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<rant> My biggest complaint with driving on highways in the US is that people generally tend to arrange themselves in a checkerboard pattern, taking up all the
by optymizer 7y ago
<rant> My biggest complaint with driving on highways in the US is that people generally tend to arrange themselves in a checkerboard pattern, taking up all the lanes, despite all the signs that say that the left lane is for passing. I think it's because everyone wants their own lane, so they can cruise. It's not a case of 'a few bad apples'. Anecdotally, about 1/3 of the cars actually let you pass, the others don't give a rat's ass, slowing down the traffic for no reason.
Speaking of cruising, my second complaint is how most don't use cruise control. It's painfully obvious, because the other cars slow down significantly when going up the hill and accelerate downhill. I see the same cars passing me, downhill, then ending up behind me uphill. It's so annoyingly unnecessary. If your car doesn't have adaptive CC, that means you have to turn on/off the CC frequently. The traffic ends up stretching and compressing like a rubber band. It doesn't have to be that bad - just use cruise control.
To contrast this experience, I had the pleasure of driving in Portugal (from Porto to Sagres). They have by far the most respectful drivers I've ever seen anywhere (and I drove in Western and Eastern Europe, Middle East and North America). Good job Portugal, the rest of the world's drivers could learn a thing or two from you.
</rant>
- timerol 7y agoI agree with you that Americans don't know how to use lanes, but I want to push back on the cruise control comment. Many cars have cruise control set differently, and "keep the speedometer at exactly X" is not the algorithm generally in play. I was once part of a caravan with a sedan, pickup truck, and 15 passenger van where we all yelled at each other for not using cruise control until we realized that we all were using cruise control the whole time, but needed to adjust it to not interfere with each other on hilly roads. If you want the best highway fuel efficiency, programming a cruise control to slow down uphill and go a bit faster downhill is the right way to go. How much faster or slower depends on the engine and current weight of the automobile, which is why the three examples were so wildly different.
- leetcrew 7y agoon very hilly roads, I like to hit the crest of the hill at least 10 mph below my target speed so I don't have to ride the brakes all the way down. imo, this is fine as long as you don't do it in the left lane. my car has a standard transmission so cruise control isn't super useful in this situation anyway, as I tend to change gears a lot.
- jccalhoun 7y agoI have never owned a car with cruise control.
- optymizer 7y agoIt's a pretty neat feature imo. Not sure if you mean that you specifically didn't want cruise control in your cars, or just happen to be driving cars without it, but my 2000 Toyota Corolla had it, and that's a 20 year old model at this point.