Slower Traffic Keep Right, Pt 1

Slower traffic keep right. How simple is that? It is probably one of the most important rules of the road and yet it seems to be harder and harder for people to play by that one simple rule. In fact, I find it often faster to be driving in the slow lane because there is less traffic there.

This is not a new phenomenon; I have observed it for many, many years now. It used to be confined to big cities and heavy traffic congestion areas but it is expanding into all roads traveled. I used to think that it was just a Utah thing also since they have some of the worst drivers on the road but I need to correct that as the bad habits observed in Utah are not that uncommon on most of the US roads now. It is highly disturbing, and I will comment on other habits later but for this time I want to focus on the most obnoxious of poor driving etiquette, the Left Lane Bandit.

I did not come up with the label Left Lane Bandit; I think that it was coined by a writer at Car and Driver a few decades ago. The irritant had just started to appear and this was and still is the best way to describe it. It took heavy roots during the national 55 MPH speed limit though I am sure it had presence long before that. You can hear instances in some of the old car songs.

Basically it is when a vehicle insists on driving in the passing lane even though it is not passing anyone and there are other vehicles that are traveling faster than they are, or at least trying to travel faster. Not only is this dangerous it is down right rude.

Granted, some drivers just don’t know any better. I have talked to some of these Utah drivers and found that they were taught in driving school (which was part of the high school system) that they were to travel in the other lane to allow other drivers to merge onto and off the freeway. (This was probably the only way they could think of to teach new students how to merge since they don’t do that very well either.)

I have also talked to drivers that think it is there right to travel in that lane, they are going the ‘speed limit’ and there is no reason for them not to let the world revolve around them. This is a biggie for some and was even more so during the national 55 MPH speed limit. It also created what I termed the ‘rolling roadblock’ were two or more cars (depending on the number of lanes available) would travel down the road side by side at the ‘speed limit’ without regards to anyone else on the road. This would make for one heck of a blockade and a whole lot of frustration. This has become less common since they raised the speed limit in many states though if you do happen on to one, beware because there is usual a traffic cop at the head of it.

Continue on to Part 2.


This is Ed Nef with a view from the Farr West.