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.
