Is My Driving Offensive?

Every morning I drive to work and see an example of someone who does not understand common driving protocol. Common driving protocol is not the same as the law or NTSB safety guidance. The law is like a standardized test; it's a general set of rules based on sound principles, meant to apply to the largest possible population. It does not always make sense, depending on the situation. NTSB guidance informs the law, and is based on minimizing worst-case scenarios. It's the source of "defensive" driving.

I employ "dynamic" driving. When I drive, I pay attention to everything happening around me. I check my mirrors, I move over a lane to let faster cars pass, and I try to enter a highway at a speed matching the flow of traffic. Flow is the key to driving, in my opinion. There's the set speed limit, and then there's the prevalent speed. I maintain that it's safer to travel at the prevalent speed. The law doesn't agree and the NTSB can provide statistics showing how the prevalent speed (assuming it's faster than the posted speed) can be a percentage more dangerous in the case of a crash. My common sense response is that it doesn't matter if you're going faster or slower than the posted speed limit as long as everyone is going roughly the same speed. When you have much faster or slower cars, everyone around them has to adjust for them, and that's when chain reactions can happen. Personally, I prefer to be going just a tad faster than everyone so that the action is in front of me. If I'm going slower, cars pass me from behind, and it's harder to keep track. If I'm going slightly faster than most cars, less cars are coming up from behind, so more of my attention is focused on what's in front of me. I'd love to have some kind of way to reward the drivers that operate like I do on the road. I see it on occasion - someone moving over ahead of a merge, slowing down to make room for a truck, moving out of the left lane to let faster traffic through, etc. If there was a system of rewards in place, more people might start driving conscientiously. I'll probably still be going faster than them.