Mike,
A lot of good points have been made in this thread. One thing you said about people stopping on an entrance ramp really hit home. I don't know if it is still this way, but years ago when they had me working in San Jose on a problem I started to go onto the freeway which was 4 lanes wide in each direction at that point and was really ticked off at the long line of traffic stopped on the ramp until I got up to where I could see. They actually had stop lights at the freeway entrance and it was a huge fine if you never stopped. Really made it more dangerous I thought as now you are trying to get up speed from a dead stop to blend in with traffic flowing at 60/65 MPH. Hopefully they have changed this by now. And it is 10 miles from my house to Redding and I have had to follow some of the darn 18 wheelers at 50MPH because one pulls out and instead of passing drives alongside a line of six or more for the whole 10 miles until I get to where I can turn off the freeway.
Ron