I’ll preface this by stating I’ve never actually driven in Germany. When I say “significantly,” I mean it in a statistical sense.
The general gist of what I’ve read so far is that, in Germany, you are expected to stay in the right-hand lane on any roadway unless you have a valid reason to leave it. There are only two valid reasons: to pass slower traffic or to turn left. They also strictly prohibit passing on the right.
Every lane but the far right is a passing lane. So on a three lane (in one direction) highway, the middle lane is passing the right lane, and the left lane is passing both the middle lane and the right lane. The pattern is the same for any number of lanes.
In heavier (but not stop and go) traffic, this would relegate drivers who wish to travel at the same speed as one another to a single file line in one lane. This would eliminate what I call “rolling road blocks,” where you get a bunch of slow, oblivious drivers driving adjacent to each other and preventing people from passing.
The safety benefits, I can see. If the lane to the right is always slower, than those who want to pass are going to take the lane to your left. Your blind spot is smaller on the left side, so they spend less time in it. It also adds in a bit more predictability, which is another key to safety on the roads. If I know what to expect, I can be better prepared for it.
That is as I surmise, anyway. What think the sages of the Dope? Would it have any effect?
Right lanes get too congested to move in the US. I presume we are talking freeways here, or autobahns. Also, on the autobahns, you can drive really fast in the passing lanes without the highway patrol demanding tribute. Really fast.
I know someone who lives in Germany just for the pleasure of driving 100 mph (or whatever that translates to kph) plus regularly on the autobahns.
in CA, the right (freeway) lane is often the fastest lane on the freeway because everyone feels they have the right to be in the left lane no matter what.
Not sure if that discipline would help the US or not, but it would make me a lot happier.
I don’t think that’s strictly true from my experience. I don’t drive often but when I have driven on a 3-lane autobahn typically the center lane is the cruising lane, same as the US. I think they are perhaps a bit stricter than in the US about using the left lane only for passing. Incidentally I’m talking about the autobahn that serves Berlin. Once you get outside the city and are on the no-speed-limit sections of the autobahn you best be staying out of the left lane unless you’re going damn fast.
Isn’t that how we’re supposed to drive in the USA?
Really it comes down to a matter of the “discipline” you mention. Or, more likely, just having half a clue that there are other people in the world other than yourself. I blame that sort of awareness on the Germans’ universal healthcare… same kind of un-American thinking. Damn Commies!
That’s how most people drive in the US in my experience. I constantly see signs that say “slower traffic keep right” or even the more stern “No trucks in left lane” as we as “left lane for passing only.” These aren’t rare at all.
I have never driven in the US (have been driven some few thousand miles), so I cannot speak to the difference either.
I’d expect it to be a nightmare for me if overtaking on the right were allowed in Germany - I’d always risk being blindsided when merging back in the right lane.
Oblivious slow drivers in the left lane in Germany soon notice the driver behind them trying to crawl up their exhaust pipe.
What’s stressful on German autobahns is overtaking with a car that does not accelerate quickly (say, overtaking a truck doing 100 km/h while inching up slowly to 120, 130… km/h) and suddenly seeing a car doing 250 km/h approaching in your rear mirror. It’s much more restful driving on Swiss autobahns with their 120 km/h limit.
There are a lot of things that we Americans could do to improve our driving discipline. I suspect safety might be increased, perhaps more so than congestion. Driver training and certification here is a joke. I’ve known people who had no idea they were supposed to pass on the left.
I would like to see the training be more realistic, and I think there should be some sort of requirement for recurrent training, similar to how it’s done in aviation.
This is anecdotal based on my conversations with people, but the common perception by many is that the left lane is the “fast” lane. They seem to be under the impression that, however fast “fast” is, if they are going “fast” they are required to be in the left lane.
Among these people, “fast” seems to mean one of two things: either the speed limit, or a certain arbitrary amount in excess of the speed limit.
If traffic is light enough such that all the cars on the road can fit in the right most lanes it is my experience that traffic moves along at about 10 miles per hour above the speed limit. This is from my driving experience in the US. The few times I have been in Germany things seems to work in a similar fashion so I don’t know what the OP is going on about.
When I’ve been on the autobahn, I haven’t noticed the quantity of cars that I have in - oh say the Valley. Most Germans don’t commute like we do, owning a car and having a license are VERY expensive, and good public transportation makes cars for most people a luxury, not a necessity.
Take half the cars off U.S. roads during rush hour and you’d have less congestion. I suspect the issue has far more to do with drivers per sq mile of road surface and less with passing discipline.
I don’t know where you live, but in CA, people don’t pay any attention to those signs.
I make the drive down Hwy 1 to Carmel all the time. There’s a long uphill run when you get to Watsonville where the freeway goes fro 2 to 3 lanes. Every single time I drive this, I pull over into the far right lane, because that is the fastest lane. No one wants to be in the “slow” lane. I’m able to go 75 - 80 mph easily, passing everyone.
I think German drivers are trained to be more conscientious; I doubt that Farmer Dieter and his beater farm pickup are out on the Autobahn between Munich and Stuttgart going 55 mph in a 75 mph zone, but you see that kind of thing all the freakin’ time on our Interstate highways.
Combine that with a large population of drivers who want to go 95 on that 75 MPH interstate, and you have a lot of people driving in the left lane because they don’t want to get stuck behind Farmer Bob or Grandpa Phil going under the speed limit in the right lane with a blinker on.
In the cities, I don’t think it would matter- the sheer volume of cars make it impractical for everyone to queue up in the right lane.
Bro, we’re talking about Germans here, not the modest and self-effacing Dutch. Americans ain’t got nothin’ on them for self-importance and self-entitlement.
Note: “British,” “French,” “Russian,” and another dozen nationalities could be substituted for “Germans” in this discussion. All God’s children think they’s the best, though the Germans, British, Russians, and, yes, Americans have done more in the past couple centuries to prove it. And a century before that even the Dutch got in their innings.
AFAIK, in most states, you’d have to improve the laws first. It’s usually required that slower traffic keep right, but I don’t think there’s usually a requirement that the faster traffic pass on the left. (How does that work in Germany? You’re doing the right thing and cruising in the right lane. As you’re going along at 150 km/h, you come across a truck being driven by an idiot in the left lane. Idiots are a universal phenomenon. It’s going 100 km/h and it’s not getting over any time soon. Do you really have to wait patiently behind it until one or the other gets off of the autobahn?)
CA really is a special case. I just don’t get it. I used to really wonder about people who complained about drivers going too slow in the left lane. I assumed that they meant that the drivers just weren’t going as fast as the complainers wanted. Then I moved to California. I’ve never seen so many rolling roadblocks where people go exactly the same speed in the left lane as in the right, or even go slower in the left lane. I haven’t seen any places where the right lane is usually faster, but people here really like matching the speed of the car next to them for some reason! I’ve never encountered that anywhere else in the country.
I moved to CA from the East Coast and I don’t get it either. I regularly commuted from San Francisco to San Jose on the 280. It seems like they like the left lane but not to go that fast. You can see a good distance on some stretches and there will be a solid line of cars in the left lane while cars in the right lanes are passing them by in the thinner traffic in those lanes. Of course on the 101 in rush hour, no one goes anywhere fast.
