The New Left Lane
Karen and I recently took a weekend trip to Tennessee – yeehaw! The destination is pretty much irrelevant, but it did provide several hours of highway driving. I’ve done a lot of highway driving over the years, and I can definitely say that the driving skills of the United States population has only gotten worse. I guess you could draw some similar conclusions with the overall education of the country as well.
At any rate, it’s quite evident that the vast majority of drivers just don’t “get it.” I don’t understand why almost nobody knows how to drive on the highway. It seems so incredibly simple to me – the left lane is for passing, and that’s it. And passing doesn’t take place on cruise control going .2 miles per hour faster than the car being “passed.” What exactly am I missing?
On this particular trip, something odd happened. I spent a couple of hours on a six lane highway – three lanes in each direction. I ended up passing almost exclusively in the far right lane, which was almost completely empty. Meanwhile, the left two lanes had bumper to bumper cars all pacing each other maybe going the speed limit. I’m not talking about passing one or two cars in the right lane, I was passing ten and twenty cars at a time in a completely clear right lane. I was looking over in disbelief as everybody was waiting for the car in front of them to go faster or move over (at least I can only assume). How did this happen? Did I miss the memo?