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You were on the on-ramp to a 4-lane divided highway with a 65 MPH limit, behind (and tailgating) a slow (probably heavily-loaded) 18-wheeler. The right lane was empty, because another 18-wheeler doing a steady 55 MPH had just changed to the left lane (no other traffic on the road).
This is a fairly common thing for trucks to do - if there's space, move over to create room for the traffic on the on-ramp to enter the highway. Of course, once the truck that's already on the highway passes the entering traffic (or in the case of a steady stream of cars, is passed by the traffic), it will go back to the right lane.
The proper course of action for you, once you got into the right lane, would be to change to the left lane (55 MPH beats a slowly-accelerating truck any time), and wait for the left-lane truck to pass the "entering the highway" truck and go back to the right lane, leaving the left lane clear for you to pass it. Did you do that? Obviously not, or I wouldn't be writing this.
A bit of trivia - the right side of an 18-wheeler is known as the "blind side" for a reason, and the view of traffic 2 lanes over is poor to nonexistent, but that's not an issue when there's only 1 lane to the right of the truck.
What I didn't expect when the other truck blinked his lights (a way of showing that you're far enough in front of him to change lanes) was that you would also be passing him ON THE SHOULDER (please re-read the paragraph above), and were trying to change into the right lane at the same time I was. Fortunately I was able to avoid contact, because if you'd wound up under my trailer wheels, we both would have gone someplace we'd rather stay away from - a meeting with the safety director for me, the morgue for you.
This is a fairly common thing for trucks to do - if there's space, move over to create room for the traffic on the on-ramp to enter the highway. Of course, once the truck that's already on the highway passes the entering traffic (or in the case of a steady stream of cars, is passed by the traffic), it will go back to the right lane.
The proper course of action for you, once you got into the right lane, would be to change to the left lane (55 MPH beats a slowly-accelerating truck any time), and wait for the left-lane truck to pass the "entering the highway" truck and go back to the right lane, leaving the left lane clear for you to pass it. Did you do that? Obviously not, or I wouldn't be writing this.
A bit of trivia - the right side of an 18-wheeler is known as the "blind side" for a reason, and the view of traffic 2 lanes over is poor to nonexistent, but that's not an issue when there's only 1 lane to the right of the truck.
What I didn't expect when the other truck blinked his lights (a way of showing that you're far enough in front of him to change lanes) was that you would also be passing him ON THE SHOULDER (please re-read the paragraph above), and were trying to change into the right lane at the same time I was. Fortunately I was able to avoid contact, because if you'd wound up under my trailer wheels, we both would have gone someplace we'd rather stay away from - a meeting with the safety director for me, the morgue for you.
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