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[Industrialblog, August 15, 2005]
Left lane ...
Note to drivers on Route 81:

The left lane is the passing lane, not the camping lane. Camping is to be done in approved campsites, which are never on the highway. If you are driving your vehicle, keep right, pass left.

__________

You can't imagine how many times I was stuck in traffic for no reason other than some fucktard slowpoke was in the passing lane. At one point, and I exaggerate not, me and a pickup truck in front of me passed a line of 30 cars -- all of whom were doing the speed limit in the left lane. We obviously passed them all on the right.

But that was the one lucky time. Too often, there was a line of 30 cars in the left lane, and one good citizen going slow where he belongs -- in the right lane. No way past. Hello traffic for the next 10 miles.

Ugh.
Harry (on Firefox) (mail) (www):
Ummm, so are you allowed to go over the speed limit in the left lane? "But officer, I read it on IndustrialBlog..."

I have greater problems with the stealth switchers (people who refuse to signal lane changes, because that might give you the edge), weavers (people who swerve from lane to lane passing on the left, the right, whatever's convenient, usually without signalling, trying to get ahead of everybody else) and, of course, tailgaters (particularly when the vehicle that's 2 feet from my rear bumper is a tractor-trailer moving at a speed that would require at least a half-mile to come to a stop.) Oh, and butt-flickers. On my list of people to be removed from the road, people who compulsively drive the speed limit are pretty far down.
8.15.2005 8:25pm
Chris (mail) (www):
THe ones that really worry me are the tailgaters. The ones who scare me are the guys who come zooming up at 20mph faster than everyone else in order to tailgate the guy doing only 10 mph over the speed limit as quickly and as closely as they can. As a co-worker of mine occasionally mentions, don't these people realize that breaks to occasionally fail?

I mean, how important can shaving a second off of your tailgating time be?
8.16.2005 1:23am
Bill (mail) (www):
So you are two of the guys in the left lane going the speed limit?

The left lane is for those who are going faster than you. It's as simple as that!
8.16.2005 5:16pm
Harry (on Firefox) (mail) (www):
I find that theory - and law, as of the beginning of this year, or was it last year? - fascinating. If you take a part of 81 where the morning and evening commute is essentially 70mph bumper-to-bumper in both (or all) lanes (we're damned good drivers up here, which is why you don't hear of more 40-car pileups in NEPA), and then declare that the left lane is to be used when and only when a car is engaged in an act of passing (we'll forgo any arguments about whether or not you're legally permitted to exceed the speed limit in the passing lane, which you're not, but when everyone is already going 15 miles over it, the point is moot), then you have effectively doubled the amount of traffic in the right-hand lane. Which means you now need twice as much lane to hold the same volume of traffic. Which means your traffic nightmares will only get worse.

I believe the place for those who are going faster than me is behind me. At least that's what the people travelling faster than me seem to think.
8.16.2005 10:26pm