Friendly drivers

Does anyone else besides me “make friends” when driving long distances? You know, another car that you stick close by that will match your speed, and will watch out for one another?

I know I do. :> Generally this involves clearing lanes for one another, and making space. This often occurs when I find a car that wants to speed along with me.

Is that just weird, or does anyone else do the same thing?

Does anyone else know what I’m even talking about? :>

I’ve only done this with people I know, such as a caravan situation. I think it’s cool that you can do that with strangers during long distance driving. Do you have any signals, like winks with the ladies (assuming you’re a man)?

On my way home from Colorado last summer, we some how picked up a guy in York, NE who stayed with us past Des Moines, IA. We matched speeds, cleared lanes, all that. When he finally got off his exit in Iowa, he honked his horn and gave us a friendly wave. I thought that was pretty cool.

It’s more of an unspoken thing, but you know it’s there… :wink: And I do make eye contact with some of the drivers in these situations, but not always.

Yeah, stuff like that. It’s hard to find a driver nowadays who won’t speed past you angrily trying to dodge traffic, and people like that are really cool.

I’m a regular semi-long-distance driver (400-600 miles/weekend) and I usually team up with at least one other car (or truck.) It makes the drive a bit nicer, rather than just ahnging out in the fast lane by yourself, you can swing by in a little high-speed convoy, and having more eyes on the look-out helps. I always offer a parting wave when one or the other of us is peeling off.

We’ve only got about 20 miles of freeway here so things don’t last very long but I’ve always enjoyed teaming up, although I always assumed they didn’t realize what I was doing. Usually I will be a ¼ car length behind and 1 lane left or right and then stay right there till town. I call it driving wing-man.

But now I know to look out for it on my next road trip.

You know come to think of it we did try to try that back in 1985. We had 2 cars driving from LA to Kansas. But the LA traffic did us in. We lost our front car and didn’t see them till Kansas, csg

I’ve never had that happen during long distance driving, but I do see “regulars” on my route to work. I try to work with them for clearing lanes, etc. And if it weren’t for friendly drivers letting me out into traffic at this one stop sign, I’d never get to work.

I’m from new york, what’s this concept of friendly drivers you speak of?