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Comment by athenot | Hacker News Reader

> GW Autobahn Rule 3: Slower traffic stays to the right! As in the US, whenever possible, move into the right lane. Most German drivers are good about this, but some non-German drivers are not.

Having driven both in Europe and the US, this is one of my pet peeves in the US. This causes so much unnecessary risk. I used to chalk this up to the super light driving test in the US (at least compared to Europe).

But recently I realized it's not just driver education: the road UX is different between Europe and the US on main highways. Here in the US, the right lane very often "disappears", i.e. becomes an "exit only" lane. The result is if you're going straight for a while, you find it easier to not stay on the right and then have to change lanes. In Europe, the road design tries to minimize the "vanishing right lane" syndrome: exits ramps are separated; and if need be, it's the left lane that goes.

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It's not just that. It's also that US onramps often involve a very tight curve followed by a very short time to merge. This makes it difficult for many cars to get up to the speed of traffic before they merge, and also leaves drivers with very little time to negotiate the merge.

More cautious drivers are going to be more intimidated about this than most people, so they're more likely to move move over a lane so that they don't have to deal with it. They also, of course, tend to be slower drivers.

I've no experience driving in Europe (Europe, I love you), but I suspect that a big part of why I don't see this sort of thing happening in Canada is that, outside of very dense places like the middle of Toronto or Montréal, the onramps tend to give you a good kilometer to merge. Sure, you might also be liable to get a ticket for loitering in the left or center lanes, but that's also illegal in the USA. It's just not enforced, because everyone does it, because the roads encourage you to do so.

I have no qualms with accommodating merging traffic, a "zipper merge" is easy to accommodate when everyone leaves sufficient space between cars.... but drivers tend to bunch up on the on-ramp and you'll get a pack of 3 - 5 cars with < 1 car length of distance between them and then they try to merge as one unit, so invariably one or more cars either on the ramp or on the freeway end up stomping on the brakes which makes everyone behind them do the same.

So for this reason, I avoid the far-right lane when there are 3+ travel lanes.

In a lot of European countries, vehicles entering from the right (aka merging onto the highway) have the right of way, so even if they aren't necessarily up to speed, you have to let them in, or make room for them. This is one reason you'll see many people change out of the right lane just before a merge -- they are probably making room to let someone get in.

This does certainly not extend to Germany. And I wonder in which European country this could be the case, as it sounds like a really bad idea.

There is the general rule of right-before-left on intersections in Germany and some other European countries. But this does NOT apply on highways, after all an on-ramp is no intersection.

The same is true in the USA.

And then, invariably, someone behind them will immediately change into the right lane and speed up to pass them on the right. Thereby making it even harder for the person merging to get in, while also pinning the person who made room for them in the middle lane, because there's suddenly a bunch of faster-moving traffic in the right lane.

It will tend to work out this way even when it's a 3-lane highway and the left-hand lane is wide open.

> In a lot of European countries, vehicles entering from the right (aka merging onto the highway) have the right of way

Really? In Ontario, entrance merge lanes are marked as if the opposite is true, with "lane ends 300 m" signs and painted lines all the way until it tapers off to nothing.

I'm not sure what the law says, but this creates the feeling that "you're lane is ending, not mine", and it's entirely up to entering traffic to match speed and find a gap. Basically, freeway traffic shouldn't adjust their speed unless it's the only way to let entering traffic enter (if there's no room).

In contrast, most US states seem to immediately merge the two lanes into one really wide lane that gradually (or rapidly) tapers down to normal width. Often without any warning signs for freeway traffic to expect merging traffic.

(Some US states also do this for exit ramps, which creates the dangerous situation where some drivers will accidentally take the exit at freeway speeds. This happened to me once at night, and I had to slam on the brakes before running the stop sign at the end.)

As a fellow Ontario driver it is of course polite to move over to the other lane if possible to give the merging car some room. Then you can move back of course.

Yes, I agree. If I can't move over, and there's not room for entering vehicles, then I slow down to create enough space for a single vehicle (zipper merge fashion).

> Here lies the body of Henry Gray

> He died defending his right of way.

> His way was right, his will was strong,

> But he’s just as dead as if he was wrong.

I don't care that I have the right of way as I merge into the highway. I have no idea if the idiot who is doing 65 mph in the right-most lane, who clearly sees my merge maneuver is planning on slamming on the brakes after I merge in, or slamming into me.

I may technically have the right of way, but I sure as hell am not going to bet my life on it.

In the Netherlands at least, if you can't find a spot to merge from the onramp lane, you are to stop and wait for a better moment to merge. This never happens in practice though, because drivers on the rightmost lane will commonly either move a lane to the left, or if they can't, change their speed a little to accommodate you. But that's a courtesy, not a rule.

Nope! On ramps do not have right of way speaking for Germany Austria and Italy here. By any means move over for merging traffic if you can but don't endanger yourself or others by jumping out of your lane for merging traffic.

As a European, the US highways drive me mad. People passing on the right, slow traffic in the left lane, dangerous markings, dangerous merging of lanes, and most of all: drivers seem to only see what's directly in front of their car, one car length only. There is no anticipation, no allowing for other traffic that might need to switch lanes (because of slow trucks ahead). I have to look not just in the mirrors, but around me all the time, because cars will stay in my dead zones. In general, I find it a frustrating and dangerous experience.

Confirm. Driving German Autobahn's is much safer than driving US highways.

The only thing I like about US highways is the way they drive fast an cities, right and left, 60 miles, 5 lanes. In Germany there will always be a 100km/h speed limit, and 2 lanes only.

Also in the US they'll use left side exits, which pushes exiting traffic to the "fast" lane. Drives me crazy when road designers do this.

I think this also varies state-to-state, I recently drove from Colorado to Texas and it really seemed to me that in general TX drivers observe the "stay right except to pass" rule much more than CO drivers.

Maybe it's worse in CO, but as a native Texan I have to say that there are plenty of slow drivers who sit in the left hand lane on major highways seemingly oblivious to the drivers wanting to go faster stacking up behind them.

This is abundant all over the USA. I've driven all around the USA and hugging the left lane is a universal trait among the incompetent and oblivious drivers we have. (And we have many!)

A few years ago it seemed like CO drivers were strictly obeying "keep right except to pass" because cops were enforcing it. Now they apparently don't any more because it seems like CO drivers hog the left lane jist like everybody else. I guess enforcement matters.

> I think this also varies state-to-state,

The actual law varies from state to state and the rule you are discussing is actually the law in some states, but not in others.

> Having driven both in Europe and the US, this is one of my pet peeves in the US.

Funny, one of my pet peeves since I moved to the US is the "keep right unless passing" or "left lane is for passing only" or any other variation of the same sermon. Sounds logical at first, but it's really bureocracy.

If the highway is congested, then the rule becomes meaningless. The traffic density is so high, that it's perfectly natural to use all of the available lanes.

If the highway is not congested, then the density is low enough that you should be able to change lanes as necessary, with minimal fuss. If that's the case, then the whole "keep to the right unless passing" is really just a crutch. In this situation, what we really want is something along the lines of "pay attention and don't make people pass you on the right", but that's not enforceable. So we come up with a rule like "keep to the right unless passing", because that can be enforced by cops.

In my experience it isn't really the people in the left lane that present the biggest problem, it's the cruisers in the middle lane (on a three lane highway). They effectively cap the speed of the highway because you have to match their speed and squeeze in (they rarely leave a legal amount of distance) just to get to the other side of the highway to go faster, or to the right to take an exit. I really do wish cops would do some enforcement of the keep-right rule so the highway would flow smoothly.

> If the highway is congested, then the rule becomes meaningless

I don't think this is true. On a German three lane highway you normally have a lane of trucks driving 60 mph, a lane of cars going 80 mph and a line of cars going 100-120 mph. This arrangement follows naturally from "keep right unless passing" since each of the lanes is constantly passing the lane to its right.

You're completely missing the safety factor.

On European highways passing always occurs on the left, this means nobody should be ever passing you on your right.

When you have an emergency like a tire blowout, on a European highway you can safely merge right towards the shoulder with urgency and confidence nobody is coming up fast from behind and overtaking you on that side.

In the United States, you cannot make that assumption, people are overtaking on both sides at any time, it's basically chaos.

I would expect everyone going at different speeds in different lanes to increase congestion, because it encourages people who want to go faster than the general flow of traffic to jockey around a bunch, which then adversely impacts the speed at which everyone else can go as they react to all those sudden moves, which ultimately slows everything down even further.

Not entirely unlike how turbulence in a pipe decreases the overall rate at which water can flow through it.

> If the highway is congested, then the rule becomes meaningless.

> If the highway is not congested, then the density is low enough that you should be able to change lanes as necessary

In my experience there is a lot of middle ground between these two cases, where there is enough traffic that you can't change lanes as needed to get around a slow person in the left lane (often because that person is driving right next to another vehicle in the right lane, and their speeds are so similar that it takes a long time to resolve which one is passing which), but there's not enough congestion that it no longer makes sense to have any designated passing lane at all.

Living in the US and having grown up in Germany I couldn't agree more. Freeways could go so much faster if the slow people stayed on my right. During my commute I constantly am stuck between three card next to each other, happy to go 45-50 mp/h. At the same time I see cars changing lanes all the time to work their way around the slow cars. It's super dangerous. Visit LA and this gets dialed to 11.

> Here in the US, the right lane very often "disappears", i.e. becomes an "exit only" lane.

Are there any instances where there isn't signage that informs drivers in advance? I'll drive in the right-most lane and if I see one of those signs, I'll check for traffic, signal and move to the lane to my left.

Sometimes it's ambiguous, where you don't know if the exit lane is a new lane or your lane.

This is also a consequence of speed limits that are artificially low.

In the US, people who are going at or over the speed limit feel entitled to move as far left as is necessary to pass slower-moving vehicles.

But when you reach the far left lanes the person going 5 over feels entitled to stay there, even if if the person behind them is willing to go 10 over.

I think having no speed limit means you have to yield to faster cars, and enforces politeness. And the faster moving cars get past you and everyone is good.

I think there is some truth to that. However, most of the Autobahn does have a speed limit and other places in Europe definitely have a speed limit and still drivers are great about only overtaking on the left and moving to the right (well when I drove in Ireland they moved to the left.. ;))

In California, you don't need to stick to the right lane on the freeway. You just pick whichever lane. If you want to go faster than other cars, go in the left lane. Not necessary to keep switching lanes

Since I'm getting downvoted, here is a link:

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/hdbk/traffic_l...

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