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Comment by tormeh | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I think Myth Busters did an episode on this. It saves surprisingly little time.

The thrill of weaving through traffic vs the tedium of being the traffic might be the real incentive, whether the driver is consciously aware of that or not.

Its a facto, but I think people also do think it makes more a difference than it does.

One thing I have noticed from using satnav is that even with a mostly motorway journey the difference between driving fast and driving at a more leisurely pace is never more than a minute or two per hour compared to the predicted time.

I knew it from seeing how often I later caught up with someone driving very aggressively, but quantifying it made me realise just how consistent the small difference is.

I'm not sure this is true. In Atlanta, on a very busy two-lane city-street commute into work, I follow traffic laws scrupulously, and have excellent driving skills, but I take every advantage I can that's not illegal or antisocial -- e.g., I always pass people going slower than me, preemptively change lanes to avoid buses and cars I can tell are slow or turning, take small shortcuts that add many more turns to the trip -- which means lots of lane changes, etc. My wife, on the exact same route and time, does not do any of this; she just follows the car in front of her until she arrives. My driving shaves a solid 10+ minutes off of her 40-minute commute this way. That's significant (>25%), and adds up to 20 minutes more time at home with my kids, etc.

And fwiw, I abhor illegal and antisocial driving and wish there were much more enforcement of traffic laws. And where it's a necessary cost, I'd be happy to have a longer commute if we were all safer for it.

I think congestion pricing is probably a net win, and the lesser evil right now, but tolls are so regressive I wish we could do better by making public transport not suck.

> The thrill

I think it's more of the self-deception that they're more important than others and that they're meaningfully getting ahead of others. This is a major issue in American culture where it's not just about doing great, but about doing "better" than others (competitive in areas it's pointless to be competitive about)

You can think of it as basic math. If the speed limit is 60 and you go 70, across a 10 mile drive you save at most 2 minutes... and only if everything is perfect. I stopped driving so fast once I realized that leaving a touch early was the dominant factor.

I just drive normal and stick to the right unless I'm passing and try to maintain a good speed the whole time - no breaking and reaccelerating. I often see the people weaving and then pass them 5 minutes later because they tried to pass on the right and got stuck behind a semi. Ha.

Idiots that try to pass on the right should get their driver's license revoked immediately.

It’s legal to pass on the right here in MN. States should enforce left lane for passing only, but they don’t. This creates a situation where the left lane has effectively become the right lane and thus you can use the right to pass instead.

E: it is not legal to pass on the right in MN, unless you’re on a multi-lane road; which is basically all major arteries and thus makes this law unenforceable for all intents and purposes.

It generally isn’t even possible or useful to pass on the right if people follow the traffic laws of keeping right unless passing. It becomes necessary only when people are illegally hanging out in the left lanes going slower than the normal flow of traffic.

If you're getting passed on the right, you're doing it wrong.

I don't know why you assume this is about me? Participating in traffic is better if it's predictable, people passing on the right break that assumption.

Not really, it can save serious time if done properly and carefully in a consistent way on a long distance drive. Driving the length of California on I5, you can easily get stuck behind side-by-side slow traffic and spend the entire drive averaging about 60-65mph. Or you can aggressively cut through this isolated 'island' of slowness, and average 80-85mph. Over the ~400 miles from SF area to SoCal, this saves about 1.5 hours each way.

I used to have to do this round trip commute, and could consistently save ~3 hours per week of time by driving more aggressively, and I never got a ticket driving like this doing the commute weekly for years.

I do however try to be as courteous and safe as possible, and would time my lane changes to maintain safe following distances and not actually cut people off. If people would stay right except while passing like they're supposed to, this wouldn't be needed.

Correct.

Whoever downvoted your comment has either never driven this stretch of the 5 or they are the reason it is so bad.

It’s the idiots in cars who insist on doing exactly 65 in the left lane next to a semi that cause the problem. Get past just one idiot holding back hundreds of cars and you will find miles of completely open road.

Its all of those rolling hills where you are going up and down over and over. People don't pay attention and let their car slow down up hills, then let their cars roll up to 90 going back down the other side. Do it over and over and you get the whole centepede effect, except cars far enough back have to practically stop.

Is it surprising though?

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