Not sure what the problem is. Keep doing it.

This is how I operate in most traffic jams, since I only own manual cars & it's much easier on my leg.

I genuinely don't even remember any specific scenarios where somebody merging in caused me to have to come to a full stop (where I wouldn't have had to stop if they didn't merge). Not saying it never happened, but it was so rare and unnotable that I don't remember.

I do live in the northeast US, so maybe that has something to do with it, but I don't usually feel like I spend meaningfully more time in traffic because I let a few people in front of me.

Bonus benefit: my life is measurably better since I stopped getting pissed about people being in front of me. Road rage had such a broad impact on me, even after I got out of the car.

Honest answer involves deep breaths (at least as one first adopts the method), chuckling at one’s favorite podcast, and recreating the buffer.

On certain roads, monkey see monkey do and eventually folks behind you kinda copy you and there’s a chance fewer and fewer folks will be cutting you off. Notice this most on the longest trips. Perhaps they’re not copying you, btw, rather the most aggressive drivers continually pass you until a small cohort of Big Spacers remain behind you. If some of these Space-Not-Racers are in front and around you too, aggressive drivers passing are passing without cutting you off as much - they have enough space to jam themselves into the bumper of the car in front of you.

Kinda funny going around a curve and seeing a hundred cars bumper to bumper ahead, then checking mirrors to see safe following distances :) (oh yeah this style is safer too not just more efficient!)

Can require some SERIOUS brain hacking. How mad would we be if someone cut in front of us at the grocery store? We’d go butts2nuts in a blink. Gotta just, like, flowww mannnn

I leave a gap between me and the driver in front of me. Rarely does anyone pull into that space. They usually are in the lane that gets them where they need to go