I notice a sadly common phenomena where the outside lane on two or three lane carriageways becomes clogged by ridiculously close nose to tail traffic. Brake lights flash on and off like indicators.
Yes. Last month I was driving down the M5 and I saw something I have never seen before. The outside lane was full of cars nose to tail as far as I could see and there wasnt a single vehicle, not even one, in sight in the inside two lanes.
Maybe our british queuing instinct had triumphed - we feared than undertaking would be seen as queue jumping maybe.
Here in North America, we have solved the problem of too slow driving with state and Federal laws. It's legal on divided highways to pass in the right lanes if the left lanes are blocked. Similarly, on 2 lane roads, state laws require you to pull over at the first opportunity and let traffic pass you if more than 3 or 4 vehicles are behind.
It seems to work well, with minimum congestion on the open road. Why these policies haven't been implemented in UK is beyond me.
Its odd really. We arent allowed to undertake or to hog the middle or outside lanes. But there are no traffic police to enforce these regulations. Why then do we mostly not undertake but we do lane hog?
The real issue is that our roads are far too congested. Blame immigration and JIT manufacture, for its not like the railways are under utilised.
No. The big change since the 60s when we moved from reasonably empty roads to full ones has been that all strata of society and both sexes now have cars. In my youth, blue collar factory workers didnt have cars and whats more mostly lived within walking distance of their place of work. Few women had driving licences and most stayed at home anyway. My mother had three brothers, all skilled labour. None of them had a car in their family. All their multiple offspring and grandchildren have cars now.
