Motorcycle paramedics were briefly experimented with here about 10 years ago and would be an excellent idea. But – and I kid you not – the Public Health Ministry was miffed that they didn’t come up with the idea first, plus they were not happy that the operation would not be under them, so they managed to get the whole project killed. A shame.
Who experimented with them?
What I thought was kinda neat was when they had a Vietnam era Huey (a UH-1D, I think) land on the drill field at Texas A&M, and they were showing everyone all the different stuff on it, and they showed a couple of connectors on the floor and ceiling of the passenger area, and said that using those, and some extra parts that latch in, they can convert it from a troop transport to a medevac capable of carrying six wounded men on litters which attach to posts locked into the connectors, along with a pair of medics to tend to them.
I had always assumed that they just put the wounded guy on the floor like you see in the movies, but they apparantly came up with some specialized setups for it. Most Air Force transports, I understand, are also set up to carry litters, and the bigger ones can pretty much turn into flying hospitals if need be (though the Air Force prefers to use dedicated medevac airplanes such as the C-9 Nightingale for that kind of stuff)
OK, checking Wiki, I see that the Air Force retired the C-9, so now when they transport patients by air, they use specially designed cargo pallets that can carry litters or seats, usually in C-130s and KC-135s, though the setup would work with any cargo plane the Air Force uses.
I wish it would sink into the skulls of motorscooter drivers here in South Korea that they’re supposed to pass a bus stopped at a bus stop on the left instead of the right. I’ve taken to shoving my foot out the bus door–with force–at about the average height a motorscooter driver (who, almost always, isn’t wearing a helmet of any kind at all). On the route I travel most, a lot of my fellow passengers, Koreans, have started copying my tactic.
It was the city government, I believe, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration.
Heh, when riding in a van on the interstate just north of downtown Houston, I heard my Army recruiter mutter something like “Oh, you think you’re gonna cut me off? I’m a graduate of the Seoul School of Offensive Driving!” 
(Hell of a thing to hear the driver of an 11 passenger van say on the interstate too :eek: )
It’s certainly an eye opener to observe general driving practices outside the US or Europe. 4 lanes become 6 or 7ish, and the sidewalks are considered fair game downtown. Uncontrolled intersections are almost enchanting to watch, a choreographed random mess.
Stay right except to pass. The key here is the shoulder. Following this unerringly and keeping the shoulder free and clear makes for a lot safer driving. A big part of good driving is anticipating what could happen - and avoiding it altogether. What if you have a tire blowout, right now? What about the big truck?
Another bit of stupid-ness that has infected the by-now completely brain-anesthesized motorist. Their car breaks down - years ago, even the half-witted realized it was their responsibility to remove their car, or make the attempt, from traffic/intersections, etc. The big difference I saw between Europe and the US, it’s much more expensive to obtain a drivers license, and the penalties and fines for seemingly “minor” infractions - like running out of fuel on the major highways.
That is the law in most places that I know of, but 90% of people don’t seem to know it. People think it’s the “fast lane” when in reality it is the “passing lane”. The problem is that everyone has their own definition of “Fast”, and people tend to get quite angry when your idea of fast is faster than theirs - especially if you do something as brash as flash your lights.
Traffic would be drastically improved, especially during off-peak hours, if the text of this law were on signs along freeways.
Interesting law. I’m trying to imagine how such a law would apply if you have 5 lanes of traffic in the same direction, each going 5 mph, as is the case most of the time in California.
The solution to this objection is easy enough. The rules are suspended if you are stuck in a traffic jam. To be more precise, the rules are suspended if traffic is flowing below a certain speed.
As tschild stated way back in Post #5:
A bit of googling indicates that most states have a rule that passing on the right is permitted only in the following circumstances:
a. The car being passed has signalled a left turn and there are no intervening cars.
b. The road is divided or one-way and there are at least two clearly marked, unobstructed lanes. Driving off the road (or onto the shoulder or a bike lane) is strictly forbidden.
Not all states word the regulation exactly the same, and some states have odd caveats. Mississipi only allows it if there are at least four lanes (but it’s not clear if that means four lanes in each direction).
Anecdotally, when I was learning to drive in the 70’s, I was taught that you could only pass on the right if you were on at least a three lane highway. For this reason, I still tend to avoid passing on the right, even on highways, just out of a general sense of paranoia.
Actually, there are quite a number of conditions under which the rule does not apply:
Note the part I bolded. Really, all the law is requiring is that cars in the left lane yield to faster cars coming from behind. It doesn’t actually say you can’t drive in the left lane.
Seems a strangely-worded law. It repeatedly refers to the “right lane” as though there can only be 2 lanes, a left lane and a right lane. What about middle lanes?
I think the OP was talking about condition (b). It appears that some people believe it is wrong to pass another car on the right even in the case of multiple lanes moving in the same direction. In my state, CA, it clearly is allowed:
This clearly would include any freeway.
You are forbidden to “hang out” in the left lane, but only if you are a “slow-moving vehicle”, defined as less than the normal speed of traffic.
So why exactly were you so mystified as to “how such a law would apply if you have 5 lanes of traffic in the same direction, each going 5 mph, as is the case most of the time in California”? :dubious:
Try not to get too upset, o.k. dude? :rolleyes:
If you follow the thread, you’ll see that once I googled the text of the law, it turns out to be quite different than the way it was originally presented. In actuality, it doesn’t forbid driving in the left lane. It only forbids it under certain, very narrow conditions.
This is why I blinked at the OP. It’s hard for me to fathom this, because I never go on highways that are more than twinned, so if you are passing on the right, you’re always passing on the shoulder. Well, unless you’re a loser in the left lane, but even then it would just be a lane change on the twin. And in Saskatchewan, with our ditches, you don’t wanna be passing on the shoulder!
I’m glad I’m not alone on our highways! I know exactly what you mean, especially considering that some of our more rustic roads don’t even have a paved shoulder. Those always terrify me.
There is no left lane (there is only Zuul), there are only the right lane and the passing lane.
A problem I have noticed is that right-lane-passers are often the people who measure following distance in car-lengths rather than seconds. In other words, tailgaters. What goes through their minds is “Uh-oh, I’m coming up behind Charger. The rule is that we are supposed to make it impossible for him to follow safely. While I can tailgate him, I must force him to tailgate someone else. Even though he is in the passing lane and going the same speed as the car in front of him, he has left a buffer zone between him and the car in front of him. I must occupy that buffer zone! But, alas, I cannot get around him. Behold! There is a small gap coming up in the right lane. If I play my cards right, I can slip into that gap, accelerate, and then slip into that space between Charger and the car he’s following. As a bonus, I will get to my destination .005 seconds sooner. What’s that? A cop? Foiled again! I’ll just pretend I didn’t know you couldn’t pass on the right. Plus I’ll explain that I was passing Charger, the driver who is known statewide for his safe following distance, of which we are all trying to put to an end! And I would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for those meddling traffic safety laws!”
And, that, my friends, is why we shouldn’t pass on the right. Well, also the blind spot and keeping-with-what-other-drivers-expect, which have been mentioned.
Just to be clear, these laws do not exist in every jurisdiction. Arkansas, when I was learning to drive there, had no law about passing on the left or driving primarily on the right in multilane traffic. Several years ago, a state legislator got publicly pissed off at people driving the speed limit in the left lane and slowing him down, so he pushed through a bill mandating that cars in the left lane yield to faster cars in the same lane. The state police universally opposed the law, but it passed anyway.
…on the left.
What’s all this “cruising lane” and “passing lane” stuff? I’ve never heard of them. I’ve only heard of the right lane, center lane, and left lane. Neither my driver’s ed class nor any manual given to me by the state DMV has mentioned anything about “drive only on the right” and “pass only on the left.” If you are going relatively faster, you drive on the left. If someone is coming up faster behind you, you move right. But I’ve never seen any rule that says you have to continually zig-zag, returning to the right lane as soon as you’ve passed a slower car. Is it actually in the rule book?