Where I am from, the left lane is the fast lane (when it is not the carpool) and you are not expected to occupy it temporarily just for passing but can drive in it for extended periods. Nevertheless, driving slowly in it is strongly discouraged. If you are driving the speed limit, that is much too slow, and you if you wish to drive slower you should stay to the right or at least move right if traffic is behind you.
Just reminds me . . . . about 10 years ago some guy was tailgating me in the left lane, BAAAD, so, just to be a smart ass (and like Trinopus, I was being wrong), I turned on my blinker and SLOOOOOOOWLY drifted into the right hand lane . . . .then the guy proceeded to try and run me off the road!
I was shocked and just moved on, in hindsight, I wished I followed him just enough to get a license plate number. Of course, if some idiot is willing to run you off the road, then who knows what else they will do?
I also once saw a guy try to illegally pass another car on a two lane highway via that “left hand turn” lane in the middle, and the car being passed veered left and tried to run him off the road, too!
It is amazing how putting a wimp behind the wheel can make someone suddenly macho.
That’s nothing, wait till you hear about the maniacs in my story.
So, I was going down the highway, mindin’ my own business, when the car in front of me starts to go real slow like. I’d like to go around him, but the traffic is not letting me, and he keeps on going slower and slower. Then I get close enough and he’s got a bumper sticker that says “if you can read this, you don’t need glasses.” I won’t deny the humor involved, but fact is, I am wearing glasses, and that’s how I was able to read it. Also, he’s driving dangerously, going slow for no reason at all, almost caused an accident, but I looked up from texting on my cell phone just in time. Eventually, I roared past him, two wheels in his lane, because he almost made me miss my exit. I had to pull all the way across every lane of traffic, and then, I still had to back up. I suppose this is what I get for camping in the left lane, but cut me some slack, I was a little tipsy at the time.
So, as I’m backing up trying to find my exit again, I see my buddy pulled over in the breakdown lane. So I pulled over in the right hand lane on the interstate, and we start having a conversation. So he says thank the good lord I pulled over, because he needed a jump. So I says to him, what do I look like, triple A? And we had a good laugh, but this very visibly angry guy goes flying by at like 60+ miles per hour, almost hits my car.
So that gets me angry, and I take off and start to tailgate him. Eventually he pulls over and I nearly run him off the road. You know, to teach him a lesson.
I swear, these people shouldn’t be on the road!
You made my day.
Yes! Your car will slow down all by itself if you leave ample stopping distance, and in stop and go traffic, in most places, you don’t need to drive up the other driver’s ass. Yes, if you live in LA or someplace like that it’s different, but most of us don’t live there.
It was a steep downhill stretch. Just putting the car in neutral would be enough to get it to the shoulder. Only a giant fucking dipshit, too stupid to be allowed to drive, would experience a breakdown on the interstste and NOT manage to guide the car onto the shoulder before total loss of speed. remember, it was a long downhill stretch.
These idiots were too stupid to be allowed to drive, and I would have pulled over, TAKEN their keys, by force if necessary, and moved the cars my damn self, if they were unwilling. Problem is, I was in a company vehicle, with a co-worker that did not approve of my plan. So I let it go.
My commute to work is 18 minutes on a normal day and about 40 minutes on a snowy day. I’d say about once every month I’ll have a nice, clear day where it takes me 40 minutes to get to work because there are cars in every lane doing 10 under the speed limit, causing us to get caught at every light. What’s worse is that these people take about a minute to accelerate their way back up to 45mph after stopping at the light.
I’m getting mad just thinking about it.
Out here in CA, and in many other states, the left lane is NOT the “passing lane”. However, In CA, the rule is “slower traffic keep right” and you can get a ticket for impeding traffic in the “fast lane” even if you are going the speed limit. In fact I think that the left lane being the “fast lane” as opposed to the “passing lane” is more common.
They deserve to be eliminated from the gene pool.
Got it. Your right, thats nothing but bad news.
I do have to admit in my younger and stupider days, when I was young and stupid, I would wait for people to do shit like that. I never physically ran someone off the road. But I would stare hard right when they passed by, and jerk my hands hard to the left, without actually touching the wheel. They would always rip the wheel and take their car off into the ditch.
Just for shits, I’ll tell another dumb story. It was in the early 1980s, and the 805 Freeway was new. One night, about two or three a.m., I was on it…and saw no traffic. Nobody. Not a car in sight.
(This would NEVER happen today, any time of day or night.)
So, fuck. I stopped. Hee hee hee. Stopped on the freeway.
Then…I turned around and drove maybe a quarter mile the wrong way. Nobody in sight! The place was mine and mine alone!
That was when I saw approaching headlights in the distance, so I U-turned and got the hell out of there.
Dumb…but kinda fun!
Askthepizzaguy rarely disappoints, especially when he can keep his posts under 17 paragraphs.
This one made me laugh a lot too, XRaeth.
Recently I’ve begun to institute a policy where if I am typing for so long that it takes me more than 30 seconds to read what I wrote (fast reader) then I just walk away from the thread without posting anything.
If it takes me 30 seconds, it’ll take most folks 6 minutes, and ain’t nobody got time for that.
Well, that’s something new, and different.
When I took Driver’s Educ, we were taught to start to merge as soon as you see the Merge signs. And that it was very rude & selfish to stay in the other lane going by people when other drivers are properly merging.
In fact, that was enforced by police – I once got reprimanded and barely talked my way out of a ticket for waiting to merge until nearly the last minute. And that was only about 5 years ago.
The zipper merge is really quite the point of contention. There have been many threads here about it, with people arguing forcefully from both sides, each fully believing their method was the One True Method, and often getting quite angry.
How did this one point get so many drivers to believe so strongly in the wrong way? Is there no consistent driver’s ed across the country?
I guess in a world where someone won’t use their blinkers because “it’s nobody else’s business knowing where she is going”, anything is possible.
High profile case here lately.
She stopped in the passing lane!
Another thing in Michigan(though certainly not only here) is the highway off ramp. The ramp and the service street usually merge into each other at a very acute angle 30 degrees or so. The service street always has a stop sign but it is on both sides of the service road so people unfamiliar can see it right there on the right side of the off ramp lanes. They have angled louvers to point it toward the service road side, but it is still a very clear and obvious stop sign to the ramp drivers.
And often the road you need to take is a right turn shortly after the merge. So you start watching the service road to make sure people are stopping(and often they don’t), and looking ahead toward the next road to time a lane change after the merge. A couple times a year I’m playing chess 4 moves ahead when I notice some no-local has come to a total stop on the off-ramp at the stop sign and have to slam the brakes.
I’ve fortunately never had an accident, but I have seen some major crunches when someone didn’t notice in time.
When I took drivers ed we were particularly told never to do this. I’ve not seen this piece of idiocy.
I have seen people, mostly on streets, who are not clever enough to get on the end of a long line of cars waiting to get onto the freeway stop next to one with the right signal on, asking to get in. They most never have learned about U-turns in their driving school. This happens in a few places on the freeway also.
And we have the type of driver who needs 100 feet of room ahead even in bumper to bumper traffic moving at 15 mph. When someone pulls into the massive space they have left these clowns slam on the brakes to make sure their margin is retained.
Not only are they annoying, they encourage all sorts of last minute maneuvers by dive bombers and the like.