I’ve passed trucks that hug or even go over the line between lanes because they’re so wide (and possibly the driver sucks). Being cautious and being ready to move over might not be necessary but it might explain the behavior.
And spending more time next to the truck is better…how? (talking to the idiots, not you)
In that case, getting by the truck as fast as possible in the correct move. Slowing down and increasing the amount of time you are in a dangerous position is dumb.
We get a fair amount of rain up here. People will start to pass a truck, get to its 8 o’clock position, and then slow to the same speed as the truck. My hypothesis is that they get into the spray being kicked up by the truck and think, ‘I can’t see! I have to slow down!’ not realising that if they simply pass the truck they’ll be out of the spray and be able to see again. I can’t understand why people haven’t figured this out.
Oh no, I agree. I have a similar philosophy in general about people driving erratically in one way or another. My goal is to get away from them somehow. If and when they are so reckless that they cause an accident I want to be nowhere near them.
If they’re driving slow I speed up to get away. If they’re driving fast I get over to let them pass and allow them to drive away and out of my life.
I’d want to get past a truck like that quickly and yet be vigilant as I do so.
My point wasn’t to agree with the behavior of slowing down but to explain why a person might (unfortunately) choose to do so. Psychologically they may think “slower=safer” and slow down.
It’s like people who merge onto a freeway going 45 miles an hour. They drive me nuts. If you merge going 45 and someone is in the right lane coming at you going 60, you’re going to get hit if they don’t see you. And you endanger everyone behind you because you force them to slow down to your dangerously slow speed. Yet they probably think slow is safe and merging is potentially dangerous so it’s better to be slow.
I see that “slow down to pass a truck” behavior a lot.
I see a related behavior in our express lanes. To wit:
- Our local express lanes are built into the innermost lanes on the freeways. So there’s a jersey barrier on the left, a decent shoulder, two wide lanes, then a half-width striped “lane” filled with a line of rubber poles spaced every ~8 feet separating us from regular traffic. Or in alternative, a jersey barrier, little to no shoulder, one narrow lane, and the same line of rubber poles in a narrow 1/3rd “lane”.
Folks will drive 80+ when it’s 2 lanes wide and slow to 60 when it’s one lane wide despite a quarter mile of free space ahead of them and a pile of cars backing up behind them. As soon as it widens out to two lanes again, they zoom up to 80+ again.
As applied to truck-passing the psychology is similar.
As they approach the truck it gets bigger and closer and scarier. Since their speed is not being consciously controlled, their unconscious controls it by slowing to reduce the scariness to the same level it was before they approached the truck. And once their face has passed the nose of the truck, it’s now invisible, the scariness evaporates, and their subconscious speeds the car back up. Even if they themselves are towing a trailer that’s still alongside the big scary tractor they no longer see.
You can see this same effect in an area where the lanes have been restriped to squeeze e.g. 5 narrow lanes with narrow or no shoulders into an area that previously had hosted 4 normal-width lanes with normal-width shoulders. Everybody slows down as the scary other cars get closer alongside. Even though the number of lanes is not changing. And they all speed back up when the lanes widen out again.
This is also how you get the slowpoke camped in the left lane. By driving there, they place scary other traffic as far away from their face as possible. Angry cars passing them on the right are 8-10 feet away from their face whereas if they drove in lane #2, happy cars would be passing them on the left 2-3 feet away from their face. 2-3 feet is scary-close; 8-10 feet is safe and calm.
All of which is a very long-winded way of saying our fellow drivers are mostly untrained, untrainable, unconscious imbeciles.
It also gets you out of their blind spot quicker.
I do, however, sometimes have to force myself to speed up instead of slowing down when the lane space feels tight next to a large truck; which it sometimes does. Ordinarily in a tight space I want to go slower.
However – I’m probably just not going to pass somebody who’s driving erratically; at least, unless there’s a whole lot of vacant space around them to do it in. I’ll usually just slow down enough to stay well behind them; if there’s a place to do so I may even pull over and wait a bit.
The only semi-rational reason to slow down as you approach the ass end of a truck you want to pass is that as you get near there the air drag goes up a bunch as you’re punching through the truck’s wake. You need to add throttle approaching that area just to hold speed, and especially if you’ve got a low-powered car.
A lotta folks seem to drive by foot position, not with any understanding of speedometers and how changing power needs mean the same foot position will yield different speeds under different circumstances.
It’s still unskilled driving, but it’s not necessarily unconscious unskilled driving.
This kind of thing may be second nature to someone like, say, an airline pilot, but is rarely taught in driver’s ed classes.
I was on a freeway (I think it was the 101) in L.A. when I tried to pass a bus, but couldn’t because I was in its wake. I was in a Chevy Sprint. (I was able to pass when there was a curve in the freeway.)
Irony. I sees it.
A neighbour had a 1970 VW Beetle. The Sprint was rather peppy compared to it.
An actual beetle would be peppy compared to it.
ETA: And to all you smart-alecs out there, I know about the tiger beetle.
I had a Geo Metro that was like that. I used to have to speed up before a hill so I had enough momentum to get all the way up.
Cars like that shouldn’t be allowed on the road.
My Wife had a Chevy Sprint when we where dating. Mountain driving. Sheese she drove that to Alaska and back.
We sometimes took it on short trips, but always mountain passes (no other choice). It did pretty good at first, but the xtra 200lbs of payload (me) killed it.
I forgot to add that the Metro was the same as a Sprint, they just rebranded.
So yeah, I know exactly what driving that car is like.
Yo beat me to it. The Sprint was boxier, though. (Remember the funky separate light switches on both?)
Yep. Had to get up to 70 going northbound through the Soledad Pass, or else I’d be doing 50 by the top. On the other hand…
One time I was driving the Sprint up to Wrightwood to go skiing. Everyone was pulled over putting on chains, but the Sprint made it up to the top without slipping once.
I had a Chevy Metro (yes, there really was such a thing). The only reason mine could get up to speed on the highway was I didn’t fork out the money for such extras as an air conditioner. Had to keep the total weight as light as possible!
Separate how?
As I recall, it was called the Sprint Metro. (I think there was also a Metro II.)
Two buttons: One to turn the headlights on, and one to turn them off. They were on the left side of the instrument console.
