When you're on the highway, you only exit by turning right, so it would make sense that the fast/passing lane is on the left. When you're on a two lane road in the city, you will turn left just as much as you turn right, so no matter what speed you choose to drive there is just as much a chance that you will be turning either direction. So in my opinion, making the left lane the fast lane would just cause more problems/accidents for both fast and slow drivers.
Great input Brad I see your point. My frustration comes from when the roads aren't busy at all and you have that "Sunday Driver" in the left lane right next to the car in the right. Enabling you to pass. I'll take a chill pill then if it will cut down on accidents. Thanks again. Share the poll with your friends!!
Something that you might not have considered: As you gain experience over the years driving, you will experience incidents where people pull out of driveways on city streets without warning, sometimes with their visibility blocked by obstacles, and sometimes you will have pedestrians step off of the curb into traffic, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes completely oblivious to the oncoming traffic. Once it happens to you a few times, you become more sensitive to the possibility.
Combine that with a little age, and you get a problem. When you are young, your vision is sharp, your reaction times are fast, your attention span is short, but your attention focus is usually stronger where you can pay attention to intense driving for short times, and you tend to view driving as being more like a video game, you get some mental pleasure out of the sensory inputs and interaction with the street. Although at 17 you are probably dangerous because you don't know what to react to and aren't really in tune with the car yet, by the time you've been driving six to ten years, and reach your mid twenties, you're sharp at it and can probably safely drive faster than normal, even on a potentially congested street, despite what the cops and municipal judges say.
However, as you age, your vision goes, you get a longer attention span, but you are less intense about it, you don't view driving as much as a pleasure and more of a drudge and aren't paying as close attention, relying instead on decades of repetitive driving experience, and although you are more likely to react to things that happen, your reaction times are slower, and you've had several morons pull in front of you, with the shortest available reaction times being when somebody pulls in front of you from the right, such as from a driveway you didn't know was there from behind a bush, a parked car, a road sign, traffic light signal box, etc.
Studies show that your reaction times and attention intensity begins to deteriorate in your late twenties into your thirties, but you usually don't notice it until you get into your forties, and not even on a concious level until your late forties or fifties. By the time you are in your late fifties or sixites, you are driving with your head up your ass at a leisurely pace because driving is a bit of a drag. By the time you are in your seventies, you don't really have to be anywhere very quick, you don't give a shit about who bitches (and are sometimes entertained by the attention you get when you are bitched at), and you are conciously aware of the very real possibility that some 17 year old moron on a bike with a fresh piece of plastic from the Dept of Revenue is gonna dart out right in front of you, and you aren't even going to know it until you've plowed over them and backed over them a couple of times.
That's when you plant yourself squarely in the left lane, set the cruise control on 28 mph, and don't give a rat's ass about all the twenty-somethings trying to get to work. And just for entertainment, you leave a right blinker on at random intervals, just to screw with the heads of anybody thinking of zipping by on the right.
When you're on the highway, you only exit by turning right, so it would make sense that the fast/passing lane is on the left. When you're on a two lane road in the city, you will turn left just as much as you turn right, so no matter what speed you choose to drive there is just as much a chance that you will be turning either direction. So in my opinion, making the left lane the fast lane would just cause more problems/accidents for both fast and slow drivers.
ReplyDeleteGreat input Brad I see your point. My frustration comes from when the roads aren't busy at all and you have that "Sunday Driver" in the left lane right next to the car in the right. Enabling you to pass. I'll take a chill pill then if it will cut down on accidents. Thanks again. Share the poll with your friends!!
ReplyDeleteSomething that you might not have considered: As you gain experience over the years driving, you will experience incidents where people pull out of driveways on city streets without warning, sometimes with their visibility blocked by obstacles, and sometimes you will have pedestrians step off of the curb into traffic, sometimes unintentionally, sometimes completely oblivious to the oncoming traffic. Once it happens to you a few times, you become more sensitive to the possibility.
ReplyDeleteCombine that with a little age, and you get a problem. When you are young, your vision is sharp, your reaction times are fast, your attention span is short, but your attention focus is usually stronger where you can pay attention to intense driving for short times, and you tend to view driving as being more like a video game, you get some mental pleasure out of the sensory inputs and interaction with the street. Although at 17 you are probably dangerous because you don't know what to react to and aren't really in tune with the car yet, by the time you've been driving six to ten years, and reach your mid twenties, you're sharp at it and can probably safely drive faster than normal, even on a potentially congested street, despite what the cops and municipal judges say.
However, as you age, your vision goes, you get a longer attention span, but you are less intense about it, you don't view driving as much as a pleasure and more of a drudge and aren't paying as close attention, relying instead on decades of repetitive driving experience, and although you are more likely to react to things that happen, your reaction times are slower, and you've had several morons pull in front of you, with the shortest available reaction times being when somebody pulls in front of you from the right, such as from a driveway you didn't know was there from behind a bush, a parked car, a road sign, traffic light signal box, etc.
Studies show that your reaction times and attention intensity begins to deteriorate in your late twenties into your thirties, but you usually don't notice it until you get into your forties, and not even on a concious level until your late forties or fifties. By the time you are in your late fifties or sixites, you are driving with your head up your ass at a leisurely pace because driving is a bit of a drag. By the time you are in your seventies, you don't really have to be anywhere very quick, you don't give a shit about who bitches (and are sometimes entertained by the attention you get when you are bitched at), and you are conciously aware of the very real possibility that some 17 year old moron on a bike with a fresh piece of plastic from the Dept of Revenue is gonna dart out right in front of you, and you aren't even going to know it until you've plowed over them and backed over them a couple of times.
That's when you plant yourself squarely in the left lane, set the cruise control on 28 mph, and don't give a rat's ass about all the twenty-somethings trying to get to work. And just for entertainment, you leave a right blinker on at random intervals, just to screw with the heads of anybody thinking of zipping by on the right.