Silly car question #32: Is it OK to swap lanes all the time on the motorway?

Thursday, 7 June 2018

OPINION: There's no surer sign of a thinking, attentive and considerate driver than one who changes lanes all the time on the motorway.

There's also no surer sign of a completely irresponsible and arrogant driver… than one who changes lanes all the time on the motorway.

It's all in the execution.

I'm proud to be an inveterate lane-changer. If you view driving as an active rather than passive activity and obey the simplest rule of right-hand-drive traffic flow - to keep left as much as possible - you cannot help but be just that.

**READ MORE:

In NZ, you're still allowed to pass on the left on a two-lane road.

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You should always keep left on the motorway, overtake on the right and allow others to do the same to you when they want or need to. That simple principle requires your full attention, because cars do not move at the same speed on the motorway; everybody has their own pace, which can change according to the conditions.

So if you want to get from A to B smoothly at your chosen speed, you'll find yourself changing lanes often. Done correctly, with adequate indication (three seconds is the rule, but I like six flashes) and safe following distance, you won't annoy anybody else on the road regardless of how often you slide across.

That's not always easy in NZ because we Kiwi drivers have truly terrible lane discipline.

There are many other countries that have narrower and busier stretches of motorway than anything in NZ, yet the traffic flows much faster and more safely because everybody understands that the system hinges on drivers keeping left (or right in LHD countries of course) at all times.

Cars overtake, then they move to the inside. Immediately. Always.

Keeping to the inside is the trick on motorways. Not many people seem to know that trick in NZ.

If you've driven on the Autobahn in Germany, you'll no doubt have been overtaken by the odd super-hot Audi or Porsche and marvelled at the way they rocket past at 200kmh-plus… then move across to the inside straight away, even though the odds of something faster coming along are slight. It's a beautiful thing.

If you've driven on a Kiwi motorway, you've probably noticed that drivers of all kinds meander all over the road, overtaking right and overtaking left. That's the bad kind of constant lane-changing - the Kiwi weave.

Some people seem to drive like they have the motorway to themselves.

It happens partly because of that terrible lane discipline, the fact we seem to take very little pride in our driving (just as we seem to take very little pride in our cars), but also because it's not actually illegal to overtake (or 'undertake' as you might say) on the inside/left in NZ. While the The Road Code stipulates that you should overtake on the right, it also allows the option to pass on the inside if there are two or more lanes to choose from.

There's actually a third group of NZ drivers to discuss here that prevents the first lot of lane-changers from doing good work and encourages the second lot of weavers to behave even more badly.

I'm talking about those who don't change lanes at all, despite being very far from the left-hand side of the motorway.

If we're talking about a three-lane road, you might notice the middle 'Lane Two Owners Club' and then those on the very outside: the 'Voluntary Traffic Enforcement Unit'. These are the correct names; I know because I just made them up.

The Lane Two crowd commonly travel at 5-10kmh below the limit. I'd surmise they are stuck in the middle due to a minium of one and perhaps all three of the following reasons: they do not feel confident changing back and forth but do not want to get held up by very slow-moving traffic in the inside lane, they're really not sure where they should be, or they want to keep their options open by being able to overtake either right or left when the time comes.

The Traffic Enforcement Unit is more often than not travelling dead-on the posted limit and operating to a very specific brief: I am going as fast as the law allows, nobody should pass me therefore I should stay in the overtaking position at all times.

This is partly a result of the government-mandated national 'speed kills' obsession - which leads to the notion that as long as you're below the limit, you're driving safely - and the mentality of some that it's their job to enforce the speed limit by actively preventing others from exceeding it.

Any way you look at at, the motivations behind the Lane Two Club and Enforcement Unit are going to be somewhere on a sliding scale between fear and arrogance. Both are very dangerous. All the more reason to make a change.

Do you agree? Do you have any pet peeves when driving on the motorway? Tell us in the comments below!