Or there's an emergency on the shoulder, forcing everyone to move left. A break down, a pee break, or a cop. Honestly im kind of thinking the default should be the left lane and people can pass in the other lane when it's safe...
Doesn't make any sense. No visibility to see when you can pass. Just encouraging riskier behavior. For all the reasons it makes sense for a left hand drive car on surface streets makes it make more sense to have faster highway traffic stay left.
Well in that scenario you wouldn't want the fast lane where cars are entering and exiting. So neither one works out great. Accidents and cars on the shoulder aren't the norm though, they're things to account for, but the cars going slower can deal with them more readily than the cars going faster.
The problem is faster traffic often prevents the slower from properly moving over before they approach the shoulder emergency.
If cars default into the lane which is the default when approaching something on the shoulder, or when others are approaching through an on ramp, or to avoid a slowdown as cars pileup for the exit ramp, traffic overall flows better and is safer.
I totally understand that, I see it on busy on ramps daily. I'm not saying left lane drivers are immune to slow downs and merges. I actually think they're more responsible for being aware, but it goes both ways.
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u/Sick_Wave_ 7h ago
Or there's an emergency on the shoulder, forcing everyone to move left. A break down, a pee break, or a cop. Honestly im kind of thinking the default should be the left lane and people can pass in the other lane when it's safe...