"THE LEFT LANE IS FOR PASSING!! THE LEFT LANE IS FOR PASSING!!" A post in /r/Ohio about highway driving etiquette veers into controversy when commenters argue about the 'correct' way to utilize the left lane.

People who say this shit make me wonder where the fuck they’re driving.

America gave up on shit like etiquette and “whats proper” years ago. Everywhere I drive is a clusterfuck of people constantly making the most immediate and selfish decision and wondering why everyone around them isn’t bending to their whims fast enough for their liking

sweats in Massachusetts

Amusingly, according to some statistics, Massachusetts is actually pretty good at driving.

We are just.......aggressive.

As a Masshole, it's a toss up who is worse, Rhode Islanders or Connecticut erstwhile. Both suck at driving, but in different ways

sees I-95 being backed up with like a hundred cars in the left lane

Massachusetts has never touched, seen, or imagined the concept of driving etiquette.

I drive 12 miles to work in the left lane only every day because I have a left exit into Boston. There are also right exits into other places in Boston off a 3 lane highway because it’s a mess. The idea that there should be one less lane reserved for passing only, when there’s no room in front of other people to pass because traffic is always so dense is insanity to me.

Also people who don't let 18 wheelers pass. If the truck is signaling to move into the left lane to pass it's courtesy to let them go in front of you and make the pass. It's very taxing on the truck to accelerate and slow down compared to a normal vehicle so you're doing them a favor letting them pass when they're signaling to.

This. And a dedicated lane going up a hill/mountain that’s completely empty while trucks are camped in the left lane with no intention of moving over.

Quite literally. I've lived in 9 different states, and every time the worst drivers in the world are from [nearest major city]

Yeah this thread could have easily popped up in r/Texas.

The Ontario way

I just can't understand how these people don't get it unless they are 100% of the time the person trying to win an imaginary highway race. Very typical situation on my commute is that the right lane goes about 65 (speed limit), middle lane is 70-75, and left lane about 80 - at least 90% of the people using the left lane. So left lane folks are pretty consistently passing everyone else, but not instantly. Then about once a week some absolute maniac is going 100+ and let me tell you, if you have ever been going 80, passing a 72, and have a 105 zoom up on you - the thing about people going stupidly fast is that they go from "can't see them" to "right there" really fucking quickly. Of course I get out of the way as soon as I have room because I don't wanna deal with that, but yeah, I might have someone on my bumper for 5-10 seconds.

Of course, the people that go 40 above the speed limit and ride your ass are the same people who love to hop lanes unsafely and without signaling, so there's a good chance that person is going to zoom around me on the right as soon as there's 0.5 mm of clearance, well before I can switch lanes with a safe following distance for the car I just passed.

and then you have people who speed around you in the right lane while you're actively passing in the left lane. Guess what! I'm not going to get over to the right while your car is zooming up in that lane, because you'll crash.

Left lane camping is annoying but people who are obsessed with driving as fast as possible are so much worse

This is it. Passing doesn’t mean anyone is required to go 20+ over and yet when I’m passing at a decent speed not excessively over the speed limit, someone is often barreling up behind me at excessive speed.

I don’t think this is really about “misuse of the left lane”, it’s about people who drive safely and moderately not immediately getting out of their way.

Correct, it almost always is. And any thread is a clusterfuck because of it.

lots of users (I’m assuming from more rural areas) also really don’t understand that the left lane naturally turns into a normal highway lane in big city traffic during rush hour… I’m not camping the left lane if everyone on the road is going 25 mph

I'll pass in the left or sit there doing my 78 in a 65. I'm passing people and I'm speeding, but without a doubt some dipshit in a Lexus or Honda will be 2 inches off my bumper because they were doing 95 straight down the highway.

I love going into /r/idiotsincars and sorting by controversial lmao it's always a shit-show

Also, the people getting passed aren't always consistent. You start passing them at 10 over and they decide to speed up 9 mph resulting in a 1mph differential. So you speed up another 5, and they speed up another 5. Meanwhile a jackass comes into your rear view doing +30.

There is an upper limit of acceptable speed violation for passing. How fast are you willing to speed in view of a highway patrol officer?

"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?" - Carlin

People misusing the left lane is obviously a thing and it's annoying, but I don't for one second believe most people that complain about it so vocally on the internet have anywhere near the amount of self-awarness or honesty to appreciate when they're the asshole in the situation.

Yup and people arguing are imagining the other as the ass in the scenarios even though we have an seen both of these types

If you’re going 20 over at all, you’re an ass.

If you're passing someone by going 1 mph faster in the left lane, you're an ass.

So if you don't wanna go over the speed limit you just slow down and stay behind so as not to inconvenience those going 20 over?

Also, why would we rob ourselves of the joy of seeing some red faced jackass losing their shit over having to go 70-75 instead of 90+?

Watching impatient drivers just pumping themselves full of stress as they barely get ahead of me is a personal moment of delight on the road.

It's also impossible to tell if it's safe to do so with these assholes because there's a high chance of them undertaking you.

 rules of the road

Lol, well, some rules of the road: ie everyone else should obey the rules so it’s easier for me to break them. 

Not every freeway. It seems to generally be for "2 lane" roads. As in 2 lanes in the same direction. I only start seeing those signs when I'm about 30% of the way up the palm. Granted, I usually drive near cities on the bottom half of the palm

I know it's a meme that Germans have a word for everything, but in this case we actually do: It's called Rechtsfahrgebot. Basically a rule that says you should always drive as far to the right as possible. All lanes on the left are only for passing (though of course people stay in, say, the middle lane for longer periods of time, but then there should always be cars on the right that are slower and that they are passing by staying on the middle lane).

Someone did this to me the other day, almost had a goddamn heart attack

Its not in America either but you wouldn't know from the way people drive

I've heard cops say when it comes to highway driving that "9 you're fine, 10 you're mine" meaning, generally speaking, if you are going 79 where the speed limit is 70, most cops won't bother to pull you over. If you are going 80+, then they might.

It depends on the cop, road conditions, and how reasonably safe you're being.

But technically, going over the speed limit is illegal.

Effectively yes although the degree varies widely by jurisdiction. It's roughly but not perfectly correlated to what the speed limits themselves are. I've lived in two places that are pretty different and also done a lot of road tripping, so I've seen a lot of this variability. You get used to how people actually drive and what cops ignore or enforce in the areas you drive a lot.

Let's normalize the situation to a typical 3 lane highway in a segment without a ton of complicated on and off ramps. There are places (I wanna say like, Indiana? but don't quote me on that) where the limit is 55 and nobody exceeds this much, and you probably shouldn't exceed it at all if you can see a cop. These aren't the norm. On the other hand, if you're in Utah with a speed limit of 80, hardly anyone is speeding because the speed limit is already high enough. More typically, a speed limit will be posted at 65 or 70, but still, local custom treats it differently. In Oregon, the average speed on the highway is almost exactly the limit, the fastest people push it maybe by 5 (at least this was the case before a ton of people moved in from other states) and there are people going below as well. In Connecticut, the slowest people go the speed limit and the usual top speed is more like +15, you should probably slow down a little if you see a cop but they most likely won't bother for anything below +10.

in most areas in america the police stopped enforcing any traffic laws. around here maybe a quarter of people are driving cars with no tags, everyone drives 20 over. legend has it it's because of the police getting butthurt over the BLM protests and then a lot of copa died fron covid and no-traffic-enforcement thing got locked in.

Not really, but cops will virtually never pull you over unless you're going 10+ freedom kilometers over the limit and there are no other cars around you.

But a large number of people here seem to have convinced themselves that the speed limit is just, like, a form of self expression and not a property of physics with very real safety ramifications. Its how you get people losing their shit over left lane campers when everyone is going 15+ over the speed limit already

No it’s not allowed lol. People actively choose to ignore that here.

It basically is. Drive on any major highway and you’ll see people passing cars that are already going 20 mph over lol

It's more telling that they're not in an area that sees moderate-heavy traffic. They can screech and rage all they want, they're not passing in rush-4-hours in SoCal.

Idk lol I've seen these same posts in the Toronto subreddit - even though the official rule here is "slower traffic stay right". But yeah lol most people don't "properly" use the left lane, especially during rush hour(s) it's impossible to do so.

I submit Atlanta. Genuinely the only place I ever worried about dying on the highway

I was hoping someone else from Michigan was going to chime in. I absolutely hate driving in Ohio, and you’re right the lower speed limits and highway patrol play a huge part in that.

It’s also so funny to me because I feel like every time I’m in Ohio or I see an Ohio driver in Michigan, they’re all driving quite slow (not as slow as Ontario drivers), like they are MAYBE going the speed limit exactly, if you’re lucky. So this discussion about passing lanes and going over the speed limit was very confusing in general to me.

A law that I've never seen enforced ever, at best a cop moved them to the far right lane but then left

Can guarantee that if people just stuck to a safe following distance regardless of speed it wouldn't be an issue.

This is brought up like daily on r/sanantonio and r/Texas.

This. I'm pretty consistently 5-10 miles over the limit. I'm not going to move over just because someone is mad they can't drive 90mph for two minutes.

Also from NJ, think we just have different (better) etiquette. Left lane is the autobahn, you can use it if you

1. Are passing someone (pass quickly)
2. Are going faster than everyone and nobody is behind you closing distance, stay there as long as you want as long as these conditions are met

If you’re taking more than 15-30 seconds to pass, you are 100% the problem by NJ standards and you clearly don’t need to pass if you’re not willing to go reasonably faster than the person you are trying to pass.

If you’re camping the left lane and someone’s closing distance, move over, idc if you’re doing 90, if the guy behind you wants to go 95 get the hell out of the way.

Left lane campers who don’t move over because “you don’t need to go that fast” are the hall monitors of the highway, Melvin behavior.

I need to go wring out my wifebeater cause this thread has me sweating.

I drive up and down I5 all the time and I understand why left lane is free game, nobody wants to be stuck behind the litany of semi trucks on the right lane.