Safe Speed Forums

It really infuriates me, but I think I've worked out why they do it.

I think they go to a special school, and when they graduate they get a trophy. Not sure where the original trophy came from but I think was intoduced by someone called R. Sole.
On the trophy it says: "This trophy is presented to the driver named below for his/hers exeptional ability to drive a vehicle like a dead head. It proves they are both ignorant and arrogant in all things motoring and that their selfish and bloodyminded behaviour is all consuming and overwhelming. It grants them license to drive in the one lane set aside exclusively for them. The middle one. From this position they can cause maximum frustration to other road users without ever thinking about the consequences."
The trophy also comes with a certificate of authenticity which states: "Congratulations on earning this award. You can now cause major congestion further back along the motorway, and have absolutely no idea why!"

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Without self expression, we're all slaves.

Yep , I saw one on bank holiday monday about 5pm on the M6 (couldn't have picked a better time to demonstrate her skills). After about 2 miles of slow congeestion the motorway, all started moving again then there she was doing 50MPH in middle lane, no traffic on inside lane at all, happily sitting there driving VERY safely (well she wasn't "speeding" so she must have been driving safely eh? folks.)

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

It is my impression that the M40 gets more than it's fair share of MLMs, goodness knows why. It is often the case that more safe progress can be made using the inside and middle lanes then the middle and outer, such is the snarl-up.

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

It is also encouraging a serious increase in undertaking as more people become increasingly exasperated with it all !
With less Trafpol on the road too they know they will not be 'tugged' & questioned.
I have tried various 'control' inputs to move the offending L2 chicane and some work and some don't. It can be hard to tell the 'type' of driver possibilities until you have been in their area for a while.
One favorite 'control' is to allow, one to overtake me, and that has the positive psychological effect that moves them, but timing I have learnt can be crucial and you have to have been behind them for a min of about 1 - 10 mins !
I *am* talking of about 2.5sec (plus) gap by the way !
I always ensure people are thanked clearly.

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

HGV's ( fitted with speed limiters ) are the worst culprits on the four lane section of the M6 northbound between the A59 and M55 at Preston. Ignorant HGV drivers often pull out as far as the third lane for no good reason up to a mile before the M55 junction starts proper even if the traffic is fairly light. 20 Years ago when I was driving HGV's, plod would have done you for driving in the third lane before the dotted lines of the junction itself which are a bit short one must admit. It needs clamping down on as it screws the traffic flow and makes life dangerous and frustrating if not encouraging undertaking if you plan to take the M55 exit. Plod has cameras all the way along there so why not plenty of warning letters through the post in an attempt to stamp it out if not prosecution for persistent offenders.

I'd love to be a middle-lane hog, but it (along with the inside lane) is full of trucks. The outside lane is full of car drivers doing 70mph +- 0.1mph.
Yes, ii's really good fun....all the way from J10M1 to J13M1 behind the same two trucks from the same company, trying to out-hog each other. And then they both pulled-off at J13 to go to the industrial area, still occupying two lanes. Really fun, since J13 has the largest traffic jam anyway, without the A421 dualling AND the new J13A construction. Must have been a competition to see which one chickened-out first at the 421/507 junction. The one with on the back won.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

Having spent yesterday going up and down the A34 from Andover to Oxford, I'm with you on the elephant races. Spent I would estimate 50% of the journey back sitting in queues of 20 cars in L2 at 56 mph waiting for one lorry to finish trying to overtake another lorry.

Utter selfishness.

I would agree in principle. But it depends on what speed one lorry is doing over the other. One lorry at 56 overtaking another at 55 does seem somewhat ridiculous I'll grant you (unless it's NOT causing a tailback). I don't condone this behaviour and I certainly don't do it. However, if the same lorry is overtaking one at 50, then that's perfectly acceptable. It's no different than a car doing 70 overtaking another doing 65.
Would you rather keep ALL lorries in the inside lane whatever the speed? That sounds kind of "utter selfish" don't you think?

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Without self expression, we're all slaves.

While I would not restrict lorries to the inside lane only, I can't see the point in lorries overtaking one another on these roads where they are both limited to about 56mph. What gain is there to the overtaker? One mile per hour? If the slower lorry is doing 45-50mph then OK, but this would not produce the queues noted above.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Really!!? Actually, I can quite believe you would. I would have thought that you of all people would have at least understood the implications of such a move...I was obviously wrong! Let me explain:

If you drive in, or "hog" the middle lane of a three lane motorway, or drive one lane in from the outside of any multi-lane motorway, you effectively reduce that section of the motorway to two lanes, in that overtaking traffic has only one lane to do so. This means that following traffic must queue up behind you and wait for a gap in the outside lane in order to overtake. Once the queue becomes long enough it's called congestion. Two miles back along the motorway the traffic's at a crawl. Had you moved over to the available inside lane, then you would release the congested traffic that you should not have caused in the first place. Now you know why there's these seemingly unapparant blocks of slow moving traffic.
Why do you think motorways are being widened to add an extra lane? MORE lanes means MORE traffic moving MORE freely MORE of the time. What's the point of spending millions building more lanes if no-one's going to use them?

It's all about education, or the lack of it. It's not rocket science really...People just need to think about what they're doing. Either that or take their horse blinkers off.

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Without self expression, we're all slaves.

On that we concur.

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Without self expression, we're all slaves.

I agree entirely, and if an HGV driver was caught lane hogging he WOULD get a ticket. Not so a car driver. But we have to keep things in perspective. All things being equal, there are only 500,000 trucks on britains roads, and 30,000,000 cars. 50% of all car drivers hog the middle lane. That's a lot drivers not paying attention...

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Without self expression, we're all slaves.

In certain situations, it's fine, and I do believe the problem is the limiters, not the drivers to a great degree.

But last night as an example saw ~5% of the vehicles on the road slowing the other ~95% by between 10 and 20 mph, purely so that some of those ~5% could go 1mph faster than others.

It was no surprise that L1 was almost empty, meaning that a few chancers were undertaking a dozen cars at a time if anyone in L2 left a decent gap in front, making it even more frustrating for the rest of us, as the resulting bunch caused stop-start to set in.

We've had this debate to death on SS before, but I still can't believe it's not selfish for one vehicle to impede dozens of other vehicles that want to go a lot faster in order that they can travel 1mph faster, especially when the effect of just a few of such acts is to congest the entire road.

Getting nerdy, one could represent a busy 2-lane DC as a two column bar chart, with traffic distributed in either bar 1 (for L1) or bar 2 (for L2). In an ideal world bars 1 & 2 would be the same size, i.e. there would be a 50/50 split in traffic flow between lanes. If we assume a uniform bell distribution in vehicles' ideal choice of speed then the bottom 50% would choose L1 and the top 50 would choose L2.

Unfortunately, human nature means that anyone in L1 who wants to go faster than the flow moves to L2. If they are slower than the current speed of L2, then they slow it down.

Even more unfortunately, the speed distribution is not a uniform bell, but has a pronounced spike at 56mph (representing limited trucks), with something like a bell curve peaking at about 70mph.

This means that everything going faster than the slower limited trucks goes in L2, and everyone goes at about 56mph.

M3 J2 to J3 EVERY BLOODY DAY

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Prepare to be Judged

I'd quite happily be one of those "chancers"; if it's safe to pass on the left then there is no good reason not to do it, it is not illegal (though the HC discourages it, and BiB might use it as grounds for DWDCA if not done in such a way to to remain above reproach) and it even offers a better escape route than passing to the right, due to the adjacent hard shoulder. I would not, of course, cause any stop/start on pulling back into the middle lane, because I would not pull into any lane, in any direction, if it would cause following drivers to brake. If dozens of cars could be passed safely in this way then those cars should clearly be in the inside lane until they encounter the next vehicle to pass.

Keep left unless overtaking, it's not rocket science!

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Regulation without education merely creates more criminals.

My occasional guest appearances up north to see my family involves the recently widened M1. This appears to the the training ground for the GB Olympic Poor Lane Discipline Team. I predict more Gold medals

They adopt a similar approach in the States. You can overtake using any lane. They have no 'inside lane' as such. Never work here tho'. Boy racers birthdays and christmas' would all come at once!

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Without self expression, we're all slaves.

Undertaking is ok when it's quiet and one numpty is in the wrong lane, but this was nose to tail in L2, but with some people leaving larger gaps than others.

I spent about ten miles trying to get past some knob in a Kia then he undertook me at the next elephant race and we started again.