"I don't know if this is in my top ten, but it sure burns me up. I have a boat. 23 feet long. On a trailer. I CANNOT GET ON THE FREEWAY!!!!! You come up a ramp. "
I'm a boater, too. This is a real problem...no question about it. I try really hard not to use on-ramps where there's lots of traffic. You can't always avoid it, but sometimes, I'll drive five miles on surface streets to use another ramp when towing my boat. That ramp is way longer, and will let me hit right lane speeds by the end of the ramp. It's also past the most crowded part of the highway, so it's usually easier.
The worst time I ever had was when I was driving across the country with a 24-foot moving truck right at its GVW limit. It was one of those big U-hauls. I bought the thing from U-haul. Talk about underpowered.
One thing I discovered was that big rigs are very nice about letting you merge if you're in a crappy truck like that. I remember one long, uphill ramp on I-35 in Iowa. There was no way on this planet that I was going to be doing more than 35 mph at the top of the ramp, even running that engine up to redline on each shift.
I started up the ramp with my foot through the floor. A guy driving a big semi saw me start up the ramp. He was about 1/4 mile back, and he slowed down so that he would be right behind me when I got to the top of the ramp. Made it easy for me.
I caught up with him later at a truck stop and thanked him for helping me out. He said, "Well, you guys in those little tiny trucks have a hard enough time. I thought I'd give you a hand."
I've got the same problem when I'm towing. I've got 3,000 pounds of boat behind me plus 63 gallons of fuel and people still won't cut you any slack. Especially the ninnies that like to brake check at the bottom of a hill or cut across two lanes to hit that offramp. I try to stay off the interstate when I've got the boat behind me.
And, I do go out of my way to be polite to truckers. They remember, and return the favor if needed.
I moved from Nova Scotia to Ontario in a U-Haul Ford F350 based box truck with my Nissan Multi (Stanza Wagon in the US) in tow. That little truck, with that stuff behind it, didn't want to do much more than 55, maybe 60 tops, on the highway. Anyway, big truck drivers, and others, really appreciated it whenever I noticed a line up forming behind me and pulled over onto the shoulder to let them all pass.
Too many people don't realize that our roads are a game of give and take - rules and regulations are fine and all, but courtesy, consideration and a brain that's in gear go a long way, too. For example, generally cars on a multi-lane highway have the right of way over cars merging on on-ramps (thus the yield signs on the ramp) and have no particular responsibility to allow them to squeeze in. But the reality is that our highways are crowded and a little consideration to the mergers helps things move along better, and more safely. At the same time, when I'm the one merging, I assume that everyone on the highway is going to keep going as they are, and I adjust my speed and position to find a gap. Too many people won't even use the ramp to get up to the highway's speed before they merge.