If you drive in the middle lane, hogging it, when there is absolutely no need to - why?

[hell091727]

Please stop driving on the motorway and go re-read the Highway Code.

It is dangerous, lazy, and completely disrupts the flow of the traffic.

I have just driven 200 miles and the amount of drivers who just don’t know how to drive is astonishing. And the motorway wasn’t even busy!

Yes, you are a bad driver and thoughtless and ignorant.

The speed limit is 70mph.

@Middlelanehogger thank you. Much more eloquently put than I managed.

@EmmatheStageRat I’m sorry if this thread is touching a nerve for you. I have never hurt anyone and am not a terrible driver.

50% are selfish arses who think the law doesn’t apply to them.
The other 50% are lacking the confidence to drive properly on a motorway and therefore sit in the middle lane to avoid ‘weaving in and out of traffic’ (as I’ve seen overtaking referred to before).

Not sure which group is more dangerous to be honest.

Why? If you are in the 'slow' lane doing 70 why would you need to overtake someone in the middle lane, presumably also doing 70?

I never understand this either. If I'm in the driving lane, making normal progress (under the speed limit) with nothing ahead of me, why should it matter that there's an idiot sitting in the middle lane to my right?

Am I meant to overtake in the third lane, even when there isn't actually anything to undertake? The only risk might be that the MLH pulls back in to my lane without due care, but I can't be held responsible for another driver's lack of ability to use lanes safely on a motorway, or for their general lack of safe driving skills.

An incompetent MLH is likely to cause an accident regardless of the other traffic on the road: if they were able and willing to drive safely and bear in mind the fact that they aren't the only vehicle using the motorway, they wouldn't be sitting oblivious in the middle lane in the first place.

What happened to the so called fines middle lane drivers were going to be getting?

Another one, on a dual carriage way and one lorry decides to overtake another lorry both driving at 60mph. Infuriating.

Because I want to drive at 70 not 55 in the left and 90 in the right.

Why's that?

To all the people in this thread who are so angry about anyone being in the middle lane ever. Do you honestly think highways should be full of people weaving in and out of lane 1 between every lorry... And that this leads to safer results than people generally staying in a lane travelling at the same speed as them?!

If you're angry at people who don't indicate or text and drive or drive way under the speed limit or don't give way to allow other cars in front of them... be angry at that because that's poor driving. None of those things are exclusive to the middle lane though...

@Burnamer till your self-confessed terrible driving kills someone else’s kid. I’m such a snowflake for worrying that my lovely children are in my car and sharing the roads with idiots like you. I’ll just get over myself shall I? 🙄

I know I'll get flamed for this.

But I don't think the rule makes any sense.

When I'm on the slip road trying to join the motorway, I'm actually bloody glad if everyone except the lorries is in the middle lane. I don't know how anyone would actually be able to join the motorway if everyone stuck to the left hand lane except when overtaking. Or what the point of there being more than two lanes would be.

i hope you all get points and a fine-it might make sense to you whatever that means but its dangerous

It slows traffic you will not be travelling at a steady 70 - it never happens because you are slowing the motorway down.

There will be gaps and yes if there are large gaps you should always pull across.

thats fine to move to the middle lan then move back for joining traffic

@EmmatheStageRat I was trying to be nice. You’ve made several comments about children being killed so I thought you might experienced something awful connected with bad drivers. I thought the thread may have upset you and I was trying to be understanding.

Some people live too far away from a motorway to practice and test on it which is why it's not part of the test i believe.

I mentioned this in front my mother in law once and she was genuinely surprised and said she had been taught to stay in the middle lane as it was safest. I was pretty baffled as I always feel least safe in the middle lane as I have to be aware of what traffic is doing on both sides of me.

I think she thought the inside lane is really for lorries etc, and the then the middle and outside lanes for cars, so in her head she's on a two lane road for cars if that makes sense.

We were pretty strident she shouldn't but I don't know of she still drives this way or not. It was interesting though as I always saw middle lane hoggers as oblivious idiots and didn't consider it might be purposeful for Reasons.

There will be gaps and yes if there are large gaps you should always pull across.

I think there will always be disagreement on how big that gap should be to make it worth pulling in. And if you pull across to smaller gaps than someone else, you might think they're thoughtlessly hogging the middle lane, but really they've just decided on a slightly bigger gap than you as the benchmark for moving back over. Similarly someone who moves into smaller gaps than you may view you as a bad driver hogging the middle lane.

I don’t always but there’s a road near me where I always just stick to the middle-there’s loads of entry points with slip roads full of people trying to get on, plus the inside lane keeps turning into exit ramps for places I don’t want to go, so between moving across to make way for people and making sure you don’t exit when you don’t want it really doesn’t feel worth it to keep moving back and forth.

Changing lanes is one of the riskier things you can do on a motorway though. Why have a rule which forces people to change lanes more often than they need to? I'd much rather drive on a road where drivers have, by tacit agreement, created a slow lane, a medium lane and a fast lane, than one where people are constantly weaving in and out of the left hand lane and people joining the road need to rely on the kindness of those in the left hand lane to move over and let them in.

No flames. What should happen is that if you are joining the motorway and someone approaching sees you coming down the slip road, they will judge their speed and yours, and either

• assess that they will pass before you get there and there is room behind them, and maintain their speed to allow you to slot in behind,
• assess that they will not pass before you get there, but that they can safely reduce speed slightly to allow you to slot in in front, or
• indicate and move out to the middle lane to allow you in. Which can only happen if the middle lane isn't full of middle-lane-hoggers.

But in all seriousness it's dangerous. My experience is they go 50mph in the lane meaning anyone coming up has to go across 2 lanes behind them and then back over 2 lanes. That increases the chance of accidents.

Highway Code 268 suggest not to weave in and out of traffic,

Do not overtake on the left or move to a lane on your left to overtake. In congested conditions, where adjacent lanes of traffic are moving at similar speeds, traffic in left-hand lanes may sometimes be moving faster than traffic to the right. In these conditions you may keep up with the traffic in your lane even if this means passing traffic in the lane to your right. Do not weave in and out of lanes to overtake.

This is telling you not to undertake!! It's not saying you can't go across lanes in order to overtake. In fact it's tacitly telling you to do this so as to not undertake on the left.

Super well said. Totally agree. I personally am very happy to move into the inside lane in principle (and I do, if there's not much traffic) but in practice if I'm doing 70 and it's reasonably busy it just isn't worth it!

It's ridiculous to expect everyone to stay in the inside lane on a 3-lane highway. I agree that keeping the rightmost lane relatively free is sensible but not all crowding up in one lane and popping in and out on principle.

I don't think some of the MLHs really get what we're talking about; nor do they appear to understand the Highway Code.

You aren't expected to keep darting in and out of the middle lane when there is a continuous stream of slow traffic in the left lane. Just as you would overtake one slow vehicle in the left lane, if there is a line of 30 slow vehicles in the left lane, you can freely overtake them all by staying in the middle lane for a little while, until you've passed them all.

We're talking about people who will stay permanently in the middle lane, with the lane to the left of them completely empty all/the vast majority of the time. There's nothing wrong at all with using the middle lane when you are correctly doing so - when overtaking a slow vehicle(s), even if you do end up needing to use it for quite some distance - that's exactly what it's for.

It's just that driving continually in the middle lane, with nothing to the left of you, is like the motoring equivalent of booking a table in a very popular restaurant that you have no intention of going to: you're just selfishly taking away opportunities from those who need them for the sake of it, for no actual gain to yourself.