Wednesday, December 10, 2008
How many of you hate left lane drivers who never seem to MOVE OVER? I was recently reading on the internet how some states are starting to enforce the law and give tickets to those who stay in the left lane and are holding up traffic for others. Afterall the left lane is for passing only isn't it? I think this is a god send! Please pull them all over! I do a lot of high way driving and nothing makes me more upset than those who stay in the left lane and block a line of cars behind them. In many cases no one even drives in the right lane, especially on a three or four lane high way. Traffic would move much more smoothly especially during rush hour and make 84 and 91 through Hartford a little more bearable to drive through.
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Hands down, 84 West is the WORST highway to drive on. Not only is there the problem of these left-hand loaders, there's also constant construction and idiots who can't read a merge sign! I'm a complete advocate for driver retraining at the age of... I don't know, say 55? Adults may think that we're the annoying ones- always needing to go fast and get places right away. Isn't that supposed to be the beauty of the highway system? I seriously think older drivers act on principle alone. "I'm not going to move so that whipper snapper can do 80 and kill someone!" Well guess what, your decision not to move will make that driver cut through two lanes just to get in front of you.
I feel your pain. I grew up driving on the Merritt Parkway, which is referred to as several other names, but basically is the highway part of Route 15. Needless to say this two-lane little road that cannot even support commercial vehicles on its exit ramps has become quite the racetrack. I have noticed this especially in Fairfield County. If you want to drive 65, which is 10 miles above the speed limit, in the “slow lane” you WILL get run over. There is no sympathy.
On this literal death trap, where one will easily find himself driving 80, there are no breakdown lanes. This is good for travelers, as it makes policing difficult, but extremely bad as well, because during bad water there is little room for precipitation to run-off.
I think that this need for speed is a part of our generation. Everyone is rushing around constantly. I, too, am a culprit.
Age is not the only deciding factor. I have young family members and friends who have their licenses and I feel like yelling “chop, chop” every time I sit in their cars. Then there are the old men who drive erratically in their sports cars.
I would just like to clarify something that I too am guilty off: the right lane is the travel lane and the left lane is the passing lane. Ideally, no one should be traveling in the left lane for extended periods of time, but we have all been guilty of this at one time or another in our life.
Furthermore, we need to have more sympathy for left lane snails. I know that when the weather is bad I am petrified to switch lanes, and sometimes I just get stuck in a lane and just cannot move because I am too afraid, such as in torrential rains.
People, especially the truckers, are crazy on 84 West. Back in the 1980's, when I was in my 20s and still a nervous driver(actually I still am), I was stopped and cited for driving too slow. Yes, you read that correctly. I was doing somewhere between 35-40 because driving around those exits (19-20-21) in Waterbury used to scare me. I was in a middle lane. The officer told me to stay in the right lane if I was going to drive slow. "That's your lane," he told me. (He was nice.) Unfortunately, it has often seemed that people don't know that's my lane. And now that I am more comfortable driving at 65, I can get a little impatient with people who aren't moving.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I do believe that some of 84 is 45 mi./hr. (at least the sretch that I drive, which runs through Waterbury). So that is crazy that you would be sighted for driving too slowly.
Some sections may be 45, but I must have been in a 55 section because he told me I needed to be driving about that to be in a middle lane. And, knowing what I was like as a driver in those days, I was probably closer to 35 than 45. I was very nervous. I got my license at 21 so I was behind a lot of my peers when it came to confidence behind the wheel. My father and mother drove me on assignments for my first newspaper internship because I couldn't drive.
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