What should I have done?

Around here the highway cops are now parking with the nose of the car angled out about 3 feet over the line to provide protection. My thought is that the law should apply in all situations where someone, anybody is stopped at the side of the road. And the OP needs to take out his rig and put on the cruise control running at the speed he was running and have somebody measure how long it takes to slow down to 30 MPH. I'll bet a car length per 10MPH isn't even close!Probably takes him 150 feet plus the time he was looking behind him towards the passing lane. That's the time/distance he needed between him and the truck he was tailgating.

And if leaving a safe gap allows other drivers to pass him and cut in he's not keeping up with traffic. If nobody lets people back in, everybody will be in the passing lane and he'll never get over!