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Comment by seabird | Hacker News Reader

This is a solved problem. The left lane is the passing lane, the right lane is the cruising lane. If you're not passing, you should be in the right lane. Highway traffic organizes itself if you do this.

US highways (and driving in general) will always be fucked as long as the only requirement for a driver's license is a pulse, and you never get ticketed for ignoring the rules of the road. Your average American driver is lazy, stupid, combative, uneducated, clumsy, or some combination of them, and they will never be inconvenienced by the behavior enough to change it.

The only way to fix this is to enforce the rules that already exist, which will never be done.

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The state highway I take to work frequently has State Patrols pulling people over who are getting passed by people in the right lanes. It’s a law in my state to move over even if the person who passed you in the right lane is speeding.

In the SFBA you’ll see some of the fastest drivers deliberately passing from the right lane - my guess is they think they are less visible outside the fast lane.

Having driven quite a lot in the SFBA (SF Bay Area, right?) it's usually out of frustration with traffic clogging up the left half of the highway.

Lazy careless drivers leave the right lane underutilized, congregating on the left side because they can't be bothered with monitoring let alone handling potentially merging traffic.

So the right lane often becomes the only way to get around these clumped up clusterfucks, and to minimize time spent in the right lane while overtaking, it often occurs at quite extralegal speeds.

Even without traffic though, the right lane can be faster because of how many people sit in the left going 65 with nobody in front.

Because often someone is hogging the left lane but not the right lane, especially in San Jose where nobody wants to be in the right lane due to the wacky merges. So it becomes the true passing lane, with extra risk. Also, carpool lane is on the right on some expressways.

A special situation is the 2-lane part of highway 5 between SF and LA. Sometimes one truck needs to pass another, causing traffic in the left lane during the pass. Courteous drivers basically form a line in the left lane waiting for this. A few people pass this entire line on the right then cut in.

And yet between SF and SJ, the empty right lane becomes the fastest available lane.

The existence of the Lexus Lane makes that more important where it's in effect because the "left lane" for most cars is closer to the right lane.

The law in my state:

> Except when overtaking and passing on the right is permitted, the driver of an overtaken vehicle, on audible signal, shall give way to the right in favor of the overtaking vehicle.

https://casetext.com/statute/code-of-maryland/article-transp...

I think this is awesome.

One interesting difference between the german autobahn and american freeways seems to be how the left lane is treated.

On the autobahn, if someone is going faster in the left lane, the slower person should pull right.

In the US, if the person in the left lane is going the speed limit or over, they don't feel any need to move to the right for someone going faster.

This isn't remotely a solved problem in the congested city and suburban highways they're trying this for. What you're describing works perfectly fine for a two-lane rural highway running between cities where the average vehicle spacing is half a kilometer apart bare minimum. It's not viable during near perpetual rush-hour conditions to just tell everyone to not just one lane of the highway unless they're passing. When there are seven lanes on each side, how do they even get to the left lane to do the passing? Cut across six, pass, then cut back?

Every successive left lane is meant for passing traffic in the lane to the right of it. This is a touch simplistic (the rightmost lane is for traffic entering/exiting) but the practical bit is relatively simple:

Drive in the furthest lane to the right that is practical. Merge left to pass a person in front of you. Merge back right when you are no longer passing. Do this regardless of which lane you are in.

I have wondered if you could use simulation based on actual driver behavior to quantify the impact when a single truck moves from the slow lane to the second lane from right. You get a huge number of cars that, themselves, should be the slow lane, but still need to pass the truck. Many will, as they are instructed, get over and pass the truck on the left. That's what I do for the most part. But it makes an amazing impact on traffic to have twice the lane changes, and many folks, once they have gotten over to pass, remain in the "passing" lane.

This truck behavior is a recent change, the last ten years at most. I have certainly noticed that when merging I essentially never have to speed up or slow down for a big rig. It's certainly easier to merge with a light truck or car!

But the organization of traffic has almost completely broken down in the San Francisco Area. I have heard that the California Highway Patrol more or less refuses to enforce any traffic regulation that isn't driven by safety. And to be fair, I rarely see CHP cars, so they may well be spread so thin that they can barely keep the flow of traffic from going 20+ MPH over the limit.

> This is a solved problem. The left lane is the passing lane, the right lane is the cruising lane. If you're not passing, you should be in the right lane. Highway traffic organizes itself if you do this.

Ok, but what about the other five lanes? Only use the left lane for passing works when traffic is light. When traffic gets heavier, you need to use all lanes to increase throughput; even though it makes passing more difficult.

1) If there is a car behind you, and no car in front of you, go one lane to the right.

2) Always pass on the left.

Breaking either rule is a > $1000 fine, and points on your license.

This is how it works everywhere I’ve driven except California, and it works great.

During congestion, there is invariably a car in the fast lane with no cars in front of it, and a line of 1000 cars behind it. That driver should lose their license.

Here in Maryland, passing on the right is permitted:

> On a highway with unobstructed pavement not occupied by parked vehicles and wide enough for two or more lines of vehicles moving lawfully in the same direction as the overtaking vehicle;

Otherwise known as what everyone calls a highway. All the rules about keeping to the right to allow passing do not apply when passing on the right is allowed.

Of course, someone who is licensed to drive in MD is allowed to drive in all 50 states, even without being trained on their laws.

https://casetext.com/statute/code-of-maryland/article-transp...

Most states you can pass on the left, it is the driver in the passing lane committing a crime.

IME, during congestion, there aren't cars with no cars in front of them, and if there, there isn’t a way for them to get into the next lane without coming near a dead stop first.

In fact, if neither of those conditions apply, that alone is a pretty good sign that there's not particularly significant congestion.

Americans are not willing to do what it would take to raise driving standards. Germany has the Autobahn. The passing lane concept is followed there. Getting a driver’s license is much more involved and includes CPR training. In the US we expect 16 year olds to be able to drive to school because the town is designed in a car dependent manner. Not having access to driving is like not having legs. You can get fined for running out of fuel on the Autobahn. In the US we bristle at the idea of roadworthiness inspections. We hate tolls and taxes more than potholes. You can’t drive 200km/hr on a rough road. In the US we have more cup holders than seats in our cars. German cars don’t have cup holders because you’re suppose to be focused on driving.

> German cars don’t have cup holders because you’re suppose to be focused on driving.

Every BMW, Audi, and Mercedes that I've driven has had cup holders. This seems like one of those tropes like "Russian cosmonauts just used pencils!" that is easily debunked with even the most rudimentary of searches, but somehow lives on in the zeitgeist.

the Sacco era Benzes mostly lacked cupholders. (maybe the 500 series or SEL had them)

In Oklahoma the interstate has periodic warnings that drive in the left lane is for passing only, and is a fineable violation. Like magic, when driving over the state border, the drivers magically become more aware and cognizant of passing and getting out of the way.

Enforcement is the only way laws have any effect at all, otherwise they are words on paper nobody reads.

When the roads have 5 lanes each direction, we need greater social cohesion to set up differentiated cruising and passing. The majority of people prefer to have more open space directly ahead of them (unless impaired enough to want to follow someone else's lead or having trouble with nighttime visibility), so they sort of spread out.

> Your average human driver is lazy, stupid, combative, uneducated, clumsy, or some combination of them, and they will never be inconvenienced by the behavior enough to change it.

FTFY

No, Americans are specifically worse. Simply look at what is needed to earn a license - almost nothing, and it also costs next to nothing. American driving laws are also extremely lax, there are American drivers who have had multiple DUIs in life and still have a license.

It's also even easier to drive without a license. Chances are you can go a long time without needing to show your license, better to have them easy to get so people have them when, than a high barrier and many unlicensed drivers.

Sounds like a good reason to have more stop and checks.

Cops are the last people we should trust to be arbiters in anything beyond justifying their own DV case. They're scum.

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