Why YSK: Your signals alert other drivers as to what you’re doing; a signal bulb costs a few bucks and is usually a quick and easy repair to do yourself (consult YouTube); and any place that regulates motor vehicles probably requires you to have working turn signals. So knowing when and how to replace a burned out signal bulb can save you an interaction with law enforcement.
Adding: You can diagnose which bulb is out by turning on your hazard lights and checking all four corners of your car. It’ll be the one not flashing.
This is also probably a good time to check your brake lights. Put something heavy on the pedal or have a friend hold it down and check that all three brake lights illuminate. Replacing a burned out brake light is also usually pretty cheap, quick, and easy.
I miss having a car that didn’t have timed pulses, like where if you tap it once you always get 3 blinks. I used to love overtaking people sat in the middle lane and then mash-tapping my inside indicator, as if to say “RRRAAHHH YOU SHOULD MOVE OVER!!” and then I would latch it on and blink normally while I pulled to the inside clear lane. Half the time, people understood what I was getting at and moved over themselves.
The other move on middle lane hoggers was to overtake them, move to the inside lane, slow down so they pass you and then move out and overtake them again. The game was to count how many times you could do this before they moved over. I never got a very high score.
You are going out of your way to mess around with someone at speed in a public motorway. Is it your responsibility to teach every driver? No. Your actions are adding higher risk as you are changing lanes, speeding up, slowing down around a vehicle that is staying in their lane. The justification you are using is you are better than them, while you’re are creating more risk than they are. So you might be annoyed at someone in the middle of 3 lanes of travel, an adult would not increase risk for the sole benefit of their ego.
You’re the asshole
I mean, you just described driving like an asshole, what more do you want?
You’re kind of an a*hole for doing the latter. But I get it. Middle lane hoggers are amongst the worst. And I have no good solution to offer.
I’d agree that it’s kind of asshole-ish, but not full blown asshole. However, it’s perfectly legitimate to do, meanwhile sitting in the middle lane is explicitly illegal in most cases. I did find that it was better to slow down with the brakes, if only lightly to show the lights, as just taking your foot off the throttle was more likely to confuse. Also, I was sure to make it two separate lane change maneuvers with clear space in front of them, not just sweeping across two lanes across someone’s nose.
Also, slowing down so that they pass you inevitably hurts you, as you end up accelerating more than necessary and reducing your fuel economy. Tbh, I don’t do it that often, precisely for that reason.
Frankly, I wish beginner driving instructors would teach what I learned in advanced driver training:
If you’re not overtaking something within 10 seconds, you should move to the inside lane.
I ended up working to 7 seconds, as I found 10 seconds was sometimes hard to judge at distance, and by the time I hummed over it I was well within the bounds of staying out. Meanwhile, if you ever drive in the Netherlands you’ll find people cutting your nose off all over the place - they pull in right away.
it’s perfectly legitimate to do
Yeah, it’s illegal here in Germany. It’s likely considered a form of coercion and two wrongs don’t make a right. And it’s dangerous.
Same thing to get super close to other cars on the left lane, flash your lights and have your indicators signalling to the left constantly. It’s kind of a dick move. And bad accidents have happened because of this. But it happens every day on the streets.
I don’t participate in that behaviour. I can’t be angry at the world the whole time. And there are soo many bad drivers out there. It’ll take you ten minutes and the next person pulls to the left lane without having a look into the mirrors. Or can’t drive straight and on the right lane like they’re supposed to do. And I don’t think it does anything to lecture those middle-lane hoggers. In my experience they’re mostly way past learning anything.
Honestly the best solution, as with most traffic annoyances, is just to quietly curse at them as you go about your day and let the police deal with enforcing the laws.
When trying to teach someone a lesson, you might get the occasional person who was absent-mindedly being annoying, but most people are just going to come away from the interaction thinking YOU are the asshole. Not to mention the person who is being an asshole on purpose looking for confrontation…
The best option would be for ongoing training for driving.
Police don’t enforce the laws. Police are quite happy to punish people for speeding, because it’s an easy charge to convict - it’s much harder to convict someone with the crime of sitting in the middle lane. So they don’t bother.
In my experience in the UK, most drivers actually respond to an interaction like I’ve described. When I flashed the indicator, then moved over to the inside lane, many drivers followed and moved into the inside lane. When I’ve looped around them, I’ve never been able to complete that many loops, because the other driver has realised what I’m doing and moved into the inside lane.
Communication =/= confrontation. When driving, we are very limited in our communication - but that doesn’t mean there is no way to communicate.
I think you summed it up pretty well. It’s a bit easier said then done to let go of your rage… But in my experience it’s exactly like you said. I’ve kinda accepted that like 40% of people just can’t drive. Any you just got to stay away from them and decide if you want to care. You can’t change anything about it and the next a*hole or bad driver is already waiting for you anyways…
