That's not the occasional-changing to find a moving lane. The drivers that do this have it perfected.
As much as I hate to say it, The Germans got us beat on this one. When they get to traffic and lanes are merging they MUST file into the single lane like a zipper or they will be ticketed if caught not letting the next person get in front of them.
On another note, driving has gotten pretty bad in the recent past. The lack of use of signals is just unbelievable. That is one thing that should be enforced. They are for signalling your intentions and they are not optional. It doesn't matter if you are going 100 or 10 mph. Because someone around you is not going the same speed and doesn't know your intentions unless you signal them.
Please, please... Don't even get me started on the cell phone drivers. I do answer mine and ask them to hold on until I can pull over or call me back.
Technically, you are supposed to merge at the end of the lane, not when you first know it is dissappearing.
The lane exists so you can use it, if you merge early why wouldn't someone else drive past you to the end? If they wanted you to merge that soon, they would have blocked the road at that point.
Traffic moves better through a merge area if everybody merges at the point the lanes end, and if people cooperate by alternating.
When people merge early, it makes everybody mad, people in the continuing lane get to thinking they already let people in so they won't do it again, the people who came in get mad when others drive past them, and the people who wait for the merge point to merge get mad that nobody lets them in.
A caveat: In cases where there is a "merge lane" specifically set up for merging, you want to merge during the last part so nobody has to actually stop, rather than driving to the bitter end and then having to cut into moving traffic. Usually these are normal merges marked with arrows at the point where you are supposed to start merging (the Washington Beltway after the 270 spur entrance is like that).