Someone may have gotten a picture of my plates... should I worry?

[O2HeN2]

I don't let people in when they're too dense to see the "lane merges" sign or drive all the way to the end of the merge lane...

What you disagree with here is exactly the way to do it. You are not supposed to merge early, you're supposed to drive all the way to when the lane starts to go away and then do a "zipper" merge for maximum safety.

But don't take my word for it, go to just about any DOT site and you can read it for yourself. Minnesota's DOT page comes up first on google (though in this case it's construction specific) so here's their description of a zipper merge:

http://www.dot.state.mn.us/zippermerge/

Of course if you have road ragers not letting you in when you get to the lane going away, that's when problems arise.

O2