I've had it happen, though, enough times to vent about, that I've moved to the left lane for some legit and transitory reason, and then ended up being there for a mile or more while a parade of cars dive to pass on my right leaving no space for me to move back. I wonder if they do it because they think they're less conspicuous, like some police radar might buzz on account of their speed and the ossifer's eyes will reflexively go to me in the left lane.
I wonder whether that's a matter of poor manners (people camping in the overtake lane) prompting bad manners (people passing on the right). Your intent was to temporarily switch to the left lane. Particularly in urban areas, highways will feature a lot of left lane campers and left lane exits for which slower traffic may have a legitimate need to be in the left lane. This prompts a tetris frame of mind in which the object is to get past any obstacle in any lane in either direction. Tangent/"cool story" - Pre-covid on may way home I came up on Chevy Bolt in the left lane doing barely more than 60mph with no one ahead of him. I flashed to pass. Nothing. He had room to yield, but didn't. I flashed to pass some more. He having made it unambiguous that he would not yield, I changed to the middle lane to pass. He was intent on being in front of me, so he changed too. Not many days later, I was coming home and came up on Chevy Bolt in the left lane doing barely more than 60mph with no one ahead of him. I didn't flash to pass, but took the middle lane and passed. It was the same car and driver, now screaming and flashing his lights. I had exhibited poor manners in anticipation of poor manners. Of course, people should have let you back in when you signaled, but their individual failures speak to a general deterioration as well.
Good lord.... overtake or passing lane! Around here it is the fast lane. The freeways are not wide enough to abandon a lane for such temporary uses.
When etiquette is observed, it's beautiful. If a highway has three or four lanes the rightward lanes can accommodate speeds under the limit and the fast, overtake or passing lane cars at 150% of the speed limit. However a culture that has people pull into the left most lane, set the cruise to the speed limit and check out makes that order impossible.
He's probably exaggerating just a bit, but there are some areas I can think of where 130-135% is not unreasonable depending on time of day. There's a couple sections of the 494/694 loop around Minneapolis that are posted 60 or 65. Now that's fine during high traffic periods(which is the reason for the limit), but during off-peak times it's three or four lanes in either direction with fairly minimal traffic. People will do 75-85 in the leftmost lanes during those periods and it's not really unsafe as long as everyone stays reasonably alert. In Chicago, it's not uncommon for the leftmost lane to be doing 85-90mph when the posted limit is 70-75(120-125%) The best and worst driving I've personally experienced was in Oregon. Oregonians are fantastic at zipper merging and just general onramp and offramp etiquette. But they are godawful bad at open road etiquette. I can't even begin to count the number of times I got stuck on I-5 between Portland and Eugene in a logjam caused by a single driver. You'd have a vehicle in the right lane(often a semi) traveling at exactly the speed limit. That's fine. But then you'd have another vehicle in the left lane at the speed limit + 0.0001mph. And dozens of vehicles in both lanes behind them all bunched up. That behavior is far more dangerous than accelerating to speed limit + 5mph for maybe a minute to pass the slower vehicle and then get out of the way to allow traffic to unclog. Bunched up traffic is where a one- or two-vehicle accident instead becomes a 10 or 20 car pileup. I'd be driving 1,650 miles from ND to Eugene, and those last 100 miles were far more rage-inducing than the previous 1,550 combined.
The road I come home on is posted at 60mph and varies from 4 to 5 lanes wide. During an accident free rush hour, the left most lane would run at 90mph. This mostly worked at rush hour when speed enforcement wasn't practical. This was a regular feature of the trip home. The way into town wasn't as predictable. I've had mornings that I never shifted intBunched up traffic is where a one- or two-vehicle accident instead becomes a 10 or 20 car pileup.o third and others when I just kept up with surrounding traffic only to realize I'd gotten into triple digits. This is the problem with morning traffic here. Everyone wants to get to work. The left most lane is full of people who signal a desire for the car ahead to yield by tailgating it. A driver taps his brakes, the driver behind sees brake lights and panic brakes, the next driver stomps on his brake pedal to trying to avoid collision, and the ones behind him are taken off guard by the rear bumpers coming at them. That end of accident ruins everyone's morning. As people slow to take in the full magnificence of bent metal and broken glass, they run into the car ahead the drive of which wanted to go even slower and see more. It's surprising we don't drown by opening our mouths and looking up into the clouds when it rains.
Here 20mph is reckless operation. The PO always lets you know what a favor he has done by making your revenue ticket less than 20 over.
I can't think of anyplace here where more than 120% is reasonable. The fraction doing 130% is quite small (except maybe the Seattle-Tacoma free-fire zone of I-5). I'm going to take a different angle on that. Yes, it is annoying, but you are the outsider, the foreigner, and have absolutely no standing to insist that locals who are obeying the speed limit should go faster. Just chill, and adjust to the local culture. Don't try to push your faster 'foreign' road culture. The big pileups around here are mostly from (1) people driving too fast for the visibility (fog, smoke, severe dust, rain), (2) people driving too fast for the traction conditions (ice, rain, slush), and (3) people following too close for their reaction times (tailgating), not from people going 'too slow in the fast lane'. I can't help but wonder if much of that was in the mirror.
Lane yield rules don't require anyone to drive faster; they just require slower drivers not to obstruct faster traffic. There is no functional driving culture in which people fail to yield according to conventional traffic rules. Good and functional road etiquette requires drivers to yield according to generally accepted rules about the vehicle position and direction of travel, not residence.
On the entire Left Coast, by either law or official policy, vehicles traveling at the speed limit are not "slow". Though across the region, functionally there are several very disparate local driving culture zones. When in one that differs from your home culture, please adapt, don't force your faster or more aggressive version in a slower or less aggressive zone. "When in Rome ..." Don't be blind. "Generally accepted rules" very definitely vary by "residence" zone. There is a widespread tendency to be selective about which traffic safety laws are obeyed closely vs. loosely. Don't be the ugly out-of-state plate trying to force a different selection than the local norm. IOW, Chill.
Sorry, it's how I write -- not much for bumper-sticker content, and have a lot of thoughts on Prius hate (am an ex-sportrider, after all -- wanna read about some really hairy cager tantrums? Buckle up ). Besides, now that it's holidays here at work, inbox's slowed to a trickle... so if the column height gives you a twist, just scroll past... Nah, gotta disagree here. Drive exactly the same way now as in my 10th-gen turbo Civic 5 yrs, which is nearly as rapid and torquey as the XW60. And the amt of douchery that happens now is easily 2 - 3x what I got in the Honda (which wasn't exactly Q-ship-discrete what w/ its styling). Still kept to the R lane, still do everything right I do now. Feel it depends more on the comm'y you commute in, and how many others also own hybrids / are actual adults and not glass-ego'd infants in adult skins. And feel the 5th-gen's attractiveness + its quicker pace vs. earlier gens, is what tends to trigger those who'd clocked all Priuses as eternal-swirly cars, and can never deserve to be treated with anywhere near the same respect as the Camrys or Sonatas or RAV4s they're easily liked-paced with. Which my proactive efforts like wave-pasts, not driving like the 40-over douches in the L lane vs. ego-based reaction... but also respecting and actualising driving like rules actually apply to me... which have a nice ripple effect on the non-douches out there, which are more numerous than # of bad apples suggest. Lamborghini windscreen rake, A70-Supra power, and 60+ mpg? 'Oh, guess I gotta flex the only card I still have', which of course, is the least-effort foot-to-wood, to protect their fragile, candy-floss egos... So if you live in a comm'y none of this happens, hey good for you, got pretty lucky. Doesn't apply anywhere I'd lived, though (East Coast, Midwest, TX, Southwest, PNW).
Emphasis added. "Slow" isn't slower. Legal speed limits don't address how ordinary driving rules govern situations in which one car should yield to another. A car traveling at 25mph is slower than a car at 30mph. They might both be slow or fast for conditions. Whether the slower car should yield that lane to the faster (but not necessarily fast) car is the generally accepted etiquette. I'd pass on that as well. When I was in Virginia Beach, I noticed a lot of red light running. Even if that were a feature of local driving culture, I didn't adopt it because it isn't orderly or safe. The better practice, local culture notwithstanding, is to stop if the light is red before one reaches the intersection. Similarly, as Hammersmith describes above, disregarding lane yield convention so that traffic accumulates behind the slowest driver is not the better, safer practice. Following lane yield conventions isn't aggressive, but refusing common etiquette can be. In every region, you'll find drivers who aren't aware of or intentionally disregard those conventions, like the one that requires drivers at a four way stop to yield to the driver coming from the right. Whether those laws are obeyed widely or not has a lot to do with enforcement, and that certainly does vary by region. In the bad old days of the 55mph limit, PA was maniacal about speed enforcement. A highway might be filled with people driving anywhere from 54 mph to 55.5mph, the latter being nervous about passing the former. There are other places in which if there is any speed limit enforcement, locals clearly don't fear it. Driving etiquette isn't only about laws. In my state, the law has been changed to make passing on the right legal if it can be accomplished safely. It disregards international convention and is still disorderly.
And, these days VERY rare. When I drive home, I need to turn off a 60 mph highway. When turning right, I signal early as I slow down so people can pass. When making the left turn just over a hill, I start signaling before cresting the hill as I start to slow down. that allows other driver to make proper decisions.
Lane yield rules are to generally pass on the right, not the left. Don't get me started on turn signal use or, more accurately, lack thereof. What possesses people to turn on their signal part way through their turn?? They are obviously not helping anybody!
My immediate area has a lot of yield signs at intersections and low speed limits. Sometimes I wonder if people here think using the turn signals costs more or they just assume that since everyone knows everyone else, we also know where they are going. It's nuts. I've driven in VA and never noticed this. If a faster car comes up behind you, you would yield the right lane and move to the left lane so he could pass you on the right? VA code appears to adhere to the left lane for passing convention. § 46.2-804. Special regulations applicable on highways laned for traffic; penalty
The sign around here I think is crazy is where right turn vehicles need to yield to those doing a U turn! I thow this is a college town, but students need to know how to drive too!
In Vancouver there a stretch of highway with morning/evening lane restriction: single-occupancy vehicles legally must stay in the left lane, the right lane is reserved for vehicles with 2 or more occupants. Every morning and evening, it’s a very strange mix. If I’m driving it alone, and there’s a lot of other vehicles, I’ll usually end up breaking that law, going into the right lane, in the hope that any carpooling speeders will have enough muscle-memory, to pass me on the left. Even when you’re legal in the right lane, have a passenger, it’s still an uneasy mix: carpoolers "can" be rabid lead foots, going nuts if someone's obeying the speed limit, with clear space ahead. It's been thus at least a decade.
