Since you hardly ever have a problem finding a way to quickly get back into the right lane, I suppose I must conclude that either (1) you’re located where the traffic is relatively sparse, or (2) you’re a much better driver than I am, or (3) you routinely scare the tar out of people when you cut back in front of them and miss them by a foot or so. I get tailgated by speeders in the left lane who want me to move over immediately even when there is quite a lot of traffic in the right lane (which is the reason I was in the left lane to begin with).
I doubt I’ve ever scared anybody too much. First, I drive a Prius, which is an inherently unscary car. Second, I always signal before I move, and make sure that the car I am moving in front of was far enough behind me to SEE my signal (this means that I will pass a car sometimes, and then slow down to merge so they see me dropping back toward the space in front of them — rather than cutting in front of someone who never had a chance to see my signals).
If I think a space is really small, but I just have to get over, I will inch over carefully, and once my right wheels are in the lane, I will hesitate to see how the person I’m moving in front of is reacting. Usually they will be slowing down a bit; if they look like they are wanting to speed up instead, I’ll give up and move one car forward and try again.
I wouldn’t say I’m a ‘better’ driver than anybody. But I am a good driver who has a lot of tricks I use to make sure that other drivers know exactly what I’m doing, and are not surprised by it, as well as to make sure I always have bail-out chances, and to maximize my options.
As a result, I’ve been in accidents, but all were stopped accidents (where I was stopped and somebody hit me). My only moving accident was when I was 17, and I pulled out of a parallel parking space and clipped the back bumper of a speeding car that was coming by and apparently tried to get past me before I pulled out.
One of the reasons I’m driving slower these days is that I’ve noticed my reaction time is a bit slower, so I can’t follow so close or drive quite so fast.
Although I did manage to do some stretches at 90 mph on our trip to Orlando, when some particularly fast cars came by to follow. I didn’t enjoy it like I used to.