I have made an effort to chill out a bit behind the wheel particularly on the way to work in the mornings. But by not passing cars you invariable get stuck behind them!

I have a 9 mile one way commute - no highway. I will not accept going to work every morning with no open road in front of me. Won't do it.

I tried. But it doesn't work. I've taken all possible routes, and its unavoidable. You drive the speed limit, and you will forever stare at a bumper.

The left lane is no longer the passing lane. Slow drivers get in it all the time. Why? I don't know...because its there? Then they don't go any faster than the car in the right lane. Driving the same speed as the car next to you is just plain wrong and less safe (statistically far higher opportunity to collide when there is constantly a car next to you). Some people move over when they see a 911 in the mirror (a nice gesture, but not an entitlement), others it seems to steel their resolve to stay put.

I wouldn't be writing about it now if it didn't drive me crazy.....Generation by generation, speed in cars has been demonized in this country. Ironic because we work so hard to speed up everything else to increase productivity- fast food, jiffy lube, Fedex, instant tax refunds, eyeglasses in "about an hour", faxed insurance binders, online credit apps etc..... But god forbid we raise the speed limit in the last half century.

Sorry for the rant.
Have a good weekend all (pass some people!),


DRP

 

I hear you. One of my pet peeves is when slow drivers just "camp out" in the left lane, and they look at like an a$$hole cause you want them to get over.

Here in CA, we have these big signs on the highways that say "Slower traffic, keep right". But nobody knows what the hell that means.

Ugh.

 

J,
U know they r doin it to **** u off! LOL

Jim

 

You can drive at 55!?

Here I am just glad to have moving traffic...

 

Yeah, I know.

Smug sons of b!itches in their prius'...

 

I call this the "rolling roadblock" syndrome or "mobile chicane" , whichever you prefer.

Drives me batty. It's made worse by the way the CHP patrol the freeways.

MB

 

i agree wholeheartedly that lot of people do not understand the concept of a 'passing lane'..

btw in cali, most hwys have 65mph limit now and some as high as 70mph.

 

I was driving west bound on hywy 24 this afternoon and eveything was going pretty smooth. Traffic scooting along at a good clip. All if a sudden the whole enchilada slows down to about 55. Two jerks in a haul truck in the fast lane going slow causing eveyone else to go around them which bottle neck the whole freeway. I'm behind them and as I go to pass they gun it and speed up to 85. I look over and its two teenagers driving it laughing their asses off because they weren't going to let a porsche pass them.
I've got my kid in the car and the last thing I'm going to do is drive next to a usual truck dong 85 with two kids driving. I slow down, get over two lanes and the find the clear spot and get away from them.

I usually drive 80 in the fast lane. If someone comes up from behind I get over. I'm not the police. It's courteous and that translates into safety.

 

+1 to that. Passing them would have made them go even faster endangering everyone on the road including you and and your son/daughter. It pays to ignore the morons on the road.

 

Anyone who can drive 55 doesn't belong on this site. Plain and simple.

 

I can't stand slow drivers......I normally flash my brights at them once if i want them to move over on the highway. It actually seems to work!

 

how to drive a car, and for those of us that do its super annoying to share the road with them. My biggest pet peeve is people that slowdown to way below the speed limit when they are next to a cop. Last time i checked it was not illegal to drive the speed limit next to a cop.

 

unless you drive at 4am, there will always be someone in front of you. time to fix your own attitude and share the road....

 

Traditionally, a single quick flash of the headlights meant "I'm driving faster than you, may I please pass?" When did it become a challenge to the very manhood of the driver in front? I almost never flash my lights any more. In the past I've been flipped off, had people slam on their brakes, and other obnoxious behavior. If they refuse to pull over and I finally go around them, they speed up, tailgate and flash their headlights repeatedly. I've lost track of how many times that has happened.

Why? I'll admit I drive faster than most folks on the road, but I'm driving a great car with a fair amount of high performance training under my belt. I actually watch my mirrors (NOT just for the CHP) and will always move over if a faster driver approaches.

To continue the rant in another direction... I still hold a door open for a person behind me leaving a room or leaving a building. It has reached the point where it's actually a surprise if that person says "Thank you." I can't count the number of times that people have virtually let a door hit me in the nose.

To sum up - common courtesy isn't quite dead yet, but it sure is on its last legs. What we're seeing on the highways is just a reflection of what's happening everywhere else. People are "entitled" to do whatever they want and to hell with everyone else. I'm inclined to think the Decline of the Roman Empire started the same way...

Then again, I'm in Southern California. Maybe the rest of the country isn't so bad. We seem to get the worst of everything here.

DMoore
'09 C2S
'10 P4S

 

This one almost had me on the i4 yesterday driving back from Tampa. It had just started raining, and we all know that most drivers lose total control when a raindrop hits the ground . The guy in front of me, slammed on his brakes in the middle of rush hour traffic because he saw a state trooper at the side of the road. The limit was 75 on that particular part and we were already only doing 70... yet after this violent maneuver, we were doing 35 on a very busy road. Thank God I was always taught to leave a good size gap because you do not expect someone to brake that hard for no reason.

If I'm honest, I know the standard of driving in the UK isn't perfect but it's the one thing I miss after moving to the US, the vast majority of the drivers here must have got their license free in their cereal because they have *no* idea how to drive. The driving tests are a joke/disgrace, the lady who tested me was more interested in my Cayman S than my driving and amazingly, I never even went out onto the road!!

You know its bad when even the cops don't know the highway code. Last week I had a cop *stop* in the middle of a roundabout to wave me on. Is it really that difficult to work out how a roundabout (traffic circle) works? Each entrance has a giant yield sign on it!