On motorways: owning up

[toothycat]

I am a middle lane clogger.

Motorways are divided into three lanes.

The outer lane is mostly inhabited by lorries, mobile homes and Robin Reliants.

The lane closest to the central divide is mostly inhabited by madmen who prefer to drive at their car's top speed and, upon encountering someone who is moving slower, come to within an inch of their bumper and flash their headlights rapidly to stun their prey into submission. This strategy, incidentally, serves them very poorly on country roads: tailgating a lorry or van narrows one's field of view until one is unable to see far enough along the oncoming traffic lane to be able to overtake, and dropping back does not appear to be an action these drivers are able to conceive of; instead, they get more and more agitated, sound their horn and weave from side to side in a desparate attempt to see even a little way ahead, until eventually their anger overcomes their vestigial self-preservation instinct and they boldly go forth to face the oncoming traffic.

Those of us who just want to get from A to B while doing the speed limit and without going via a hospital, therefore, end up in the middle lane.

Clogging the middle lane is supremely bad taste, naturally. One is supposed to remain in the outermost lane in which there is room. However, when room does appear between two of the aforementioned lorries, moving a lane outwards guarantees that just as you catch up to the lorry ahead and get ready to overtake, you will see on your inside another lorry, going slightly faster than the one in front of you, and will be forced to brake and wait for the elephant race to finish. Something similar, of course, happens to the madmen whenever they drop into a gap in the central lane, which is why they are so annoyed with you.

In practice, therefore, one stays in the middle lane until one can see a gap big enough that the madmen will all have gone before one catches up to the next lorry along. And feels vaguely guilty.

That is all.

Comments

[wrh-2005.livejournal.com]

I remember the days when the "elephant" race was rather faster paced. Of course these days with speed limiters and the like overtaking is like inch at a time. Some of the old trucks (before 1994) could do over 70mph. The new ones that have been fiddled with can do well over that.

We often play spot the convoy on long trips. Because you get a bunch of wagons with speed limiters two abreast on dual carriageways. They take ages to either give up or get around. It does slow those madmen up though.

When I had my Rover I used to be a madman, After a couple of these fast runs to London and Kent the engine blew up on the way to the supermarket. My dad had to tow me home with his elephant.:P

Then I got my nice little Vauxhall which I treated with a great deal more respect, you get really good fuel economy from it about 55mph so I keep it at that as much as possible. Safe and cheap. :)

You take it easy lad, your car will last longer and be cheaper to run. If anyone bothers me like tailgating I just slow down a bit more. Or hide behind a nice big elephant or two at a good distance so I can see. ;D

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

this post needs to come with diagrams.

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

Cars are the things with four wheels.

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

i am getting confused with all the inner and outer lanes, and where the car is during the elephant race and indeed where the elephants are.

i think i have worked it out now though.

[toothycat]

I deliberately didn't go for "left" and "right" as I've just spent two weeks driving in Europe ^^;; and the DVLA practice of calling the slowest lane the inside lane seems unintuitive - AIUI in the US the term "inside lane" refers to the one closest to the central divide, which seems more so.

Hm.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

I actually find the DVLA nomenclature more intuitive since I've been driving. You "pull in" to the side of a road - a normal single-lane road - if you want to stop or to let an ambulance go by, and you "move out" to overtake and back in again when you've finished; so it's just generalising those terms to a multi-lane motorway.

But I used to prefer the terms the other way round, because as you say, the fast lane is actually "inside" spatially on the whole motorway.

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

well, I understand "slow" lane and "fast" lane--and doesn't everyone?, but I got told off when I last tried to refer to lanes like that.

[sonia-leong.livejournal.com]

I have to say - I am one of those people who veer from the slowest lane, to the fastest lane, and I NEVER stay in the middle.

If I see people like you, I will pull into the fastest lane to overtake you, then pull all the way across, back into the slowest lane once I'm in front of you, just to make a point that what you're doing is wrong.

The trick to staying in the slow lane yet driving at the speed limit (like you're supposed to) is to anticipate gaps in the traffic and prepare to overtake slow vehicles well in advance. Slip out, overtake at leisure, then slip back in again.

Although, from your last paragraph, it seems your method is like an even more leisurely version of this - you anticipate so far in advance, you get into the middle lane very early, and stay in there a little longer than need just in case a slow vehicle appears suddenly on the horizon?

In which case, you're only slightly clogging up the middle. I'm assuming that if the roads are clear, you would go into the slowest lane like you should.

It's the ones who stay in the middle, even if the roads are entirely clear, that really really piss me off. XD

[toothycat]

I'm assuming that if the roads are clear, you would go into the slowest lane like you should.

Indeed, that is the case. It just feels like I ought to be weaving to the slowest lane whenever there is even a ten-fifteen second gap visible, and yet I rarely feel safe/comfortable doing it in any but the lightest traffic for the above reasons.

[chess]

Nah, the real middle-lane cloggers are the ones which go at 67mph in the middle lane on an entirely clear road, forcing me to go right out into the lane full of people doing 100mph in order to elephant-race them, or undertake them and feel guilty, or sit behind them fuming with frustation and occasionally getting dangerously close when my attention wanders.

[alextfish.livejournal.com]

Ohhh... I see. I got completely the wrong impression from your post. This comment clarifies you back into the "sensible & sane" camp :)

I do what Sonia does to people who really loiter in the middle lane with no reason to be there - but "a lorry that I expect to reach in 60 seconds" is a perfectly good reason to be in the middle lane. (My rule of thumb tends to be about 60 seconds as the cutoff below which it's not worth moving in just to then move out again.)

Your post is confusing, because there are people who'll sit in the middle lane when there's nothing visible in the "slow" lane. They irritate me; but people who behave as I think you've described you do are fine.