German vs. American Drivers - A Trip Report and Call to Arms

[Howard Treesong]

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I spent last week in Germany for work. I stayed in a city and commuted to a test facility out in the suburbs (well, more like a village) via the autobahn every day. German highway drivers in general are aggressive, aware, and concise in their driving patterns. People drive in the right lane until there is someone in front of them going slower, at which point they move into the left lane, pass the appropriate vehicle(s), and move back into the right lane. When they commit to passing, they pass - no driving ever-so-slightly faster than the car you are passing and taking a full 5 minutes to complete the pass - they just commit and do it. If, while they are passing, a faster vehicle happens up behind them while they are passing multiple vehicles, they move back to the right into the slower traffic at the first opportunity to allow the faster vehicle(s) to pass, and then move back to the left to continue their own passing. The majority of traffic is in the rightmost lane, and the amount of vehicles per lane decreases from right to left. To be fair, there are people who stick to the left lane, but those are generally the people driving obscenely fast (no speed limit on most sections of the autobahn) and passing everyone anyway. If by chance someone faster came up behind them, they would surely move as well. In an entire week of driving, I did not see a single driver pass somebody on the right (though I did see one attempt promptly shut down by the passee). It’s a great system, and consistently made for a pleasant, enjoyable commute where I could drive whatever speed I was comfortable with without worrying about anyone caring or slowing me down.

Upon returning home, I got on the Massachusetts Turnpike to visit my father for father’s day, and 25 minutes later came to a frustrating conclusion: American drivers are unbelievably stupid. They cram the left lane completely full and refuse to pull to the right for anyone. If someone faster comes up behind them, most people blissfully ignore any opportunity to pull over and let them by. This of course forces faster drivers to resort to passing on the right and weaving, which in turn results in “policing” by the originally offending vehicles who feel they are going fast enough and deserve to be in the left lane, and now will go to great lengths not to let you back in. Accordingly, the traffic pattern is completely backwards: pretty much nobody stays in the right lane, there are a bunch of cars cruising relatively slowly in the middle lane, and the left lane is jammed full bumper-to-bumper with cars barely moving faster than the middle lane. It’s like people think “I’m not driving in the right lane, that’s for slow cars. No you idiots – the right lanes are for cruising. The lane(s) you are in are for passing. I was at my wit’s end by the time I finished my ~30 mile ride, and couldn’t stop thinking about it.

So yeah this is basically a rant, and I know this all seems obvious, but when you drive on a highway system that actually works as intended and moves traffic along in a consistent manner, and everyone participating understands and employs the rules of the road, it really makes you wonder why Americans are so challenged by what should be an intuitively-obvious system.

So why do Americans drive like idiots? And how do we fix it? Or is it just a Massachusetts thing? Is it better in other parts of the country?

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Nice job, OP. I was already attuned to this issue, but you've now sensitized me to it, sort of like a bee sting allergy. Thus, I was driving back from a doctor's appointment this morning and some numbnuts in the left lane was doing just as you say. So I gave him the lights and the tailgate, but he totally ignored me. It took 6 miles until the blockage got unclogged, and by that time, there were at least twenty-five cars backed up behind me. I'm sure my heart rate by this time was 125+.

When I finally passed him on the right, I looked over expecting to see a sanctimonious idiot like the poster above who suggested it's correct to do this as a way of enforcing speed limits -- but no, I saw an old guy who absolutely had zero clue what he was doing. I don't think he even ever saw my brights.

That calmed me down in a hurry. Some things, you just can't fix.

[Berge20]

I'd be curious to know the amount of truck traffic (goods movement semis) in Germany vs. the US.

[Slow Play Ray]

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I'd be curious to know the amount of truck traffic (goods movement semis) in Germany vs. the US.

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tons, seems like the right-most lane is 50-75% semis at any given time. they are also not allowed on the road on sundays at all.

[ohead]

I love our system here in europe and I can't help to laugh out loud at By-Tor's lame attacks on it because U SAID ALL AMERICANS SUCK AT DRIVING HURRR DAMN YOU ANTI-AMERICAN SCUM.

I would throw a fit if people drove a car like you explained about how it works in the US.

[CORed]

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What I hate worse than people going under the speed limit is people that don't know how to merge. Drive through Iowa. Every single driver merges onto I-35 at 35-45MPH.

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QFT

Same problem in Colorado. What is so difficult to grasp about the concept that it's much easier and safer to merge if you match your speed with the traffic that you are merging into? I see so many people who will just sort of drift from the on ramp into the traffic lane 15-20 mph slower than the speed the traffic is moving and force everyone behind them to slow down until they realize they are on a freeway, find that gas pedal and get up to speed a half mile after they entered the freeway. Every once in awhile one of these bozos fails to find an opening, drives to the end of the acceleration lane and stops. Fortunately this last is pretty rare, but it is one thing guaranteed to induce road rage in me.

[Slow Play Ray]

yeah, a woman in front of me yesterday jacked on her brakes at the end of the on ramp, even though there is a dedicated merging lane for ~1/4 mile after the ramp. i almost plowed right into her, i was sooooooo pissed.

i am an angry driver. i admit it.

[CORed]

I really think a lot of it is a matter of traffic volume. In Colorado, for instance, many of the rural interstates get really overloaded at peak driving times, and the four lanes are really not adequate to handle the volume. Colorado recently passed a law requiring that the left lane be used only for passing, and has posted some signs to that effect. The trouble is, on I-70 or I-25 on a weekend, there is usually a solid stream of cars going the speed limit or a little slower in the right lane, and a solid stream of cars going speed limit + 10 in the left lane, plus a few aggressive idiots in the left lane who think that "use the left lane only for passing" means "All 5000 cars ahead of me going slower than I want to go (but, for the most part, passing slower traffic and going just as fast as the rest of the left-lane stream) should clear a path for me because I'm special". On I-70 you can throw in steep grades, which means semis are going really slow, uphill and down (and the occasional semi in the left lane going 45, passing the semi in the right lane going 44), and it gets really interesting. Throw in an accident or two, or some bad weather, and the whole thing turns into a parking lot.

[KotOD]

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Anyone who disagrees with By-Tor obviously has not spent a significant amount of time driving in California. There are huge stretches of freeways where there's an exit every half mile, and the onramps are usually full of cars so you have to merge into the middle lane to let them in. Do you really think people should merge into the middle lane and back again once a minute or so? That's just retarded.

As for traffic on rural interstates, I grew up in northern Indiana and I thought it was fine. Haven't driven on the highways in other states enough to know whether it's any different.

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Traffic would still be much smoother if people stayed in the middle lane/right lane as their normal lane and used the left lane as a passing lane. As it is now, you have the middle lane being the 'slow lane', and people passing on either side of it - and sometimes the left lane slows down 'cause some retard doesn't know it's a passing lane.

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ummmmm....






...no.

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You know how that jam started? Some idiot didn't get out of the lane. Or some other idiot rode his breaks when all he had to do was let off of the gas.

So they are still idiots.

[Erik W]

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except of course when somebody needed to get on or off the freeway and there was nothing but a cluster [censored] of cars in the way with 2 open lanes to the left of them.

other then that "minor detail", you are probably right.


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Well, in Sweden when I run the right lane and someone is getting on we just move over, works fine.

By the way German and Swedish and other nordic countries is the same when it comes to driving. France and south is another story.

[Erik W]