Laws requiring the left lane to be used for passing are meaningless IF the general population is ignorant or if they just don’t care; same thing if the left lane is the designated “fast” lane. Around here, the attitude seems to be “I’m driving as fast as I intend to drive and you don’t need to drive any faster and that’s that.” We have an older population, true, but at least SOME of these older people must have known the rules at some point. I’m an older people and I remember but I might be the only one who does. Its very damn frustrating but I’m not sure what to do about it.
Do those Southern California “fast lanes” exist by law or convention?
Convention. The speed limit is the speed limit. But unlike here, there seem to be fewer cops on the road in SoCal and they don’t seem particularly inclined to pull one over unless one’s speeding is excessive and/or one is changing lanes too much. And SoCal drivers (I include myself) seem not to see speed limits as ‘laws’, but more as guidelines.
Here in Montreal I occasionally take the 15 north to Laval. I’ve found that when it gets to 4 lanes across, the third lane (ie. second from the left), always slows to a crawl, if not a dead stop, while the two right lanes and the far left lane zip on by. I have no clue why this occurs, but it happens every time I take this highway.
Strangely, on the Ville Marie eastbound, which also at times tends to have 4 lanes, the far left lane rarely has more than two vehicles in eyesight.
I have heard it called the passing lane and the fast lane, as well as just the left lane.
That’s possible. I’ve noted that trucks stay in the middle lane, so as not to have to deal with merges, I believe. Which is fine so long as they keep up, which doesn’t always happen. There is usually one joker who stays in the middle lane, slowing down traffic, until just before the truck scales when he moves to the right.
My own theory about the left lane is that it is occupied by those going a long way, to 101 at least, who don’t want to ever change lanes. Another culprit is the slow carpooler, who will stay on the left waiting for the car pools lanes to start again, even though he’s driving 10 mph slower than the rest of the traffic.
But every car in the left lane is not paying attention, not just the few blockers. Maybe there are that many dumb people around here.
JohnnyLA, a question for you: in Washington, do you notice that the rightmost lane seems to be rougher than the left lanes? I’ve noticed this in East Texas where the log trucks tend to beat down the pavement in the right lane. In some places, there will be ruts in the pavement 2-3" deep where the trucks have crushed down the pavement.
I’ve guessed that this is the reason that some of the slower drivers stay in the left lane. It still annoys me, but I can see where they’re not just doing it out of sheer obstinance.
In the DFW metromess, there are just as many left-hand exits as there are right-hand, so there’s no convention for a fast lane.
There’s a road here that’s like that in patches, although not to the same extent (A14 out of Felixstowe, for the Brits reading). There’s certainly patches where I stay in the fast lane when the road is clear for this reason. With huge logging trucks, I can see that it could become a major problem.
On occasion, but for the most part I’ve found the roads up here to be fairly smooth. The most rutted freeway I’ve been on is the 5 between downtown L.A. and Orange County. Driving on it, it feels as if they’re a foot deep. (They’re probably only like three or four inches – but they do jostle the car around.)
A few of people have answered this, but the main question is whether ‘fast lane’ is a phrased used where you (collective ‘you’, not Tully Mars specifically) are. As I said, it’s used all the time by traffic reporters in L.A., but I haven’t heard it up here.
I read an anecdote years ago. It might have been in one of these fora, but I don’t remember. Anyway, someone’s relative from out-of-state visited him (?) in L.A. The father (or whoever) pulled into a left-turn lane – one of the ones that go on for a block so that people can turn left into parking lots – and sped along saying, ‘This must be one of those “fast lanes” I hear you have out here.’ Something like that.