Painted White Lines & the People Who Ignore Them

There is this portion of my commute home in which the southwest freeway (59) merges with Beltway 8 going east.  Three lanes of Beltway 8 merge together to become 2 lanes right before the merge with 59 and then becomes 3 lanes again.  Shortly thereafter, Beltway 8 merges back into 2 lanes.  Traffic backs up horribly in this area.  When painting the lines, for whatever safety reason, the City of Houston decided to leave enough room on Beltway 8 that if someone decided to blatantly disobey traffic laws and keep driving in their own imaginary lane, regardless of the striped off area that is no longer a lane, that person would be able to do so without worrying much about dying in a violent wreck.

This infuriates me.  See, my exit is directly after the merge.  So, when others are merging left to get on the Beltway from 59, I'm merging right to get off the road.  Everyday, there are people who think painted lines don't apply to them.  As I patiently (sometimes impatiently) await my turn to merge right, other arsehats decide that it is the cool thing to do to drive over the painted-no-longer-a-lane area to "merge" right.  

I'm unsure if I am so irritated by this because they are constantly breaking the law and not getting caught or because I'm too much of a goody-good to break the law myself and therefore am stuck waiting my turn to merge.

In my next life I am driving without abandon.  Don't worry, I'll at least sign up to be an organ donor to even things out.