Left Hand Man
It’s a rare stretch of road that allows me to drive in the right hand lane. Please don’t misunderstand this- I am all for driving on the right and passing on the left, it’s a great theory. I’d be the first to extol the virtues of this romantic highway utopia were it only a true reflection of the natural order of things. But alas, reality makes a policy like this life threateningly prohibitive.
We are taught in driver’s education to drive on the right and to pass on the left. I suppose this has to do with keeping slower traffic closer to the on-ramps, exits, and Burger King. This is also means that on single lane dotted-line roads, we still pass on the left; so no need to adjust your rules for the size of the road. Drive on the right, pass on the left; no matter the road, time of day, or state that you’re in. Beautiful simplicity.
But it doesn’t work like that. There are too many people driving too slow on the right, and not enough people in the left hand lane to make it worth the time to keep switching back and forth.
If everyone drove the same speed, we’d have no need for this policy at all. Everyone would drive at exactly the same velocity like a multicolored train in the left hand lane, and we’d use the right hand lane for acceleration and deceleration as we were entering from and exiting to Burger King. But this is America, as I seem fond of reminding people, and we have the freedom to choose our rate of travel within a well defined specific range of parameters deemed safe and responsible by our elected officials (or their duly appointed civil servants).
And fine, I’m ready to admit that they only way I’d be in favor of a policy that dictated everyone drives the same speed, would be if the policy were written in such a way that everyone was to drive the same speed as me. That is, I decide how fast or slow I want to go on any given day, and everyone keeps up. They could also choose not to drive while I am driving, so there is some flexibility built in. While this would certainly solve the problem of driving on the right and passing on the left, I have yet to get anyone in Washington to answer my repeated phone calls.
So we’re stuck with this “drive on the right, pass on the left even if you’re me” compromise. Which sounds fine at first, but you quickly realize that people in right hand lane are so slow that driving behind them is actually dangerous. Instead, I find myself driving in the left hand lane and moving over to the right when someone wants to pass me. How do I know they want to pass? They approach really fast from behind and get close to my bumper.
Tailgating does not bother me in the slightest. Folks I know will actually slow down when they are put in this situation. I’ll never understand this. Someone wants to go faster than you do, so you slow down so that you’re both going slower? This can’t be right. I love spite as much as anyone, but not at the expense of my own nose. The healthy thing to do when someone rider right up on your tail, is to pull to the right and let them pass. And why not? Doing so sets out a kind of advance team to look for speed traps, thereby reducing your own chances of getting pinched. Now I can increase my own speed by a few miles per hour in a situation like this, as I have an extra barrier of protection against the dreaded radar gun. All thanks to tailgating.
The other reason to pull over when someone is behind me is because this is what I expect when I ride right up on other cars. I find myself speeding right up on someone’s tail ten times more often than I find myself tailgated. So for whatever the golden rule is worth, I like to extend the same courtesy to my fellow speeders and hope to put a little karma in the bank. Or as Thomas Fuller once said “He does not believe who does not live according to his belief.”
Back to the problem. There are a few opportunities to get into a high speed crash. Such as when you’re driving along and someone in front of you (or more likely, everyone in front of you) has stopped. Another is when you fall asleep behind the wheel. A more common time for a high speed accident is when you come across something unexpected in your lane, like an object that has fallen off a truck, or some ice. But the most common time for a high speed accident is during a lane change.
So, if I’m driving my usual 14 miles per hour over the speed limit, and it’s a rather slow crowd, I could be moving from the right lane, into the left, and back into the right (yeah, that’s two lane changes per pass) every couple of minutes if not more frequently. As long as there’s no one behind you, why not reduce your chance of accident by removing yourself from the high risk activity that is lane changing? Far better to remain in the left and watch for foreign objects in the road, as you monitor the speed of those in front of you and try to stay awake.