Perhaps driving 5 mph under a speed limit isn’t illegal, but in some states there is a minimum speed limit.
Also, in my state it IS illegal to hold up more than 5 cars behind you. It’s posted at regular intervals on the Seward Highway from Anc to Kenai. The signs say something to the effect of “Illegal to Detain 5 vehicles, Use Turnouts”. And the turnouts are plentiful.
I think that Washington state must send a lot of these horrible drivers up here, for the 150 miles to the Kenai can be SOOOOOOOOOOO Long with 50 motorhomes driven by little old blue hairs clogging up the way, and refusing to use the turnouts.
I admit I sometimes speed up when others are passing me. There are a few reasons why it happens, some I can defend, others not. The first reason I’ll speed up is because your passing me has made me realize I’m going more slowly than I’d like. I usually catch myself, wait until you’ve passed me (two lane divided highway), and then get back up to speed.
Another reason is that you’ve pissed me off. You’ve been trying to race me, tailgating, tailgating & flashing your lights at me, and various other examples of aggressive assholery. It’s going to piss you off if I speed up and I can be a petty vindictive bitch with a sometimes frightening disregard for my own safety.
The last reason I might speed up is because you’ve passed me five times now. Every damned time you get around me, you slow your bloated ass down to the point where I have to adjust my speed and then pass you. Finally, after you’ve pulled this crap for the sixth or seventh time, I’ve had enough. I put my lead foot to the metal and get away from you. If I’m lucky I’m somewhere I can safely go, well, really damned fast, for a while and you won’t catch up to me and play your little games any more.
You’ll notice that I mentioned tailgating and flashing your lights at the same time to be something that annoys me. I don’t mind someone flashing their lights at me. It’s the teensiest bit rude, but then I was probably woolgathering and need to get myself in the left lane. But it chaps my hide to have some jerk get within inches of my bumper and flash his lights. Almost without fail, the guy is pulling this crap when there’s nothing I can do about it. Unless my car suddenly sprouts wings and I get cleared for take-off, I’m boxed in, you idiot. Back off-- your cousin is still gonna let you diddle her even if you’re five minutes late.
There are all sorts of exceptions to everything I’ve said, but generally, this is what I’ve noticed.
Oh buddha, I’m driving to (near)Jasper next week on single lane roads- with the Albertans who drive towing everything they own (boat included) at a solid 25km/hr below the limit. In the mountains. Shoot me
Critical1’s post is worth re-stating with puncutation!
OK: here’s a newsflash for everyone in the entire country (America that is).
Flashing lights when you are blocking traffic from passing is a fucking COMMON way to ask you to move over or pick up the pace. Every civilized nation on the damn planet recognises this.
Unless of course you happen to live in America where flashing lights at your slow driving in the fucking passing lane means “your mother is a whore and she gave my entire highschool football League a freebie over the weekend you stupid ignorant fuck”.
You dont like people flashing their lights at you? Try driving like your head is turned on for a change. Don’t hold up traffic and don’t drive in the passing lanes when you are clearly moving to slow for traffic flow or conditions.
Which many americans call ‘autobahn’ driving…and is quite illegal in Germany on the autobahns … it is considered a distraction [along with offensive hand gestures and the horn] and personally, when i am hauling ash at 75 or 80 mph in the middle of 3 lanes, the left lane[passing lane] being totally empty, and someone crawls up my tailpipe and then starts flashing their lights at me makes me seriously wish to be a cop so I can ticket them…but instead i back off the gas and start slowing down. I have actually gotten down to 55 mph before they blast their horn, flip me off and finally move into the passing lane [which has been empty for the last 5 miles or so of shenanigans] and pass me.
Actually, I did mean west of Forks, but I should have clarified I was speaking of the entire coastal strip, and I was using Forks as a reference point. Seems to me the ten miles bordering the ocean, all the way from Neah Bay to, say, Cathlamet, is a discrete region with its own identity, that has more to do with the coast as a whole than the north-to-south variation one might otherwise expect.
Nah, just a safe prediction: it’s always like that.
I worked for a power company a few years and did a LOT of driving. One thing I definitely noticed was that road rage was proportional to the heat. In the summer people would drive like complete raging infected assholes and in the winter everything would calm down again. Driving in July/August was an exercise in maintaining your sanity on the road.
Also I would just like to give a hearty FUCK YOU to tourists who drive ridiculously slow through the windy sections of the road but then speed up on the straightaways so you can’t pass them. I’m forced to do 20 when I could be doing 45, and if you had the sense to let me pass, you could follow me and get where you’re going twice as fast. Fucktard.
Inattention. In most cases I suspect the guy being passed has little idea how fast (or slow) he’s going. Particularly when there isn’t much other traffic around - no visual cues. You go to pass a slower vehicle, he looks down at the speedo and reflexively applies the accelerator. Same reason people will drive for miles with their blinker on, or headlights off. They don’t look at the dashboard and/or review mirror frequently enough.
Just to be clear, you should be flashing your hi-beams - once or twice only with a repeated sequence if necessary and always to be done before getting too close - when you wish a slower vehicle to remove itself from your path by moving into the open lane to the right. Another thing a person in the oncoming traffic side of the road may be trying to convey when he flashes his hi-beams repeatedly, is that there is a cop up ahead on your side of the highway who’s radaring for speeders. When you see this, you’ll move right, and slow down for a couple miles if you know what’s good for you - that is, if you’re exceeding the speed limit or driving faster than other traffic.
Flashing your low-beams should be used to inform someone passing you that he is clear to move back into the lane you currently occupy. This is particularly helpful to drivers of tractor-trailer rigs or other vehicles with limited visibility. If these persons wish to say thanks, they will flash their taillights at you when they have completed their maneuver.
Generally speaking, your hi-beams should be used for alerts and cautions only; low-beams should be used as non-critical advisories.
I ran into a couple of these, and they were frustrating. I asked Dr. Supercharger if he had a prescription to help me get ahead of the offending tourist. Dr. Supercharger replied “Why yes, I have just the thing!”
I feel your pain, Leviosaurus. I moved up her in 2001, and the slow-ass drivers here make me nuts! I’ve lived all over the country, and this area has the pokiest drivers I have ever had the misfortune to be trapped behind. I have completely changed the way I interact with traffic. I know that no matter how far I am from the exit, I can go ahead and stay in the left lane until I am very close to my exit, where there will assuredly be at least one driver leaving a 7-car-length gap between him and the driver in front of him while roaring along at a blinding 25 MPH approaching a 40MPH ramp. Cautious to a maddening fault, and one of the reasons I have adjusted my (thankfully) flexible schedule to a 4am to 2:30PM shift, just to avoid any more traffic than I absolutely have to.
One thing I did notice, though, is that, unlike other areas of the country (where surly drivers are more likely to be armed), there is no reticence to flipping the bird, deserved or not. They are happy to let that baby fly at a moments notice, even if it means having to loosen the death grip they have a a vehicle careening down an interstate at 50MPH in the left lane!
There are several possible explanations, given the area. Some of the drivers you passed were stoned–they flipped you off because you made them realize they were driving too slow. Some of the drivers were out for a nice drive on a lovely day and were trying to enjoy the scenery–they honked because they think you should slow down and appreciate the beauty around you. Some of them were really old–they wish you’d slow down, you crazy young whippersnapper.
Cervaise has one of the best explanations–the folks on the peninsula are just different.
Weird. And here I was just reading that the PNW has the best drivers in the nation.
We have the same problem here, FWIW. Lotsa blue-hairs in motorhomes who have decided to spend their last years clogging up our highways and causing road rage. I-5 is pretty decent, but all of the other highways and interstates are just scary.
I have seen tractor-trailer trucks briefly flick their lights off for both of these signals. I’ve taken to using this when I come up behind someone at night and I want to get by. It seems that fewer and fewer people understand that a brief blip of the hi-beams is not an offensive gesture, so I use the quick dip of the lights to get their attention instead. If they just sit there, then I’ll briefly give them the hi-beams.
People who are enraged by this: just how exactly do you want me to indicate my desire to pass? Maybe I should make a sign that says, “Please, kind sir, but I’d like to drive a little more quickly. Perchance you could let me by, as you seem to be blocking the passing lane. Cheerio.”
I’ve always been leery of studies like these. I also don’t have a lot of faith in the driving tests the states administer. When I took the Washington State driver’s exam, over half the 20 or so questions related to the dangers of drinking and driving. I noted that if you always chose the most extreme answer you were correct. (“What level of crime is DUI? Answer: d) felony. How many drinks does it take before studies show a noticable impact to driving ability? Answer: d)1.” That kind of thing.) While I applaud the education on the dangers of alcohol, the exam and the road test never took into account what I consider to be the most important factors in driving - Does the driver have a good awareness of the other cars around them? Are they anticipating what others drivers might do? Are they aware of the impact of their actions on other drivers? Are they anticipating what might happen if the light they’re approaching suddenly changes, or anticipating other changable factors in the road ahead?
The one I’ve bolded is the one PNW drivers seem to fail on the most. I notice that on a four lane freeway like I-405, Seattle drivers like to pull into the blind spot of a car in the lane next to them, and just stay there for several minutes, cruising along. People back in Michigan never did that. You don’t ever want to be someplace where you’re not visible to the guy in the lane next to you, that’s just asking to get yourself in trouble. As sj2 already mentioned, on 405 three drivers will blithely pull up next to each other, blocking all three lanes, and drive 55 in a 60 mph zone. It never seems to occur to these drivers that they should open a lane to let others through. Then the cascading effect slows traffic down to a crawl a mile or so behind.
With the number and quality of the roads around here, there’s really no excuse for any rush hour traffic whatsoever IMO - I assure my friends that if the entire populace of Seattle was replaced with an equivalent number of Chicago drivers, there would be no rush hour at all. I concluded this after reading one of Cecil’s articles:
My guess is that in Seattle, people start to slow down at 15 cars per minute. No cite, just what I’ve seen.
The one thing, (other than the spectacular thunder and lightning storms), that I really liked about Texas, was the practice of fellow drivers to move OVER when they figured that they were driving too slow for someone.
It was especially common on the sort of road where a driver going too slow is REALLY annoying, that is, on two lane country roads (one one way, one the other). You’d come upon someone going kinda slow, and all you had to do was push just the wee-ist little bit and they’d move right over to the shoulder letting you by.
And if you were the slow one? The person you let by would do the cutest “blinky-blink” thing with their turn signals as a thank you.
VERY cool tradition/habit, whatever it is. I sure wish it would catch on with the rest of the country. Instead of, as others have noticed, where people seem to take it as a personal insult, akin to questioning their parentage or something, when they get passed, or someone even attempts to pass them.
OH yeah, and to whoever it was that mentioned the cruise control thing? That drives me bonkers. You have YOUR car set to cruise, so you know your speed isn’t varying by more than a mile or two per hour, but yet the bozo next to you who keeps slowing down and speeding up gives YOU the dirty look.
just a quick fyi, its also illeagal to Hold up traffic by driving in the passing lane And its illeagal to Pass on the Right in Germany. see I like them Germans and their traffic laws, they took Etiquette and made it into law.
OK, I admit it. I’m horribly impatient. And I cannot stand people who drive below the speed limit, especially when there’s absolutely NO REASON for such action. I also sometimes feel like people are “fucking with me” when they drive slowly, I’m sure tho that the feeling is probably just my big ego.
But why, why must people drive in the fast lane and not move over when people approach? I thought that it was good manners to do so and I do it all the time. Are people just that oblivious? Are they thinking “I’m going fast enough for everybody so tough shit”? Why do people slow down for five miles when they see a cop giving someone a ticket? THE COP IS BUSY! He’s not gonna jump in his car and chase you down!
It all comes down to my basic innate feeling that people (of course none of the dopers here!) are all fucking stupid. This smiley explains my feelings most of the time I’m on the road… :wally
I agree … and in europe, driving is a privelege, not a right. I would love to see it that way in the US, but our mass transit system is essentially nonexistant outsside of a few cities. Nearest mass transit to my house is a bus running from one major town to another twice a day [round trip] that passes 7 miles away from my house.
