Four-lane undivided road—which lane is safest, right or left?

Are there any data that supports any one lane being safer than the other? My brain wants to say that the lane furthest away from oncoming traffic is the safest, but it’s likely not so simple.

I think that’s right, for two reasons. One, the farthest to the right is the lane to stay in unless you are passing or in extremely congested traffic. Two, if the highway is undivided, a head-on collision is more likely between the inner lanes and the sum of the speeds effectively doubles the impact velocity. If you think hitting something at 60MPH is bad, try it at 120.

As far as data, I haven’t researched it. Have you?

This cite claims the left lane is safest based upon reports that cite the lane the drivers were in.

Warning pdf. This report has a lot of information concerning comparisons to 2 vs 4 lane rural highways but I don’t have time to review it; perhaps someone could cull some useful data from it.

I’d say the left lane is safer because I believe the dangers from traffic merging into and exiting the right lane far outweigh the danger from having cars on both sides of you traveling in both directions.

I assume that’s mostly because if people are following proper “move to the right when not passing” lane discipline, there’s significantly fewer miles driven in the left lane in general.

Have you researched why you think it’s appropriate to post this kind of answer in GQ?

I saw that page when I was searching around as well. The biggest problem I have with it is that there is no distinction made between divided and undivided highways.

Undivided highways have four-way intersections, so you’ll have entering traffic from the left as well as the right.

What world do you drive in? :confused: :smiley: :confused:

Not every question in the world has a factual answer, no matter how much you may wish for it. Have you researched this?

Well pretty much the rule in General Questions is to at least attempt to answer the question that was asked in the first reply. No jokes, no opinions. You didn’t so I went looking for a cite to help the thread get back on track, still here you are acting like this is IMHO thread.

If you thought there was no factual answer to this question, then you should have reported it for a forum change instead of bringing opinions into it. And I know I should have reported your post rather than engage you, but I think it’s better to have these discussions in the open. It’ll help clean up GQ a little better in the end.