Why you shouldn't drive slowly in the left lane - Vox (Finally! this is one of my pet peeves!)

[pnwmom]

196. I wasn't talking about an interstate. Our regular city roads have multiple-lanes each way.

Last edited Sun Dec 28, 2014, 08:16 PM - Edit history (1)

(Often two plus a third turn-out lane). And there are lights at every corner, and people have to be on the left to make a left turn.

And police do ticket in the city, and I've gotten tickets for going 4 miles over the limit.

Meanwhile, our freeways look like this:

http://blogs.seattletimes.com/fyi-guy/2014/05/12/road-rage-survey-seattle-drivers-are-polite-but-look-out/

I don't see how everyone in all these lanes can keep to the right. Lately, they've been talking about getting rid of the carpool lane because we need another lane to take regular traffic.

And here's a point made by a Canadian driver who thinks American drivers sometimes follow the right-lane rule in a way that adds to the danger when they're passing another car.

http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/2jxhtv/

Anyways, I'm from Canada and it hadn't occurred to me that there might be a difference in driver culture until a recent trip I made to the US. I was driving for three or four hours on the beautifully-paved divided-highway interstate in desolate North Dakota. It was late at night and there was basically zero traffic. In that time I only passed two or three cars, and I was passed probably five or six times.

edit: To be clear, while driving down this empty highway, I'm definitely driving in the right lane like you should. Every time I was passed, I was shocked that the drivers came right up behind me before changing lanes to the left, despite the fact that there were no other cars in sight behind or in front of us. Even worse, once they had pulled out and passed, they would immediately pull back into the right lane in front of me, leaving less than a second of driving distance between my car and theirs.

This made me physically uncomfortable, especially the latter, because I'm always conscious of leaving enough stopping distance between my car and those in front of me, and I know that I'm liable for anything that happens if we are in a collision in that scenario. If a deer jumped in front of their car a second after they pulled in front of me, and I rear ended them, I would be at fault. Annoyed, I made a point of immediately pulling into the left lane to drive for a while until the passing car was a safe distance in front so I could drive directly behind them again.

There were no other cars around, so there was no reason to leave the left lane vacant for any amount of time that would cause danger of a rear-end accident. In Canada our driving instructors teach you to leave 4 seconds of driving time between your car and the car in front of you, which is what I try to keep, both when following someone and when pulling in front of them. It was clear when I crossed the border into the US that the priority was not to keep that safe following distance, it was to keep the left lane clear. In a country that has thousands of miles of smooth and safe divided highway (a luxury we do not take for granted in Canada), causing unnecessary danger by leaving one of those lanes vacant at all times for no reason seems like quite a shame.