You know what's "explicit"? The aftermath of an automobile collision with a human body. The f-bomb doesn't even belong on the same scale.
I don't understand why humans are such ridiculous prudes about all the wrong things, while in other contexts they are blissfully murdering each other—quite literally. This is why I stay off social media. I do not understand my own species, and they frighten me.
And god forbid you suggest that cars' maximum speeds should be set to 100. People come up with all sorts of fantasy scenarios in which they might need to go 110, all of which are certainly ridiculous
My favorite one is the "hospital rush" story. I encourage you to try driving 105 on a clear freeway in the middle of the day and see how safe you feel in your kia. Protip: your tires probably aren't rated for that speed!
Unrelated rant: I once saw a US traffic sign online that said "If drivers are passing you on your right, you're doing it wrong". I wish those signs were everywhere.
I get that leaving the left lane clear for passing is the convention, but is it actually optimal? If everyone stuck to this, then the left lane would be rarely used and we'd be underutilizing the available space, right?
Where I live, there are signs saying "keep right except to pass" but they're neither obeyed nor enforced afaict. And it's never really bothered me tbh (I'm usually chilling in the right lane).
On the two lane sections of I-5, among other busy trucking routes, you can encounter miles long convoys of trucks in the right lane. If you religiously stick to staying to the right, you and a whole lot of other traffic will be weaving between the trucks and changing lanes every minute or so. So nobody who's going 10mph faster than the trucks does that. If you actually did that, you'll likely get boxed out trying to get back into the left lane as soon as you come up on another truck -- you'll have a brief period where you're going 75 in the right lane, then you have to slow down to 60 to deal with a truck, then you go back to overtaking at 75, then get back in the right lane... rinse and repeat. What happens instead is that the people enraged by this will use the gap on the right to go 100mph past everyone who just wants to cruise at a steady speed past all of the trucks.
> I get that leaving the left lane clear for passing is the convention, but is it actually optimal? If everyone stuck to this, then the left lane would be rarely used and we'd be underutilizing the available space, right?
Right, it depends on traffic volume. There are situations where "keep right except to pass" obviously doesn't help - e.g. streets with regular left-hand turns and congested highways, most notably.
I got pulled over and given a warning when someone passed me to the right.
I told the officer I totally support the policy.
In my defense, I was overtaking other vehicles to the right and moving at the speed of the vehicle ahead of me, but as I was driving a large vehicle I was preserving a longer follow distance than the driver who passed me thought I needed...
Most of the time, the US drivers passing on the right in my region are speeding and driving erratically. I agree that slow drivers in the fast lane are dangerous. Driving in the slow lane like it's the fast lane isn't the solution.
I love that verbiage, because IMO it really gets to the crux of the issue: many drivers think that if they're going the speed limit, it's OK to park out in the left lane.
The problem with that is nearly everywhere in the US the average rate of speed on highways is about 5 miles over the speed limit, so if you're doing the limit you are going to be one of the slower cars driving.
It really is about cars passing you. If you're not passing you need to move over.
People think of (and are sometimes taught) that the left lane is “the fast lane”. If they are going a couple over the limit, they think they’ve earned the right to be there.
Moreover, if they are prone to road rage, telling them to move over is seen as an insult/disrespect towards that they need to get out of the “big tough guy lane” and can really set them off.
This is the law in Europe, passing on the inside is called 'undertaking' — in the UK if you get caught undertaking 4x in 3 years you lose your license!
It's a shock initially in the US but actually leads to a more relaxed kind of driving. US driving is more like going for a relaxed walk, in Europe it's more like running on a track.
Driving in Europe is like running on a track with a couple of assholes and a few normal people. Driving in the US is like running on a track with a couple of assholes and a lot of normal people.
The end result in the US is that on highways drivers will settle into social groups of normal people driving along with occasional disruptions from the assholes.
The UK has also now passed laws that criminalise hogging the middle or fast lanes on motorways (UK highways). Unfortunately it's not strongly enforced. It feels like a significant cause of congestion during peak hours.
In the US traffic laws are state-by-state. In most states, unlike most European countries, "undertaking" _is_ legal, but, additionally most states still have a "slower traffic must keep right" rule.
That's what the sign the parent post is referring to is trying to point out - if someone is passing you in the "slower" lane, you are not in the correct one.
Typically the leftmost lane is meant to be the passing Lane. If you're in the left lane and getting passed on the right that means you should have moved to the right...
> If you're in the left lane and getting passed on the right that means you should have moved to the right...
Not always.
I'm often in the passing lane (passing a semi, for example) and someone else zooms up behind me and expects me to accelerate to their speed.
They get annoyed that I'm not passing fast enough, so they either ride on my bumper or they fall back and scoot 2-lanes to the right and then speed up to pass everyone (the semi and me).
To be clear: after I pass the semi (or whatever) in the center lane, I will move to the right, but I'm not going to speed up to the point where I consider it dangerous just to please the speed demon behind me.
Or the worst of highway inventions: "exit left in 1 mile".
There's almost an entirely separate ruleset for urban highways vs rural highways. Rural highways it's dead simple... stay right except while actively passing. Only 2 lanes to be in and not really many corner cases.
Urban highways still have the same general "stay to the right" but suddenly there are a lot of exceptions "except when passing, except when exiting left or taking the left fork soon, except when trying to get to a spot where you can even start to pass the block of semis in the right 2/3 lanes, except when you are trying to get out of the lane that force exits in 1 mile". Inevitably someone will be going fast enough to be mad you spent 5 seconds in a lane that wasn't the rightmost open one but, unlike rural highways, it doesn't always mean you're in the wrong lane.
The correct thing to do is to turn on your turn signal and wait for a safe opportunity to move to the right.
But in most circumstances, if you’re trying to find an opening to move right, that’s still an indication that you’ve been hanging out in the left lane for an inappropriate amount of time and/or misusing the lane.
CDOT also encourages people to use more than 6 neurons while driving by posting "CAMP IN THE MOUNTAINS NOT THE LEFT LANE" on most interstates. Driving in CO is a _nightmare_.
In my state you can get pulled over for holding a cell-phone during driving. It looks like Colorado (the state in the article) is starting to enforce this in 2025. [1]
The new law isn't apt to be enforced as often as many might like. Emphasis added:
>How is this law enforced?
>In Colorado, mobile electronic devices, like cell phones, are not allowed while driving a vehicle without a hands-free accessory. Colorado’s hands-free law is a secondary offense, which means drivers will be pulled over for this law only if an officer witnesses an individual drive in a careless or imprudent manner while holding a device in their hands or pinning it to their ears. Some examples are a driver holding a cell phone to their ear while driving through a construction zone or a driver holding a phone in their hand and looking at it while traveling 75 mph on a highway.
The more common a swear word is the more likely it has been semantically bleached to the point assumptions like this seem (ironically) nonsensical. Few people saying "you bastard" actually give a damn whether one is born of wedlock or not these days (many not even realizing that's what it ever meant in the first place) they just know and use it as "a general swear word you can shout in frustration". Same for bitch, it's certainly possible to use it in the original context and it is still done but it's most often used in a way equally interchangeable with how one would typically use "bastard".
Common swear words like bitch become so semantically bleached context is needed to even decide if it's being used in a negative way at all, let alone with a gendered intent. E.g. "that's bitching" -> is something awesome or not? Is something "shit" or "the shit"? Is it "fucking amazing!" or "fucking 'amazing'"?
I think that if you simply call someone bitch in place of a name, it has become largely but not entirely degendered, but if you call someone "a bitch" it is still pretty gendered.
I don't understand why humans are such ridiculous prudes about all the wrong things, while in other contexts they are blissfully murdering each other—quite literally. This is why I stay off social media. I do not understand my own species, and they frighten me.
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