I agree that it is the duty of the car entering the highway to merge without interfering with those already on the highway. But I more and more frequently see drivers ignore this rule. They keep driving up the entrance ramp and into the right lane without adjusting their speed up or down to find an empty spot. Or they drive down the shoulder rather than change speeds. The “Yield” sign means nothing to them. Just yesterday (a bit ahead of me) one drove up and slid into the right lane, which caused the right lane driver to move left, which caused the left lane driver to move left. Jeff Gordon could have described it as “whoa, they’re three wide going into the turn”.
But, yeah, keep it within 10 MPH of the speed limit and you have little to worry about. If you want to go faster than that, you need to find a rabbit to follow, and pay very close attention to what’s happening farther ahead. As mentioned, look for brake lights up ahead.
I drove with a radar detector for many years, but haven’t for at least 20 years. Just not worth the hassle. I now drive 8-9 MPH over the limit most of the time.
Carefully. Anecdotal, but I will note that I have had this conversation with different cops on different occasions and the ones I spoke with all agreed, given a choice between two (or more) more-or-less equally bad speeders in a grouping, they will simply pull over the one they can catch, which is most likely going to be the trailing vehicle.
Hardly likely - they’re going the same speed so the collision isn’t that huge.
Actually, that pic was a chain reaction. I just didn’t post the picture of the next car behind. My old truck “claimed” two little cars that day. Found out later both were totaled.
I’m not sure what steps to take. I don’t brake-check, I don’t do sudden stops, I stay in the furthest right lane, and I make sure I don’t close gaps unnecessarily (stagger my position to ensure there’s room* to go around me, with regard to the vehicle spacing in the adjacent lane).
*hope this makes sense. I don’t like cars that hang close to those in adjacent lanes when others are obviously trying to pass. I call it closing the gap, and it seems assholish to me.
That’s it. Just stop. Don’t slow down and then speed up. Don’t even slow almost all the way to a stop and then speed up. Just stop. A full not-moving-forward-at-all-at-this-point-in-time stop.
And the follow up: count to three before you go. I know here in Nevada I’ve had two friends get tickets at stop signs, not for failing to stop, but for failing to stop long enough. Counting to three gives enough time fully stopped that there shouldn’t be any confusion as to whether or not a full stop was achieved (and one of them said the judge confirmed that 2.5 seconds had to pass before a stopped vehicle could proceed; so far I haven’t been able to confirm that, but 3 seconds is a pretty small price to pay for both my legal safety and others physical safety, IMO).
You missed my context-I often HAVE to slow down for merging cars coming onto the highway, simply because so many people here (and elsewhere) don’t bother actually getting up to highway speed in the first place (often 5-15 below the pace of traffic if not the limit). If there is someone to my left and I can’t move over, I am kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. Hence why I avoid the far right lane as a general rule.
And see #21.
It most certainly CAN be, if I must react suddenly to some emergency and slow down drastically, in which case the speed differential most certainly can be large. Here’s an example much worse than yours-esp for the leading car (and these bozos yes often seem to be driving tank-sized pickups or SUV’s…).
These people are a menace and I simply do what I need to do to minimize the time they spend on my ass. IMNSHO cops spend far too much time hunting down speeders and ignoring tailgaters. I see these kinds of collisions all the time around here, some much worse than others…
TBH, it’s not the weavers themselves I’m concerned about. It’s the idiot that isn’t expecting someone to swerve right in front of their bumper that panics and slams on the brakes, causing FUN! to spread behind them like traffic herpes.
Weaving itself isn’t the issue. It’s the unpredictability for every other driver that causes accidents.
Yes. A weaver invariably cuts off other drivers and creates problems that ripple down multiple lanes. I admit that I’m sometimes in awe of their ability (and courage), but weaving in and out of traffic with only a few feet of clearance at 80 MPH is guaranteed to affect other drivers. Many, many times I’ve watched weavers doing 15 MPH over the flow of traffic weave between three lanes in an attempt to gain two or three car-lengths. That’s just insane, and extremely dangerous for the bulk of drivers.
I strongly suspect that weaving is an unreported factor in many traffic accidents.
I would still class those cases as the weaver causing the accident. Whenever speed limits/speeding comes up there are some speeding Puritans who say they never exceed the speed limit. But the basic problem is people weaving around to exceed the general flow of traffic by significant degree, on a ‘know when you see it basis’ as to whether it’s really dangerous but often it is.
I don’t completely disagree, but some of the blame, at least some of the time, belongs to the left lane campers who refuse to use lane discipline and move over.
Impeding traffic is impeding traffic regardless of what your speed is or what the speed limit is. Your speedometer calibration has nothing to do with it.
Of course, the speed limit is the MAXIMUM allowable legal speed. There is no law that says you must operate your vehicle at the maximum limit and not below.
I just drive at the speed limit. If someone tailgates me, I slow down till he passes me. I’ve never been rear-ended, and I’ve never been pulled over or ticketed for speeding or for impeding traffic.
I did my share of speeding and reckless stuff in my 20s. I figure I got away with it long enough, now I just relax drive the speed limit +/- 5MPH, completely stop at all stop signs, signal when changing lanes, etc. I enjoy driving curvy roads at the speed limit but like getting where I’m going safely and without tickets and higher insurance.
I have the great good fortune of living in a small city with very reasonable traffic, so this sort of thing isn’t one of my primary concerns.
When I’m on longer trips and am spending a lot of time on the interstate, my strategy is to avoid the packs that inevitably form on the highway. I get into the center lane and go exactly the speed limit. After a while, I’ll fall to the back of my current pack of cars, which I think probably average 5-10 mph over the limit.
Once I’m comfortably in the space between two packs, I speed up a bit and enjoy a mostly empty highway for a little while. The occasional car will zip past me, but since I’m by my lonesome they have plenty of leadup and there’s no tailgating necessary.
When the next pack of cars begins approaching me, I slow back down to the speed limit and let it flow past. Rinse and repeat.
