Driving slow in the fast lane

Speed kills and but slow and steady takes you home - Remember that.
 
Last drive across northern Italy a couple of years ago, we noticed a huge change in driving behavior on the Autostrada. The anything goes "wild west" attitude has been tamed quite a bit by a huge array of speed cameras, the most we saw anywhere in Europe.

Ahhh but the Autogrill, it's still an oasis, and it's spreading to other countries. Hubby feasted at one on the French-Spanish border, demolishing a heaping dish of paella.

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I usually get a few tickets in the mail or from the rental car company a couple months after I return. Yes, there are cameras everywhere now. Taking all the fun out of it.
 
I usually get a few tickets in the mail or from the rental car company a couple months after I return. Yes, there are cameras everywhere now. Taking all the fun out of it.
LOL, taking all the fun out of it for sure.
Our son couldn't believe it when a car rental company charged his card for a speed camera infraction in Switzerland.
We've avoided that fate so far, though on the last trip we expected a substantial cost in automated Norwegian camera toll charges to find us, which never did. We imagine it had to do with it being a factory lease program car through AutoEurope instead of a rental. It had this unusual red license plate also.
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I used to commute to New Orleans from Slidell and back every day. 70 miles total, almost all of it on the I-10. The fun started and ended crossing the Twin Spans where 4 or 5 lanes of traffic squoze down to two.

At first I was right in there battling with the best of them. It wasn't my car and it wasn't my gas, but it was my time. I'd get to work POed and I'd get home POed. Once I got rear-ended on the way home at the top of the High Rise over the Industrial Canal. Not much damage but its a government car so there is a whole production. Traffic snarled up and I had a bird's eye view of more POed people than I'd ever seen at one time.

After that I stopped the madness. I'd stay in one of non-gladiator lanes and go with the flow. If/when traffic got to stop and go I resolved to not change lanes unless there was a dead car in front of me.

My arrival times at work and home didn't change that much, if at all. And I wasn't POed.

Now my slow little rig is a bastion of peace. I leave myself plenty of time and poke along in the Fudd lanes, listening to podcasts.

The only exception is express lanes, which I will gladly pony up for and cruise.
 
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Every wrong way driver (& crash) I ever saw was in the passing lane. Back when I patrolled the freeway, I would invite motorists to drive on the surface streets when they were driving too slowly (like 25 mph) in any lane on the freeway. Impeding traffic is every bit as dangerous as excessive speed.
 
I know it's blasphemy to bad mouth truckers these days, but when I'm on the Interstate and an 18 wheeler going 55 and a 1/2 pulls out to pass one going 55mph, backing traffic up in both lanes, any warm fuzzies I might have for these guys fades quickly.
 
Hear hear, driving my vette I stay in the right lane and rarely move over. I can just feel the snickering going on in the other lanes, like "why have that car if you drive like a fuddy duddy?"

I just go on in life being oblivious to the "challengers", especially the obnoxious imports.
 
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IME, most people that drive Corvettes are cautious drivers. Corvettes are expensive. The few crashes involving Corvettes that I investigated were driven by people that didn't own them.
 
Hear hear, driving my vette I stay in the right lane and rarely move over. I can just feel the snickering going on in the other lanes, like "why have that car if you drive like a fuddy duddy?"

I just go on in life being oblivious to the "challengers", especially the obnoxious imports.

Me too. When I got my Vette in '71, I beat it like it owed me money. This days, Smart cars pass me, and I let them.
 
Hear hear, driving my vette I stay in the right lane and rarely move over. I can just feel the snickering going on in the other lanes, like "why have that car if you drive like a fuddy duddy?"

I just go on in life being oblivious to the "challengers", especially the obnoxious imports.

Fast driving is fun! But... not on the interstate. Find a track and let 'er go! I feel far more comfortable at insane speeds on a track than I do at the speed limit on the interstate. People on a track are predictable. On the interstate, not so much....
 
This days, Smart cars pass me, and I let them.

A Prius with a bunch of hippie bumper stickers passed me and my son in my Shelby Mustang GT 500. My son, who was 15 at the time, said "pull over." I asked if he was ok, and he said "I would rather walk than be passed by a Prius in a mustang showing Carol Shelby's name!" That was one of my prouder moments as a parent.

I do not consider myself one of the forum hardliners, but I will say this about slow-pokes in the left lane—especially those driving 25 mph. They need judical caning like they do in Indonesia! Cane a few of these **** pokes and they will learn to drive!
 
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I know it's blasphemy to bad mouth truckers these days, but when I'm on the Interstate and an 18 wheeler going 55 and a 1/2 pulls out to pass one going 55mph, backing traffic up in both lanes, any warm fuzzies I might have for these guys fades quickly.

The Germans have a colloquialism for that: They call it an "elephant race"...
 
Fast driving is fun! But... not on the interstate. Find a track and let 'er go! I feel far more comfortable at insane speeds on a track than I do at the speed limit on the interstate. People on a track are predictable. On the interstate, not so much....

That's all the more reason to drive right and pass left...
 
Speed kills...

SIR, THAT IS THE BIGGEST LIE EVER TOLD.

If speed kills every astronaut, every other person who has been to space, every race car driver, every person who has flown in an airplane, every person who has ever driven their car even 1mph over the speed limit would be dead.

SPEED DOES NOT KILL. Stopping to fast does indeed kill. Not every time but it only takes that one time to end your life.

I had the pleasure of confronting an officer in court when he used that line to try and convict me of going 15 mhp over the speed limit. Nailed him for perjury.
 
I used to commute to New Orleans from Slidell and back every day. 70 miles total, almost all of it on the I-10. The fun started and ended crossing the Twin Spans where 4 or 5 lanes of traffic squoze down to two.

At first I was right in there battling with the best of them. It wasn't my car and it wasn't my gas, but it was my time. I'd get to work POed and I'd get home POed. Once I got rear-ended on the way home at the top of the High Rise over the Industrial Canal. Not much damage but its a government car so there is a whole production. Traffic snarled up and I had a bird's eye view of more POed people than I'd ever seen at one time.

After that I stopped the madness. I'd stay in one of non-gladiator lanes and go with the flow. If/when traffic got to stop and go I resolved to not change lanes unless there was a dead car in front of me.

My arrival times at work and home didn't change that much, if at all. And I wasn't POed.

Now my slow little rig is a bastion of peace. I leave myself plenty of time and poke along in the Fudd lanes, listening to podcasts.

The only exception is express lanes, which I will gladly pony up for and cruise.

Good post. What you said works, it's safe, and your anxiety level remains normal or below. It's unfortunate that you'll never sell such worthwhile ideas to those who need them most.
 
A Prius with a bunch of hippie bumper stickers passed me and my son in my Shelby Mustang GT 500. My son, who was 15 at the time, said "pull over." I asked if he was ok, and he said "I would rather walk than be passed by a Prius in a mustang showing Carol Shelby's name!" That was one of my prouder moments as a parent.

There was a time I felt the same way, but as time passes, you realize there's nothing to prove any more. Example. Some years back, I was headed home from a show when I noticed a car bouncing thru traffic, trying to catch me. It was a young guy in a Pontiac Solstice, and he finally caught up at a traffic light. He was all hunched up over the wheel, looking at the light and back at me. When I caught his attention, I said, "You have no chance." I guess he figured I was right, because instead of nailing, (?), it, he turned when the light changed. Either way, I would've let him go. No sense proving the obvious.
 
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There was a time I felt the same way, but as time passes, you realize there's nothing to prove any more. Example. Some years back, I was headed home from a show when I noticed a car bouncing thru traffic, trying to catch me. It was a young guy in a Pontiac Solstice, and he finally caught up at a traffic light. He was all hunched up over the wheel, looking at the light and back at me. When I caught his attention, I said, "You have no chance." I guess he figured I was right, because instead of nailing, (?), it, he turned when the light changed. Either way, I would've let him go. No sense proving the obvious.

When those trolls pull alongside, I just have this vision in my head and creep along down the road.

 
on the way home from the range yesterday I was going 75mph on CR-675 in Parrish and was passed by a Tropicana truck full of oranges .

someone always wants to go faster than you.
 
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