I couldn’t take a picture of today’s Traffic Asshole of the Week because it’s foggy out and all you really would have gotten to see with my shitty camera is fog with two taillights in it. Not too interesting.

Since there’s no visual accompaniment, I’ll make it brief.

Cruising along the freeway today - again, admittedly foggy - going about 60mph. I was one exit before I needed to get off the freeway and was driving alongside the freeway onramp.

As the person already on the freeway, it’s my job to maintain speed and constancy so the guy on the ramp can adjust accordingly and properly merge. I had a three-second following distance behind the guy in front of me, and there was quite a bit of space behind me. The guy merging had plenty of space.

Did he take it? Hell, no.

He decided it would be a good idea to pace me - match speed and position so he’d eventually merge right into my side. I started getting worried because he was running out of room, so I sped up, at which point he decided it was a race and also sped up.

Hey, my exit was next, so I decided to slow down and let him in. I mean, who cares, right?

This guy merging saw that and then decided to slow down, too, so that he was again pacing me speed-wise, but now his rear bumper was going to merge into my front fender.

Time to lay on the horn.

You know what? The guy just continued to merge.

He slowed me down to 45mph, merging ever closer to my front bumper. I couldn’t get around him because of the solid line of cars in the other lane.

He then stayed at 45 - 15 mph less than the rest of traffic - all the way to my exit. As I exited, he merged into the fast lane, still going 45.

What an asshole.