Before I finalize my tentative slotting of the drivers I'm talking about firmly into the 'dumbass' column, I'd like to know if the behavior I've been witnessing is because of cross-cultural gaps rather than actually dumbassery.
On US highways, the convention -- the rule, in fact -- is that you stay right except to pass. Now, I won't even begin to pretend that Americans follow this rule. They don't. However, in general, if someone moves aside to let a faster car go by, they're doing so by moving right. And they typically stay there, unless they're going faster than other people in the right lane themselves. With me so far?
However, I've been noticing a lot more cars with Canadian plates on them around these parts lately, and what their drivers tend to do is the exact opposite: they stay in the left lane, and if they move aside for a faster car, they immediately jump back into the left lane... even if the right lane is empty for as far as the eye can see ahead of them. (Many times they don't move aside and you see a long line of cars moving right, passing the Canadian, and moving left again to pass the slowboaters on the right.)
Is the convention reversed up north?
--sofaspud
--"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
I live in a province (SK) in a region (prairies) where the running joke was the car companies disabled all the turn signals in the cars sold here. The lane ettiquette you're talking about is par for the course here.
If those aren't plates from the prairies (AB, SK, MB), then you're just dealing with twits who don't know proper left-lane-right-lane rules.
Well, so far all the plates I've seen have said "Alberta" on them, if that helps any. Typically I mistake them for Californians at first (we have a lot of that species around here, too), just because the general color scheme is similar and the word placement (California in script above the plate numbers; Alberta in a sort of smoothly-leaning font in the same place), but then my brain registers the actual words.
Californians, though, are easy to deal with. They assume everyone is a stationary object and drive accordingly. It makes them very predictable.
--sofaspud
--
"Listening to your kid is the audio equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting, Spud." --OpMegs
Yeah, Alberta = AB = Prairie Drivers. Not as bad as SK = Saskatchewan.
I live in NH and occasionally drive in VT, and we get a LOT of Bad Drivers [TM] from Quebec and Massachusetts on our highways. What's worse is the sheer amount of OUR drivers getting corrupted by the Mass guys in the south.
As in, Speed limits are not common sense RULES that give a roughly useful max speed allowing for the oldest cars regularly on the road with crappy tires and brakes to y'know actually STOP... but rather a MINIMUM speed for Autobahn-like driving.
*Drives posted Speed limit, constantly gets passed by blurs breaking 30 miles over the limit*
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''
-- James Nicoll
Quote:Not as bad as SK = Saskatchewan.
My uncle-in-law from Toronto once said something to the effect that Saskatchewan drivers are eternally surprised that someone other than themselves has managed to find a car to drive, and have no idea how to drive when there's more than one auto within a mile.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.
I had to laugh at spuds CA drivers comment. Mainly because it's true. We will pass on the left, right, or middle.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
sweno Wrote:I had to laugh at spuds CA drivers comment. Mainly because it's true. We will pass on the left, right, or middle.
What repeatedly pisses me off is the habit some people have of, when seeing me slowing, signalling a left turn, and starting that turn... of passing me on the left.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make
anything explode.
If your signaling, your doing more than 85% of the people on the road
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
Many prarie drivers (nowhere near as many as in the past, but still a fair number) learned how to drive by driving the farm's tractor. "Middle of the road" is the correct place for a tractor, because there's only the one roadway on the farm, and the habit carries over.
As to why urban Canadians drive in the centre lane... well, I guess we're just rude.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Foxboy Wrote:As in, Speed limits are not common sense RULES that give a roughly useful max speed allowing for the oldest cars regularly on the road with crappy tires and brakes to y'know actually STOP... but rather a MINIMUM speed for Autobahn-like driving.
*Drives posted Speed limit, constantly gets passed by blurs breaking 30 miles over the limit*
I feel for you, of course the local speed limits make very little sense (well actually they make a lot of sense, but for the wrong reasons), where the road is straight and wide with plenty of visibility the speed limit is 25, where the road is narrow and twisty in a dark forrest valley with plenty of roads where you can't see merging traffic from the speed limit is 45. The speed limits are arranged that way because straight roads with good visibility are good for automated speed cameras.
It doesn't help that they wanted to double or tripple the number of lanes on the road because of all the new construction along it, but because that would necessitate getting rid of the local petting farm (which I believe is currently bankrupt) the project was nixed. So now we are dealing with a ~2-5 mile queue because people want to turn left and need to wait for the light.
/rant, man I feel better now.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."