re: Merging lanes...which driver are you?

That is actually incorrect. A highway lane can only support around 1500 vehicles per hour for a 55 mph speed limit. Once over 1500 vph the speed will slow with no incident because the highway becomes congested. Once you reach around 2200 vph, you have reached highway capacity and the speed will begin to be reduced to stop and go traffic even without an incident.

So if you have 3 lanes going to 2, once the two lane section gets to around 4400 cars per hour, then the traffic is going to be stop and go regardless of the merge. As long as the two lane section remains below 4400 vph, you will have freeflow conditions and then early merging is correct. Once you reach 4400 vph, zipper merging would be more efficient because the capacity of the two lane section has been exceeded.