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!

I had to drive home on a motorway using my spare tyre, one of those thin get you home tyres. I had to stay in the slow lane as you shouldn’t drive over 50 with the thin spares. I still got hooted at, mainly by lorry drivers for driving slowly and not changing lane at all.
Personally I find many drivers far too impatient.
Advanced driving training emphasises that a good driver anticipates other driver error and that’s what prevents accidents. The times I had to tell my dd that just because it’s your right of way doesn’t mean it’s best to insist on it when driving. Far better to give way and lose 10 seconds than end up spending hours sorting out a prang or worse.

interestingly in France, many villages have junctions where the driver on the main route through is obliged to give way to traffic coming from the right.

I used to be guilty of this until I was shamed by the ‘stop being a middle lane moron’ graffiti on the M6, which now seems to have disappeared.

I want to get a matrix board for the back window of my car and have a few preset messages for middle lane hoggers, white van "people" oh and Audi/BMW drivers.

@Sunshineandflipflops Yes!

Concerned how many people are referring to ‘fast lane’ and ‘slow lane’ (regardless of how they’re claiming to drive when on the motorway).

It’s inside lane, outside lane and middle lane and everyone should be driving one the inside lane, unless overtaking.

@Sheepsheepeverywhere 50mph is an accepted speed on the motorway.

You need to not drive about the speed LIMIT. Limit being the important word. And not drive so slow that it is dangerous - otherwise, there is no minimum speed on the way. 50mph (for those who choose to do this) is not considered to be driving so slow that it is dangerous, provided using the motorway correctly.

I thought the middle lane was for people who want to drive 70-80mph 🤷‍♀️ slow lane for 60-70mph and the fast lane for anything over 80! Whoops 😬 well that's what most people seem to do these days anyway

this is worrying when the speed limit is 70mph on a motor way.

I wish the police would do something about this. Slow drivers taking up empty middle lanes effectively reduce the number of lanes available to drive in at speed. It's dangerous. You'd think by now they could at least have cameras that can give you for dangerously driving unnecessarily in the middle lane.

after passing my test at 17 I had a year or so of driving around small towns with maybe the odd dual carriageway, then moved away to uni and didn’t drive for years. When I went back to driving I found I was pretty rusty on the Highway Code and ended up watching a few YouTube videos on safe motorway driving / what to do if you breakdown etc on normal / smart motorways. Without seeing the middle lane moron graffiti it genuinely never occurred to me that it was an issue, but prompted me to avoid it.

I think a regular requirement to resit the theory test would help weed out bad drivers, or at least a public info campaign on safe motorway driving. Or a motorway simulator as part of theory test?

OK, so I do know better but I'll admit to doing this. I do it because

1. It does feel like what everyone else is doing

2. I'd prefer to stay in the inside lane but it's clogged with folk doing 55mph and so many lorries, I often aim to return to the inside lane but there's always another lorry

3. Our motorways are so busy and sometimes there isn't room to drive in one lane. Driving in Europe it works beautifully to keep to the inside lane, but the road tends to be much quieter

It’s always been a thing but I agree it’s worse now.

Some of it might be tech-related. Most modern cars have cruise control, and lane-departure warning systems etc. Both these things might tacitly discourage lane changes for a particular kind of driver. The car is effectively telling the driver, ‘back off, I’ll do it’.

Where do middle Lane hog gers sit on a 4 lane motorway?

I regularly drive north on M6 & there are 4 lanes in parts. I never seem to have a problem driving in lane 1/inside lane at 70mph and will frequently find that I’m passing a driver in lane 3 or 4 whilst in lane 1. I’m not changing my speed so not overtaking ( the driver in lane 3/4) but literally on the speed limit. I may be overtaking an HGV or slower vehicle in lane 1 so move to lane 2 then back again.

Huh? The rule is that 67% of it shouldn't be used except for overtaking!

Despite having some of the most crowded roads the UK is one of the safest places to drive in the world - the second safest in Europe.
There are several reasons for this but one is that our driving rules are highly researched and evidence based. If it was safer to have a free for all and allow undertaking that is what we would do, but it is not.

I regularly drove on the M25 for work last year and there are long stretches where absolutely everyone does this. I was often the only one in the inside lane along with the lorries!

I learned to drive in my 30s, so am very ‘by the book’ and sometimes wonder if I’m the one ‘doing it wrong’.

Road designers haven't helped by making much of the left hand lane on the M25 turn into an exit slip without warning. And the next lane is often nose to tail making it difficult to move over if you don't want to be spun off.

People whinge on about motorways being so busy and clogged with lorries all time in lane 1, and how they'd be pulling in and out all the time.

Anyone who's driven on the M74, or M6 north of about Lancaster will have witnessed this behaviour, even when it's NOT that busy. Yes there are lorries, with spaces between them. Sometimes the spaces are half a mile long. Yet you still get the numpties sailing along at 66/67 mph in lane 2, with lots of clear road ahead of them. So when you're driving in lane 1, you have to do the 1 - 2 - 3 - 2 - 1 manoeuvre to overtake them. And they pootle on, oblivious.

People who are too nervous to change lanes on motorway are dangerous drivers, however much they protest.

Without warning? There are signs literally a mile in advance 🤦‍♀️

I will drive in the middle lane at 70mph if the motorway is busy and the inside lane is full of HGV drivers or slow drivers doing less than the speed limit. I also move over to the middle lane to allow people to join the motorway at junctions.

The only time I move over to the inside lane is if I plan to leave at the next junction or the motorway is quiet and I don't need to keep overtaking slow drivers driving under the limit. Most motorways I drive on are not quiet so I admit I tend to drive mostly in the middle or overtaking lane but I am not a slow driver. Chopping and changing lanes on a busy motorway is more dangerous than hogging the middle lane and usually the people who don't like it are the ones driving at 80-90mph and they are the ones breaking the law and driving dangerously.

For roads you are familiar with and you know there are busy merging lanes coming ahead it's easier to briefly stay in the middle lane until you have past the merging traffic.

If the left lane is clear get bloody in it. The whole point of motorway driving is changing lanes. If you can’t change lanes you shouldn’t’ be on the motorway frankly.

I mostly drive in France. Slip roads are much shorter than in the UK and sometimes the same stretch of road is used for people joining and leaving the main road so these cars are crossing each other's paths. It means you have much less time to join the main road before you run out of slip road. For this reason car drivers, by common consent, tend to stay out of the right hand lane (the equivalent of the UK's left hand lane) and leave it for lorries and for those joining and leaving. And when driving around Paris there are exits every kilometre or two (making it more impractical to just move over every time you can see cars wanting to join) and complicated stretches of road where lanes divide every few hundred metres depending on where you are going, meaning that I usually just drive in whichever lane the satnav tells me to drive in.

When I drive in the UK in my French car it is safer for me to stay in the middle lane on the motorway because my steering wheel is on the wrong side and I have much better visibility in the middle. As long as I'm driving faster than the cars in the left hand lane I really don't see the problem.

I reckon this rule is a throwback from the days when roads were less busy than they are now and isn't actually the safest or most sensible way to drive anymore.

I don't know which roads you drive on but on the roads I use most often the left hand lane is never clear.

I have observed how this can happen. Some drivers are in lane 1 when a new lane joins and thay are in lane 2. They stick in the lane they were in.
And when I had decided that was what led to the problem, I saw cars join the motorway low traffic, immdiately join lane 2 as if it was the right thing to do. Nothing to overtake. And no taking care to not block the car in 2 because they had been overtaking, or responding to that car going 3,2,1 on over taking them.

Part of the problem could be the state of the inside lane on many stretches. Tracked out by lorries & unmaintained

I use the M27 a lot and the range of speeds people are driving is what's causing the problem imo.

There was a 50 mph restriction in place for ages when the smart motorway was being put in and whilst it was annoyingly slow at times, the traffic flowed better and people used the lanes correctly. Now there's drivers pootling along at 45 mph in the inside lane forcing you to move over into a lane where drivers are doing 90 (or more). It's so dangerous.

I only need to do two junctions anyway so lately I've been avoiding it and taking the A roads. The motorway is too erratic.