It's called the PASSING lane......

I'm not sure if I've blogged about this before, but it's one of my pet peeves, so I'll talk about it regardless of whether I have before.

Is there a greater demonstration of what is wrong in this world than people who drive in the passing lane of a highway and are oblivious to all that is going on around them?


Case #1:

I'm driving on a 4 lane divided highway where the speed limit is 55 MPH. There is a van in the right hand lane. Directly to the left of the van is a car. The lady is talking on the phone, smoking, and has two large dogs galloping around her back seat. The van in the right lane is going the speed limit and the lady in the car is going..........the speed limit.

Not just for a moment, but she drove the same speed as the van in the left lane for over 10 miles! Meanwhile, no less than 15-20 cars are piling up behind this 'rolling roadblock'. You could see the anger just in the way some of these people were weaving to the shoulder to see why the traffic was slow and in the way they were darting back and forth between lanes. They were obviously hoping to 'jockey' their way to the front of the pack.

After some time, the van on the left realized the lady wasn't going to correct the issue. He moved up a bit in the right lane to allow room for people to pass her on the right. This made it even worse as people were flying by on the right and then angrily cutting her off and honking the horn. It was just absolute chaos.


Case #2:

I was on a 6 lane divided highway. There was no one in the right two lanes, yet a van for a basement repair company was driving a couple of MPH over the speed limit in the left lane. He was obviously totally oblivious to the fact that there was no one on his right and that the law actually states you're not supposed to use that lane for anything more than passing.

It wasn't that big of an issue to me overall because I had two wide open lanes on the right to pass him, but what possesses people to drive in that left lane like they own it? Even if we assume that he's trying to avoid any conflict with merging traffic on the exits, that still doesn't explain why he wasn't in the middle lane where merging traffic is not an issue.

Also, note to business owners in the KC area. If I see one of your business vehicles driving in the left-lane with a clearly visable business name on the vehicle, you can be sure that I will put that business name in my mental Rolodex and will never use your business for anything. If you (or one of your employees) is dumb enough to drive along in the left lane without moving over after passing other cars, you're likely not smart enough to do your job well. Thanks for making my decision to select a company to do business with that much easier.