Unrelated rant: I once saw a US traffic sign online that said "If drivers are passing you on your right, you're doing it wrong". I wish those signs were everywhere.
The problem with that is nearly everywhere in the US the average rate of speed on highways is about 5 miles over the speed limit, so if you're doing the limit you are going to be one of the slower cars driving.
It really is about cars passing you. If you're not passing you need to move over.
Moreover, if they are prone to road rage, telling them to move over is seen as an insult/disrespect that they need to get out of the “big tough guy lane” and can really set them off.
By "everywhere", if you measure by speed per mile of road, I bet you're right.
By if you measure average speed by driver, I'd bet congestion dominates and average highway speeds are significantly below the speed limit.
One observation from a cop:
> “I stopped a guy one day for doing 100 [kph] [in the left lane] and there were cars passing on the right honking at him and giving him the finger,” Stratton said. “He said ‘I’m keeping people from speeding and doing your job for you.’ But he was keeping me from doing my job, which was to catch speeders and give them the ticket they deserve.”
* https://archive.is/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/drive/cul...
Ontario, Canada specifies to keep right:
> 147 (1) Any vehicle travelling upon a roadway at less than the normal speed of traffic at that time and place shall, where practicable, be driven in the right-hand lane then available for traffic or as close as practicable to the right hand curb or edge of the roadway. […]
* https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90h08#BK253
Quebec has similar stipulations.
Where I live, there are signs saying "keep right except to pass" but they're neither obeyed nor enforced afaict. And it's never really bothered me tbh (I'm usually chilling in the right lane).
Sure, but consider this: if there are cars behind you in the right, then you should pull over.
Right, it depends on traffic volume. There are situations where "keep right except to pass" obviously doesn't help - e.g. streets with regular left-hand turns and congested highways, most notably.
I've wasted far too many hours of my life getting stuck behind a left-lane truck on that road, trying to overtake a column of trucks in the right lane while going up a 6% grade.
I told the officer I totally support the policy.
In my defense, I was overtaking other vehicles to the right and moving at the speed of the vehicle ahead of me, but as I was driving a large vehicle I was preserving a longer follow distance than the tailgater (err, driver) who passed me thought I needed...
AITAH?
I probably tend to be in the top 10% of drivers regarding speed on any given highway. I’m usually the passer and rarely the passee. I stick to the right lane when traffic is light, but may cruise in the left when it requires me to weave in and out for no reason. But I keep an eye on my mirrors and make sure to get out of the way for the few who are faster than me. Sometimes even if that means I slow down a bit to get right. My goal when on the highway is to not make others put on their brakes or react because of me. My second goal is to not put myself into positions where I have to brake myself. That means good follow distances so minor changes in traffic speed doesn’t cause a chain reaction of tail lights that lead to traffic snakes.
Most of what I have seen that causes dangerous situations is when people act abnormally. If the cruising speed on a highway (regardless of posted speed limit) is 80mph and you’re cruising at 70mph in the left lane you are causing a higher risk of accidents regardless of whether you’re doing the speed limit or not. If the roads are covered in ice, you should absolutely be ticketed for driving the “speed limit” when most everyone else is crawling along. So much of traffic boils down to “we live in a society” and so much of what makes traffic miserable is the same folks who can never understand that concept.
It's a shock initially in the US but actually leads to a more relaxed kind of driving. US driving is more like going for a relaxed walk, in Europe it's more like running on a track.
There are exceptions on both sides. In New Jersey, undertaking is not allowed.
There are a lot of circumstances where this looks ridiculous though. Tons of cars driving on, say, M25 will cram into the leftmost lane while the other two will be empty. Then you'll deal with cars constantly joining from the left every couple miles. Then sometimes leftmost lane will leave left and the road continue as two lanes for some time. Then overtaking cars will fill the gap in front of you and you'll need to slow down to keep the following distance of two secs.
As a foreigner living in the UK for the last 3 years, I generally like how the driving rules are laid out and how people drive. But this totally misses the point.
The end result in the US is that on highways drivers will settle into social groups of normal people driving along with occasional disruptions from the assholes.
Near where I live, we have multiple 3-digit interstates. That is, they are sections of interstate that defy the usual convention of odd-numbered north-south routes and east-west even-numbered routes. 3-digit interstate combine highways or circle around cities or take you to tunnels, etc. The result is lots of sections where traffic merges from the left, you have to exit from the left, or the interstate divides into two other interstates and the former left lane is now the right lane. In those very same sections, you have signs reminding you that the left lane is for passing, not cruising. The problem with this is that everyone takes the left lane as a license to go 80+ mph.
What if I my left exit is coming up in a mile? Do I "go with the flow of traffic" and risk being the rare car that gets a speed infraction that day, do I wait until the the very last few yards to get in the left and take my exit, do I get on the left and go at a speed I'm more comfortable doing within a mile of my exit(speed limit + only 15). It's all nonsense and feels arbitrarily enforced based on the whims of the state troopers that week.
Typically the leftmost lane is meant to be the passing Lane. If you're in the left lane and getting passed on the right that means you should have moved to the right...
But in most circumstances, if you’re trying to find an opening to move right, that’s still an indication that you’ve been hanging out in the left lane for an inappropriate amount of time and/or misusing the lane.
Not always.
I'm often in the passing lane (passing a semi, for example) and someone else zooms up behind me and expects me to accelerate to their speed.
They get annoyed that I'm not passing fast enough, so they either ride on my bumper or they fall back and scoot 2-lanes to the right and then speed up to pass everyone (the semi and me).
To be clear: after I pass the semi (or whatever) in the center lane, I will move to the right, but I'm not going to speed up to the point where I consider it dangerous just to please the speed demon behind me.
There's almost an entirely separate ruleset for urban highways vs rural highways. Rural highways it's dead simple... stay right except while actively passing. Only 2 lanes to be in and not really many corner cases.
Urban highways still have the same general "stay to the right" but suddenly there are a lot of exceptions "except when passing, except when exiting left or taking the left fork soon, except when trying to get to a spot where you can even start to pass the block of semis in the right 2/3 lanes, except when you are trying to get out of the lane that force-exits in 1 mile". Inevitably someone will be going fast enough to be mad you spent 5 seconds in a lane that wasn't the rightmost open one but, unlike rural highways, it doesn't always mean you were actually in the wrong lane.
That's what the sign the parent post is referring to is trying to point out - if someone is passing you in the "slower" lane, you are not in the correct one.