Yea, I'm *that* guy

If someone tailgates me?
I just get over and let them pass. It's what they want, and they can't tailgate you if they are in front of you. Bringing YOUR speed up to 80 to 90 mph, just means you're breaking the law along with them.

As far as reporting a fraudulent carpool decal?
I wouldn't do that either. For probably a lot less defensible reasons, but maybe a childhood echo of nobody likes a snitch.
Sure it's wrong. But IMO there are greater crimes the world needs addressed, and part of me applauds the ingenuity and boldness. I'll let the person with the fake sticker take the risk themselves. I'll leave it up to the police to catch them or not. I'm not going to "turn em in".

Arguably that makes me wrong, but I just don't like the idea of Citizens turning in Citizens for what is an infraction/violation of convenience. I'll leave it to law enforcement to enforce in this particular case. I'll debate whether my ignoring the fraud makes me complicit in the deterioration of society in those quiet few seconds before I fall asleep.-- But I suspect I'll sleep soundly.

Yeah, I'm NOT *that* guy.

 

Any policy that moves a lot of (possibly) law abiding drivers over to the left lane is dangerous. Abiding by speed limits, I just stay the heck out of the left lane, regardless of carpool lanes, how many people in the car, and so on. Actually we avoid the freeway all together here, take a lower speed (2 lane) coastal highway into town.

 

I typically go the speed limit on the carpool lane plus maybe 10mph max. It doesn't bother me that someone is tailgating me. If they want to go faster, they can exit into the fast lane......if the fast lane is slower than the carpool lane, then there should be no complaints about me going the speed limit plus 10mph.

I think it's wrong to give the benefits of single carpool ridership to people that can afford a car that has the benefit. The roads are paid by tax dollars by everyone, not just the people that have carpool stickers. That's just the way I feel about the law......and yes I own a plug in Prius.

 

Just today I was in the rightmost lane doing 5-10 over, and two different people passed me - on the right shoulder. I guess the three lanes to my left weren't going fast enough either.

What gets me is when I'm doing 70-75 in a 70 and I come up on a semi-truck doing his legal 60, I have to slow down and wait till nobody's around to pass him, but invariably, once I do get over into the passing lane here comes a moron at about 100 or better and comes right up on my bumper like I'm the one causing problems.

Or god forbid I change a lane to let a string of cars merge in from the ramp.

"Start seeing motorcycles" How about motorcycles start obeying the rules? How am I supposed to see you if you're going 100 between the lanes???

True story here... two lanes northbound on a divided interstate. 65 mph. I'm doing 5 over. A semi-truck pulls up behind and tailgated. Bright lights. The horn. I just keep going, there's another lane, it's 5 am and nobody else in sight. After a couple miles of this I change to the left lane so he can pass in the right. Well then he pulls into the left. So I go back to the right lane and brake to slow down to force him in front. What does he do? He pulls into the right lane in front of me and locks up his trailer brakes. I'm now driving in a burning rubber fog. So I call 911. After explaining everything they say "go to a police station" and that I would have to ID the driver in court. WHAT???? It's 5 am! It's DARK!!! And the truck driver is way up in the air compared to where I am in my car, I couldn't possibly see him! 911:"Well, there's nothing else we can do". How about getting a cop out here to get him off the road - he's a menace. 911: "Sorry, by the time we can get anybody out there, he'll be long gone".

Reporting them doesn't do any good.

 

People are just plain weird...

And getting weirder every year. They sure become all macho and brave when inside a vehicle, don't they?

I'm getting to the point, where I don't even look forward to going out for a nice pleasant drive anymore. Because some crazy nuts always seem to spoil it. Pretty soon, we will be back to Planet of the Apes.

 

I have a mixed perspective on the matter. I own a PiP and I carpool with my wife. We go with the flow of traffic - that means if traffic is moving at 75MPH or 80MPH in the carpool so are we. If that is an issue and we want to go slower to conserve battery or for safety reasons we move to the lane on the right. That is called being courteous. Of course there will be that person who tailgates me while I am flowing with traffic at 75-85MPH so I just move to the right and let him pass - what do I care if he gets in front of me. The self-righteous driver that goes 65MPH (or slower) in the carpool lane (BECAUSE IT'S THE LAW!!) while ignoring the flow of traffic is creating more problems by forcing people to go around them and creating more traffic disturbances. Often I see Leaf, PiP and Volt drivers going below the speed limit in the carpool lane and impeding the flow of traffic (huge gaps in front of them). I am much more bothered by those folks than by a carpool cheater or tailgater. The worst, however, is a carpool cheater who is also going just the speed limit (or lower) because they are either self-righteous or oblivious. Often I try to pass such a driver and then of course, they speed up to 90MPH to prevent me from passing them after they were going 50MPH in the carpool lane...I find California to be one of the worst states when it comes to driver courteousness and road quality - this is a poor combination for a daily commute...music is my escape from that reality.

 

Excellent post from NeilPeart.

 

Hmmm... Perhaps you haven't driven in Maryland :-/


Posted via the PriusChat mobile app.

 

Back when I was part of a real carpool -- in the previous century, Before Prius -- new construction extended a formerly brief carpool lane much of our way to work. For a couple of months, there was a contest of wills between those of us desiring to hold speeds down to 60-62 mph, and those who wanted to go 70-ish, using the carpool lane as an 'Extra-Fast' lane. The later population included a significant fraction of SOV cheaters and foreign plates.

During that time, I did chastise one of my partners for making a sudden and nearly catastrophic lane change to allow a speedball to pass, after she got high-beamed. My point was that the particular lane change, forcing the innocent driver in the other lane to take emergency evasive action, was more dangerous than letting the speed-ball stew and cool his heels behind us. And it would have shifted crash liability away from the impatient speedball and onto her. She never did it again.

We, the slower crowd, were a significant majority, and soon won. Having transit buses in our midst was a significant help, they never ever exceeded 60. The faster folks learned to simply stay in the 'Regular' fast last, where they really belonged.

When this subject came up in a couple newspaper 'ask a cop' columns, their answers were to not spark any road rage, but also that the 'slower traffic keep right' law applies only to general purpose lanes, not to special purpose lanes such as HOV.

My carpool era ended as the Prius era was starting. [There are no special HOV stickers for SOVs here, that incentive is wholly unnecessary here.] A change of venue allowed me to shift to bicycle commuting, mostly on dedicated bike trail. I don't know how the local HOV 'rules' may have changed since.

 

Report fraudulent HOV sticker, yes. Report only single visible person, no. You can't always see the second passenger especially if that person is in a car seat in the back with tinted windows. That would be me right here.

 

i've driven 95 and the beltway through maryland for 15 years, and it doesn't even compare to northern cali. i bet the average speed out there is 20 mph than the rest of the nation.

 

It is always safest to drive with the flow of traffic....

Turn in bogus carpool stickers ? Not sure how to do this..how do you take pictures ? How do you write down the license plate number. If I saw them in the parking lot I would...

Where I live about 1/4 of the people in the car pool lane are there illegally. I wish the cops would do their jobs. What is even worse though are the number of people reading their cell phones. Once again, wish the cops would do their jobs.

 

Cops do do their jobs. The reason why people do it is because cops aren't around to catch them. Cops also have priorities. They could careless if you're on the HOV lane by yourself when they're responding to a murder investigation. They could tell you to get off the phone on their PA system.

 

In many urban areas, 'doing their job' would require writing more than 1000 tickets per hour. That is simply impossible. The drivers are enjoying 'protection of the herd'.

My brother is a judge in a rural area where traffic is a couple of orders of magnitude lower, so any 'herd protection' is very sparse. Locals generally know this, but many out-of-staters don't think of it, and mistake a lot their normal road misbehavior from home as a birthright. Many of their excuses and protestations in the courtroom are just precious.

 

If they would put some cops out on the roads, and raise the price of a speeding ticket, those 1000s of tickets might help balance a state budget or 2, and make the roads much safer. A $100 ticket or whatever it is is a little slap on the wrist.

 

I used to see this a lot when a friend of mine was using the HOV lane with a kid in a backseat car carrier.

You shouldn't be fumbledorking around with a phone or a camera while driving 80MPH in the HOV lane.
That's against the law too.

I'm glad that the LEO did ask you how you happened to get the pictures (sorta.)
He probably did what some of my buddies do.
Spend a minute or two acting concerned.
Then round-file your info as soon as you're done venting your spleen.....

......now that I'm done venting MINE?
I think I'll get MY morning cup of coffee.

Everybody is somebody's jerk.....