Why'd they do that?

[fredintoon]

My wife and I recently took a long distance drive to visit friends. Nice reasonably empty 2 lane highway most of the way. Get stuck behind a truck on a 2-lane and it's a swine to get past it because every stretch of road you can see well enough ahead to overtake, there's a car coming.
I have no problem with that, those guys got a living to make and they mostly go the speed limit anyway.
It's an annoyance that you can't see past them but WTF, drop back a mile, eh?
What gets to me is rolling along with the cruise control set at just enough over the limit to not get a ticket and some clown gets right on your rear bumper.
He weaves about, obviously eager to overtake and finally does so.
But does he then race on? No! The bastard slows down!
F**king idiot.

[BigRed]

The only thing that gets me more than that is when you're on a stretch of 2 lane highway that has an occasional 3rd lane for passing; generally when you're going up a hill. Everyone speeds up when you get to the third lane part... especially the drag-arse in front!

My first car was a VW Jetta diesel (not turbo). Top speed was about 135 kph (84 mph), and it took about 10 minutes to get up there. I used this sretch of highway a lot one summer... speed limit was 90 kph, but you'd get stuck behind someone doing 80 who'd speed up to 120 for the passing lane. The lane never lasted long enough for me to get around. Thankfully, this isn't a problem on my xs

[ManitoulinLad]

I agree with both you guys on both counts - must be a Canadian Hwy thing. - Dan

[kjohnson]

I have the same issue here. The worst part is that most of the time I can just keep at the set cruise speed and pass them again. Then a few minutes later repeat the cycle.

[cueball]

Australian too

Get plenty of arseholes down here who wander along at 95 on two laners, then go to 110 on passing lanes only to slow again. Also have the ones who rush past and then slow down. Get lots of them while in truck, speed limited to 101. While on two laners with 100 limit they bust a gut to get past then slow to 95.

[DGXSER]

Th biggest traffic issue I always have is with truckers. Around here, if the highway drops a lane out and there is a merge point ahead, the trucks form a barracade to keep the lanes that merge up to five miles ahead from going by. Then at the last minute, they let each other in and block everyone else from merging when they get close. I have never understood it and it always aggrivates the tar out of me.

[b.walker5]

Problems worse here. Our road transport authority, LTSA, decided in their wisdom to restrict heavy vehicle speeds (trucks) to 90km/h while the rest of the traffic travels at 100km/h.(apparently it's a safety factor) Most of our roads are only 2 lane and down this part of the country most of them are winding roads with not a lot of straight sections. A trip to Dunedin from my place in the car, which is only 200k's, can take 3 1/2 hours because of these slow bloody trucks on the road. Normally I'm a patient driver and I travel this road a lot, and i've seen my share of f&*king idiots, but the passing lanes are where they really show thier colours. My particular favourites are the leeming drivers, where one car will pull out to pass and 10 others will follow, irrespective of the fact that there may only be 400 metres of passing lane and 5 of those cars are going to be left of the wrong side of the road facing on-coming traffic, and the other one is the driver that will pass the truck and then f%^king slow down, forcing the car behind to pass a truck and a car, and then the second driver will slow down forcing the third to pass 3 vehicles.

All because the Govt decided that trucks are dangerous and should travel slower than the rest of us. Most unbelievably stupid piece of roading legislation you can imagine. A high percentage of our head on crash figures relate to impatient drivers passing slower moving trucks.