A man with nine legs?
It’s off topic here. Feel free to start a new thread or private message me if you’re interested in the term “prima facie.” I’m sure that I or the many other lawyers here would be happy to address such a question.
It’s already 9:30. He’s late for work. No wonder he’s annoyed.
It’s actually used by the cops to ticket drivers at the posted speed for the existing conditions.
I thought it was 5:45 and he doesn’t want to miss the kickoff of MNF.
Answering the OP, I just follow at a safe distance until I can get back into the right lane. No big.
Now, when someone is tailgating me for whatever reason (I’m boxed in, or already at the max speed I’m comfortable with, which for the purposes of discussion only I assure you may be ten or fifteen miles in excess of the posted speed limit), if I can’t get out of their way for some reason, I’ll usually just hit my hazard lights. I haven’t seen a driver yet who continued to tailgate me if he had reason to suspect my engine was failing. You know how much damage a Pontiac Grand Am does to your front end when you hit it at 85MPH on the freeway? Me neither, and I haven’t met a tailgater yet who was in a hurry to find out.
Now, same scenario, but at night, and someone flips on the high beams? I slow down. Why do I slow down? BECAUSE I CAN’T SEE, YOU FUCKWIT. YOU BLINDED ME. Why on God’s blue earth would I want to continue driving at a dangerously high speed when I was BLIND?
Mind you, I don’t mean the flickflick high beam “Hey, can I get past you real quick?” signal, I mean the "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY SAILOOOOOOOOOOR!" continuous high beams.
That said, if someone is aggressively driving behind me, and looks to be in a huge hurry to get past me? I will wait a moment before trying to change lanes. I’ve almost been in an accident when I was trying to yield only for the guy to cut me off by passing me through the lane I was just trying to enter. I have to try and figure out what the hell his immediate intentions are before I try to respond.
This is why it is always best to just move over and use the right lane regardless if there is someone behind you or not (provide you’re not passing, setting up for a left turn, or letting people merge in).
Faster traffic is also trying to figure out the intentions of the person going slower in the left lane. As I said before, it’s safest when people act predictably. The norm and the law in many states is to keep right.
Just yesterday, I had a bozo create a hazardous condition for both of us. Snowpacked highway 2 lanes in both directions. Speed limit is 50mph. I was traveling 50 in the right lane. There is NO other traffic around and this idiot chooses to camp in the left lane about 5 feet behind me.
People that don’t understand the keep right rules are in the same club as those that don’t use turn signals. They are inconsiderate and pretty much clueless. When I see such activity, it’s a clear red flag that they are poor drivers and I have to practice extra caution.
No. In Michigan, it’s the 85th percentile, not 90th, and I believe that is then rounded up* to the nearest 5 MPH. More importantly, that means that no more 15 percent of the people exceed the speed limit, not 85 or 90 percent.
That’s for road speed limits, I’m not sure how that is modified for freeways.
ETA: *I thought I had read that it was rounded up, but looking around I’ve found references to it being rounded down.
In places where there are keep-right laws, I tend to stay in the right lane, but when no such law is in effect, I tend to hover in the left lane just so I don’t have to worry about people merging on and off the highway via the ramps. Just less to worry about in the left lane it seems like. Mind you, I’m rarely the slowest guy in the left lane by a long shot, so it’s relatively rare when someone actually ever tailgates me.
EDIT: Oh, and for clarification, on city streets, I’m pretty much always going the speed limit. Not that I ever speed on highways, mind you adjusts halo as it starts to tilt off-center.
Eh. Without looking it up on the net. Tell us these ‘places’ that don’t have such a law in effect. You study the rules of the road for every state you visit?
If you can’t pay enough attention to move over for folks merging onto the highway, and prefer to just camp in the left lane, I will have to classify you as an unsafe driver.
This really is beyond what the law allows at this point. It’s about safe driving.
The fact is, keep right to allow faster traffic to pass safely on the left is the accepted practice by good drivers.
Would the gap in traffic in the right lane being less than the 352 feet needed for me to observe the 2 second rule for myself and the driver behind me be a valid defense?
I spend 99% of my highway driving going no faster than 55. If I’m passing, it’s probably a commercial vehicle going under 50.
Last time I checked, Oklahoma didn’t have such a rule, and Texas may or may not but I could be wrong, I haven’t driven a car in four months. And yes, I do tend to check up on the traffic laws when I plan to drive in another state. Who doesn’t do that?:dubious:
Like I said, I tend towards the left lane when there is a lot of traffic coming and going on the ramps. The whole point of what I’m doing is being a safe driver by staying out of other peoples’ ways. 
Really? I don’t. I’d guess that a clear majority don’t either, even among SDMB members.
I’ve been surprised by the results of a couple of polls, so I was going to start a poll on this. I didn’t want to misrepresent what “I do tend to check up on the traffic laws when I plan to drive in another state” meant precisely, though, so I didn’t.
Honestly? I’m paranoid about states having weird laws about what lanes I’m allowed to be in and when, so it happens to be one of the things I check on, along with laws about use of cell phones while driving and laws about slowing down when you pass pulled over police cars. EDIT: It is worth noting that when I had a car, I drove out of state only rarely. Helped that when I was in college, I lived near Houston, so I’d be hard pressed to drive far enough without it being some huge occasion anyways.
BTW, when I had a Crackberry, I downloaded a program for it that would read my text messages out loud to me. I understand the iPhone has a similar program. I found myself wondering why this wasn’t a more common feature in mobile phones.
Okay, 85%. Road speeds are absolute speeds. Highway speeds are prima facie speeds, and posted speeds are set the same way. I don’t know the rounding mechanism. It’s a lot harder to change absolute speeds, because so many of them are dictated by statute. (There are small sections of highway with absolute speeds.)
It has nothing to do with the percentage of people that are “speeding,” though, but rather with the speed that 85% of the people are driving in normal conditions. It’s possible (but not likely!) that a speed be reduced.
The important point of my post was that the 85th percentile is the speed at which 85 percent are driving that speed or slower, not driving that speed or faster, as you implied.
There’s no faster or slower. It’s 85%, period. 
The wording often used is “a speed at or below which 85 percent of people drive at any given location under good weather and visibility conditions may be considered as the maximum safe speed for that location.” Using the upper 85% would be the same as the upper 1%, which is the same as the fastest driver they record. That wouldn’t make sense.
And you are wrong.
From a previous post - State "keep right" laws
Oklahoma does have restrictions on driving in the left lane. “Keep right except to pass.”
Texas requires you to move to the right if you are going slower than the normal speed of traffic (regardless of the speed limit).
You might want to brush up on the rules of the road.
Ho boy. Besides my prevous post about you being wrong about left lane rules. The last damn thing anyone needs to worry about is their cell phone when driving. And we sure as hell don’t need them reading our text messages to us while we are on the road.