AIBU - If you want to drive below the speed limit you should pull over at regular intervals

[TheCumbrian]

'It's a speed limit not a target' etc

But equally, on a good road in good conditions theres no reason why a competent driver shouldn't be able to drive somewhere close to the speed limit (sharp bends, single track national speed limit C roads etc excluded) and make reasonable progress without holding up other road users.

If you can't, you should pull over, when safe to do so, once you have 5 or more vehicles trundling behind you.

There are lots of things that can temporarily slow you down on the road - bad traffic, farm vehicles, bin lorries, bicycles, horses, roadworks, adverse weather conditions, slow drivers.

But most of those on your list are understandable and unavoidable. The slow drivers are in control of their situation and not considerate of other road users.

The point is there are all sorts of drivers and road users on our over crowded roads and as a driver you need to deal with it. You can’t spend your time fuming it’s pointless. So chill out.
(Used to be impatient not now. Not a slow driver myself but currently driving extremely carefully as on 6 points )

YANBU. In the US you can be pulled for causing an obstruction. I'd like to see that law introduced here.

However. If you find a queue of people rapidly building up behind you the natural assumption is not that they are all road rage boy or girl racers who will wrap their car around a tree on the next corner. If you have a huge queue behind you while you tootle along, it's YOU who is too slow.
This is very true.
When I first moved to an area with lots of winding roads I'd pull over. It's common sense not to hold everyone up whilst I got used to the roads.

The slow drivers are in control of their situation and not considerate of other road users.
Yes. In control of their situation and seem to be quite smug in their willingness to hinder everyone else.

I don't mind waiting for a safe space to overtake cyclists (assuming they are riding correctly in 2 by 2 allowing me to do one safe overtake rather than silly spread out single file lines). I don't mind horseboxes or farm traffic, though they are generally much better at showing consideration for other road users. If there's bad traffic or roadworks I don't mind as that's what the float in my journey time is for.

If you're stuck behind a slower vehicle crossing villages, etc, it's not likely that you'd be able to go at a much higher speed than them anyway... Try and figure out how much time you'd save by going at the speed you wanted. Then let me know the results.

I think you misunderstood about the villages. They are few and far between; it is mostly a decent 60mph road, so given the chance would have been going 20 mph faster than them. In the villages we both obviously had to slow to 30. I thought they might have slowed more to let me past but they were obviously oblivious. I know some drivers would have sped up to overtake them anyway, but that’s not me!

YANBU. I live rurally, the road I take to the train station every day is a 60mph limit, with lots of long, straight road, ideal for maintaining 60mph (in decent conditions). The amount of people who drive at 40mph and then don’t adjust their speed when they enter the 30mph limit village is a joke. Some people should not be allowed behind the wheel of a car

Is this caused by generational difference? No, not being ageist, but I know when I learned to drive (back in the early 80's), we were taught differently. Speed Limit was just that, a limit. We were taught to change down through the gears before braking, and to slow down for junctions, etc.

When my children were learning to drive (so 2000's) they were taught to drive AT the speed limit at all times (road conditions permitting), to drive up to junctions THEN brake, etc. It seems that newer cars react differently and so must be driven differently.

But I know that sometimes driving with my son I will have one foot on the invisible brake and be thinking 'you don't have to go so fast all of the time, change down now, brake BRAKE!' when he's a perfectly capable driver, he just drives differently to me, because of the way I was taught.

So maybe some of the 'driving at 50 in a 60 zone' people just learned differently?

I used to drive a Morris Minor with a max speed of 50mph and would struggle on hills and I would always pull over for people

I like the sound of you, Maximus!

Also the slow driver crew are perhaps deliberately misunderstanding what the OP was saying.

Nobody is telling you to drive quicker. You carry on pootling along at 20mph under the speed limit if you want.

All the other drivers are asking for is a wee bit of awareness and consideration and to pull over where possible, let the traffic queue pass before you continue your pootling.

It's not going to kill you to exercise a bit of patience. It might even be good for your blood pressure.

I’m very patient, as are many other drivers but that means the less patient have to overtake even more cars than the original pootler and, believe me, watching that is very bad for my blood pressure!

When my children were learning to drive (so 2000's) they were taught to drive AT the speed limit at all times (road conditions permitting), to drive up to junctions THEN brake, etc. It seems that newer cars react differently and so must be driven differently.
I was taught to come off the accelerator to manage speed for general driving and adapting for hazards (rather than irritating and unhelpful brake tapping). For junctions you brake with an appropriate distance, but often if you can see the junction or you can see the light cycle then you might ease off for 30 seconds on the approach and then hit the green light rather than red. It's about reading the road and responding accordingly (which is why the toddling types in our area driving up to empty roundabouts with clear visibility on all sides and then stopping is a sign of bad driving as they're not being cautious, they're showing zero ability to read the road).

We were taught that you drive in accordance with the conditions and that your driving should prevent others making progress so another driver having to deviate or slow significantly due to your driving makes your driving at fault.

Doing 37/38 in a 40 zone when it's safe to wouldn't be a problem. Toddling along at 30 in a 40 when the conditions don't require it was something my driving instructor pulled me up for as a learner, and rightly so.

I'm torn on this and can see it from both sides tbh

In an ideal world then yes slower drivers should facilitate allowing faster drivers to pass safely if that is possible but in reality it isn't often safe to do so on the types of roads where this tends to be a problem (narrow, windy, country lanes)

I would also argue that 60mph often isn't an appropriate speed on these types of roads as you never know what might be round the next (often blind) bend or hill

We all get frustrated on occasion when stuck behind a slow vehicle and in a rush to bet somewhere but it's never a good idea to allow yourself to get to the 'blood boiling' stage as that is when people do stupid things and fatal accidents happen

You can’t spend your time fuming it’s pointless. So chill out.

As pointed out earlier, us chilled drivers compound the problem by making the less chilled overtake us as well as the slow driver. And if nobody overtook, the tailbacks would be even longer.

When my children were learning to drive (so 2000's) they were taught to drive AT the speed limit at all times (road conditions permitting), to drive up to junctions THEN brake, etc. It seems that newer cars react differently and so must be driven differently.

Speed limits are lower these days. In towns, there are few roads above 30 and plenty that are restricted to 20. Even in more rural areas, roads which were once national speed limit are now reduced to 50 or even 40. Our village by-pass was 60 and has been progressively reduced to just 30 today. A main road on our local town's driving test route used to be 40 and is now 20 because it has a couple of schools on it. Certainly around our test routes, you're a dangerous fool if you drive below the limits because the limits are so low.

As for using brakes to change gears, that's always been crazy as it means your clutch, gearbox etc have more wear and tear and will require repair/replacement sooner. Brakes are a lot easier/cheaper to replace. I learned nearly 40 years ago and was told to brake to slow down, not change gears, so it's nothing new.

Driving at 40 or 60 mph will get you there with very little difference in time. On roads other than motorways if you drive at the maximum speed you brake more often for bends, hills, traffic lights etc which reduces your overall speed. If you are honest, how many times as an idiot overtaken you only to land in front of you stuck behind the vehicle in front or you have caught up with the idiot at the next junction. Just because you go fast on a road doesn't mean you gain time.

how many times as an idiot overtaken you only to land in front of you stuck behind the vehicle in front or you have caught up with the idiot at the next junction.

On short sections of road, of course you don't gain much. But when it's mile after mile, 5/10/15/20 miles, it soon mounts up and you'd be many junctions ahead of the slowcoach.

how many times as an idiot overtaken you only to land in front of you stuck behind the vehicle in front or you have caught up with the idiot at the next junction

If they've overtaken you at the crest of a hill or just before a bend, I could understand you thinking them an idiot. Otherwise, if done safely it's a perfectly legal and legitimate driving manoeuvre; not the action of an idiot at all.

I'll tell you who are idiots: those drivers who tootle along, then speed right up when another driver wants to overtake them. It's so utterly pointless and very dangerous; either forcing the overtaking driver to do breakneck speeds to complete the manoeuvre, or to swerve back in behind the driver (who then immediately slows back down), or elongates the stretch of road needed to overtake, putting them at risk of a possible headlong collision and recklessly endangering both drivers.

Any moron who engages in this idiocy - and there are a lot of them out there - should if caught receive an automatic ban.

On roads other than motorways if you drive at the maximum speed you brake more often for bends, hills, traffic lights etc which reduces your overall speed.

Depends where you live. Here there are plenty of wide, straight single carriageway roads where 60 is appropriate and can be maintained for many miles. People really do drive slowly where there is no need.

Yes people have overtaken me, and I have caught up with them at the lights in the next town. I only think badly of them if I was doing 60 and they were cutting it fine with regard to oncoming traffic.

When I visited Crete (the same in the rest of Greece?) people would drive on the hardshoulder to let people overtake at will. Not just when vehicles approached, but seemingly constantly. I've never seen so many accidents in any other country. Particularly of cars in the ditches.

Sometimes I get slower drivers who will pull to the hard shoulder to let people pass but will keep driving. I don't appreciate it, tbh, because it's dangerous.
Last time, a lorry, on a blind bend, and they still took over half the road. No thanks. And he was getting annoyed with me, gesturing, etc. Sure enough, another lorry came in the opposite direction mid bend. Arse.
I'd rather you stayed on the road.

Weird how all these speedy drivers think they are all excellent drivers and everyone else on the road is an idiot. Classic sign of deluded road ragers.

In many roads that have intense traffic with lorries and tractors, in Portugal, roads often have short stretches with dual lanes for overtaking on hills because that's when slower vehicles tend to be even slower. It usually works quite well to reduce queues.

Not RTFT but don't think OP is being unreasonable. If you want to drive very slowly at 30 mph (on a safe road where you could easily do 50) and enjoy the scenery then do so by all means but when you realise there's a queue behind you, please let people past.

You don't know if there is someone behind you trying to get to work or visiting elderly relatives whereas you are just out for a leisurely drive.

Same goes for cyclists - I do pull over to let car drivers past but rarely find that a cyclist does me the same courtesy when I am in my car.

There needs to be a minimum speed limit on the A303 past Stonehenge to stop all the entitled wotsits slowing right down and stopping to look at it.

if you drive at the maximum speed you brake more often for bends, hills, traffic lights etc which reduces your overall speed

I don't, I simply take my foot off the gas in plenty of time (which I know some MNers don't like because they apparently need the brake lights of the car in front to tell them whether to slow down or not). Obviously you have to brake at times eg if you have to stop at traffic lights but I try not to wear out my brake disks/pads.

There needs to be a minimum speed limit on the A303 past Stonehenge to stop all the entitled wotsits slowing right down and stopping to look at it.

Or just grow a hedge so that they have to go off road to see it.

YANBU, and as a pretty speedy driver myself, if there's someone on my tail who clearly wants to get past me, I let them past too. The highway code actually instructs drivers to let people past if they have a queue of traffic behind them.

Re the 'chilled' drivers/drivers with poor acceleration, who make it hard to overtake - I'm chilled most of the time, and the key is to leave lots of space so those people who are in a rush can overtake cars one at a time. When I'm in a rush, this would be really appreciated. 'The traffic queue' is a situation that highlights how most people drive too close to others anyway, without realising.

Apart from cars not needing you to change down the gears any more, driving techniques have changed little over the years. 'Make progress' by driving at the speed limit where safely possible, but act in response to road conditions as soon as possible - so with as little harsh braking or acceleration as possible. This is also the most economical way to drive.