OK, here’s a goofy complaint. Your Humble Blogger was recently driving a pretty long stretch of two-lane highway. The speed limit was 65 miles per hour, cars were going, for the most part, between 75 and 80.
Now, I’m not a particularly good driver. My car is oldish, but new to me, so I don’t really know how well it handles in an emergency. My eyes are bad, as is my hand-eye co-ordination. I was driving 68, and trying to maintain that speed consistently. For an hour or more, one group of cars after another would come up behind me, and the cars in the right would have to change lanes to pass me. Nobody seemed to have any problem doing that; I didn’t cause any accidents by my infuriating slowness. But ... when I was a teenager, the speed limit was 55, and I drove between 65 and 70. For a while, I refused to speed, because I couldn’t afford the tickets, but now that the speed limit is (mostly) 65, I’m back up to my top comfortable speed. All the things that might change that top speed other than the speed of other cars have either stayed the same or, like my eyesight, deteriorated. I just don’t feel comfortable driving my car over 70.
I don’t mind going fast for a little bit; the only ticket I’ve picked up in the last ten years (of infrequent driving) was for going nearly 80 while passing a fellow who perhaps knew there was an officer nearby. And I don’t object to other people going faster than I feel comfortable doing; a driver with good eyes and good reflexes, a good car and lots of experience should be able to drive well at a higher speed than I can. And most drivers will have better eyes, better reflexes, more experience, and if not better cars, at least cars they know better than I know mine. So I understand that most cars will be going faster than 70 on that stretch of interstate.
So, what’s the right thing? If I do what I feel comfortable doing, I’m making lots of cars change lanes, which makes the road just slightly less safe for everybody. If I drive a bit faster, I increase the risk that if something bad happens, I won’t properly deal with it, which would make the road much less safe for me, and for other people as well. Or, I suppose, I could take back roads, which really slows me down. Or is there some way that the whole system could work better? Three-lane highways don’t really have this problem; I drove fifty in a moving van on the New Jersey Turnpike without worrying about it.
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-Vardibidian.
My feelings on this have long been “I don’t care what you do, as long as you don’t do it suddenly.” I think this most frequently when biking in Pasadena, and I come to an intersection where a car is thinking about going. If they want to go, and make me slow down, that’s fine; if they want to wait for me to pass the intersection, and then go, that’s fine. It’s when they lurch forwards and stop, then lurch again, that I get nervous, because now I’m not sure that they aren’t going to lurch right into my path when I’m too close to stop, or whatever.
So, my two cents is that you should drive at a comfortable and predictable speed, and other drivers will work around you; if driving faster would make you more lurchy and less unpredictable, that’s worse for everyone. It’s much easier for other drivers to cope with predictable obstacles than unpredictable ones. :^)
Yeah, agreed. My absolute favourite thing about not living on the east coast has been driving around on hundreds of miles of undercrowded two-lane roads, and getting to participate in the lane-change dance in which all the cars on the road cheerfully try to figure out an appropriate order for themselves. (This can’t happen when you’re in Connecticut in rush hour, because there are too many other cars for you to ever have any clue what they’re all doing.)
But, the point is, the right lane driver who wants to pass you and the left lane driver who wants to pass you and him know they need to coordinate with one another, and they will. As long as you keep doing whatever you were doing, you’re not going to cause a dangerous problem for them.