Question for all the RVers here on HN: why do so many of you refuse to use designated pull outs? The ones specifically created for vehicles like yours to move over and let the dozen+ cars behind you pass so they can go more than 20 under the speed limit. Many RVs I encounter even go out of their way to prevent passing. I don't really understand it, and it seems like an RV-specific behavior.
As an RV-driver, I try my best to use the pull outs when I can. There are a few complications, though.
First is the visibility of these pull-outs is often very poor. You'll be driving through long winding roads and then all of the sudden the pull-out appears. In an RV, you can't just slam on the breaks and swerve into the pullout, ESPECIALLY if you're going downhill.
Second, often times (in the USA at least), these pull-outs have rough terrain going in an and out of them. There will be a little bump or uneven ground that most vehicles wouldn't mind hitting every now and then, but in my rig, that causes the whole thing to sway back and forth (Class-C built on a Mercedes Sprinter). I REALLY need to upgrade the suspension.
Third is time. Since I'm slower than everyone else, people tend to pile up behind me pretty quickly. Pulling into the pull-out, coming to a complete stop, waiting for everyone to pass, then getting back up to speed takes a long time. If I did this every time there was a car behind me, it would take forever. So, I tend to wait until there's more than a few cars behind me before pulling off.
Fourth is my wife. She says I have "overly-considerate disorder" and I need to make our safety #1 and stop caring about other people so damn much.
Just wanted to confirm those first three points. I keep a 25' converted bus in California for when we fly to the US for holidays. I really dislike holding people up, so will turn out whenever possible, but...
There isn't always advance signage, so you often see them at the last second and don't have time to check the quality of the approach, check if the person behind you has enough warning, etc.
They're always far poorer quality than the road itself, so you're aggressively decelerating a heavy vehicle in usually mountainous conditions, approaching a 4"+ drop into ragged pavement or gravel. I've hit some of those spots at speed and it's felt like the vehicle was going to fall apart.
And yes, often you're going slowly because you've just let a few cars past and reentered the road, just for another person to drive up behind you and start the whole game again.
It's very very rare to find signed turnouts that are good and long enough that it's trivial to pull off the road at a reasonable speed, let people through, and then continue on without just creating more problems.
I remember turnouts in NW Idaho or closer to Spokane maybe where the signage suggested you were meant to use the shoulders to let cars pass, but they were really narrow and I wasn't sure how exactly they were meant to be used? Anyone familiar with that area? If it's not wide enough to get fully out of the lane, wouldn't the passing car just overtake using the opposite lane anyway?
The act of slowing down and pulling to the shoulder is a clear indicator that another car can pass you without having to go super fast like a normal overtake.
It takes far less oncoming traffic distance to pass someone going 20 in the shoulder than 50 in the regular lane.
You could achieve the same effect going 20 in the lane if you could clearly signal you intended to stay slow so the other person could pass.
Are you referencing that Idaho scenario? This generally assumes the shoulder is long enough, that the car behind you can see it and realise that's what's happening, that there is visibility, etc. From memory, in that Idaho (?) case while the visibility was good and it was generally a straight road, the shoulder was full of debris and unmaintained bushes. Also the shoulder is often a puncture risk.
Here in Australia, the road trains will often signal when it's safe for you to overtake them - they're seated higher with better visibility, have far better lights for night driving, etc. But I always hear that their employers/industry discourage them from doing this, I assume out of fear of liability.
I've driven x0k miles in the US and tried signalling like this when I can tell someone desperately wants to overtake me ("go now, it's clear ahead"), but almost no one understands the intention.
IMO, most RV/truck/etc drivers dislike holding up traffic as much as the traffic dislikes being held up!
> says I have "overly-considerate disorder" and I need to make our safety #1 and stop caring about other people so damn much
I can't speak about your (w|l)ife, but in my (w|l)ife, people who say this are the people who personally enjoy taking advantage of my nature, and my "overly considerate behavior" is only pointed out when someone else seems to be getting benefit at the expense of my (w|l)ife; i.e it's a statement of selfishness.
Can't tell if you're joking or not, but this commenter (fsckboy) is using programming/regex-like syntax to write "wife/life" as "(w|l)ife", indicating that, although the parent commenter (JohnDotAwesome) is referring directly to their wife, the commenter (fsckboy) has found it to be true throughout their life AND coming directly from their wife.
In other words, both fsckboy's wife and misc. people in their life tend to only point out that fsckboy is being "overly considerate" when it appears that fsckboy is letting someone benefit from their considerate nature. The implication is that fsckboy considers the behavior as being kind and/or safe, while their wife/companions think of it as being taken advantage of.
The broad concept of this exchange concerns where the line is between being considerate and being taken advantage of, and how others might be incentivized to view that one way or the other.
It's more than that - fsckboy also believes that the people who point this out to them are doing so because they normally enjoy being the only ones taking advantage of fsckboy, and are incensed when others get to take advantage too (in their view).
And so a corollary is that fsckboy thinks their wife is (regularly?) taking advantage of fsckboy, which doesn't sound like they have a great relationship. But maybe this is not actually what fsckboy meant to say, and so we are back to not understanding what they mean.
It confusing because one part of the wife/life pair makes no grammatical or logical sense, as shown below.
>I can't speak about your (wife), but in my (wife), people who say this are the people who personally enjoy taking advantage of my nature, and my "overly considerate behavior" is only pointed out when someone else seems to be getting benefit at the expense of my (wife); i.e it's a statement of selfishness.
Yes, this explanation did the trick! I feel like I generally stay overly considerate in order to avoid confrontation, or because there is a chance it makes the other person feel good, which I guess makes me feel good. Things like letting anyone in front of me in traffic, etc...
Hey John!! Wes here, sitting in the shade of my RV right now. Funny to hear the last line, because mine says the same thing about when I am driving. And when she is driving she literally tell me "fuck em, I will drive how I want" lol.
Says the same thing to people in the US (and elsewhere??) that drive in the freeway's fast lane holding everyone up for MILES. That is one of the most annoying things I face regularly on the road.
I hate people who do this, nd it is probably why my wife has such a reaction, it is more about me pestering her too much than her actually wanting to ride in the fast lane. Backseat driving is a bad habit of mine.
But one thing I have learned by driving 50k miles these past few years is that you never actually get there meaningfully faster. So really, everyone is better off if they just slow down and hit that cruise control.
> But one thing I have learned by driving 50k miles these past few years is that you never actually get there meaningfully faster. So really, everyone is better off if they just slow down and hit that cruise control.
Depends what you're driving on. If it's a freeway where you're going to hit stretches of traffic anyway or roads where there's stop signs and lights, sure. When I'm on the 5 going from SF to SD, though, yeah, the clown who's doing 60 in the left lane for miles while holding me up is very much increasing the amount of time I have to spend on the road.
I don't know, as a non-American, Tomah Wisconsin sound exactly like the kind of place you could get a nice grilled cheese or a decent hamburger at a diner unchanged since the 1950s, with a bottomless cup of coffee and a nice slice of apple pie from a friendly middle aged waitress called Flo or similar who would no doubt call you hon. I'd look forward to stopping there.
If it is like most of small town america, they replaced the diner with a soulless strip mall back in the 90s. You can stop at the Burgerking or Dollar General now.
What's the deal with a truck going 54 in the right lane being overtaken by another truck going 55 in the left lane? Does he not see him? Slow down, let him in, and the rest of us can get on with our day.
I agree with being measured and predictable; I take advanced driving and safety class every couple of years as a refresher and safety is a massive priority for me. And I'm a big fan of cruise control. But going fast in the fast lane IS measured and predictable :-)
As well, 20%, or say a difference between going 10km over vs 10km under on a 5hr trip, is an hour and that's not nothing :-/
Be glad you don't live in Texas, where using your turn signal is tantamount to issuing a challenge, and is seen as aggressive behavior: "Oh, you want that right lane? No, it's MINE!"
Or worse, people don't see turn signals enough to know what they mean, and just adds to the confusion.
Measured and predictable: definitely. Having different speeds in different lanes also helps traffic flow better.
Also, people seem to really bunch up in some regions. Having a gap that is several car lengths in front of you actually helps traffic flow smoother (and thus faster.) I feel like aggressive/impatient drivers who cut people off create this culture where I live and then ultimately end up slowing everyone (including themselves) down.
People here are commenting how it's wrong for long drives, so I'll chip in with how it's wrong for a short drive too.
South bay to Sacramento in a Chevy bolt. I can drive 55mph and do the round trip on one full battery charge. Or I can drive 75mph and save so much time that it more than makes up for the necessary mid trip charge up in Davis on the return.
I wish everyone would sit the fuck down, and do the math on driving faster. 10 mph, even 20mph hour more isn't going to get you where you're going much faster. Maybe you get there 5 min sooner. Was that worth being a complete dick and a danger to everyone else? Fuck off.
10-20mph won’t make much of a difference for a commute, but when you’re driving on roads with loads of RVs, it means that you’re probably doing bigger distances, and with those, 10-20 mph will absolutely make a difference.
For example, when you’re driving more than 6 hours in a day, which is not uncommon for Americans, especially ones living west of Mississippi, extra 10 mph of average speed means you’re getting to your destination 1+ hour faster, which most definitely is a significant difference.
Averaging 10-20mph faster is very difficult on anything but the least congested roads. We often set the cruise control to 75-80mph but find that the average for a journey is closer to 58-60mph (not including stops).
It's a heck of a lot easier to make up half an hour by making quicker stops than it is to make it up on the road IMHO.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Most major roads west of the Mississippi and outside of Southern California are not congested at all. They only get congested around major cities, but a 6-hour trip means you have to be away from a major city for the majority of the trip.
Parent Poster: "For example, when you’re driving more than 6 hours in a day, which is not uncommon for Americans, especially ones living west of Mississippi, extra 10 mph of average speed means you’re getting to your destination 1+ hour faster, which most definitely is a significant difference."
You: "Averaging 10-20mph faster is very difficult on anything but the least congested roads."
Either you're blatantly ignoring what the parent said ("west of the Mississippi"), which does not exactly amount to polite discourse, or you're commenting authoritatively on a set of roads which you clearly know nothing about.
I didn't say anything about those roads. The parent poster gave that as an example. They didn't place a magic hex upon the thread preventing anyone who hasn't specifically driven on those roads from commenting.
I'd be surprised though if those roads didn't have roadworks, slower vehicles overtaking one another, accidents, bends, reduced speed sections etc. Certainly the roads I've driven in 10 or so other countries had these things in common.
Do you mean it's not uncommon for Americans to drive all day to go camping on memorial day weekend or something, or do you mean we're driving 3 hour each way commutes? Because very very few Americans have that kind of commute: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
> Do you mean it's not uncommon for Americans to drive all day to go camping on memorial day weekend or something
This, for sure.
Those of us who live in the midwest are often hours of boring highway driving aware from anything, so a long weekend trip does require getting where we're going as quickly as reasonably possible.
Being stuck behind some nitwit who insists on pacing the semi truck next to them at 60 MPH rather than doing the 80+ everyone else on the highway wants to go is incredibly annoying.
80+ sounds too high. 80 is good. Stopping distance is not linear with speed, damage in a crash is not linear with speed (hello deer), gas usage is not linear with speed. No one who drives over 80 has grounds to complain about gas price, especially in large suvs or pickups.
Absolutely not. The legal limit should mean it is objectively unsafe to go faster in clear conditions no matter what you're driving. It is not supposed to be the speed you expect most traffic to go. If the average speed of traffic on a road is 85 MPH and people aren't constantly screwing that up, the limit (if there is one at all) should be meaningfully higher than that.
And of course if people are regularly screwing up at whatever the natural speed of the road may be, the correct answer is ALWAYS to change the road and reduce the speed people feel comfortable driving at. Lowering the limit below the natural speed doesn't actually reduce the speed of traffic unless there's active enforcement forcing people to comply. Redesigning the road makes people actually want to go the desired speed. A fast road is a fast road, no matter what number someone puts on a sign next to it.
> Stopping distance is not linear with speed, damage in a crash is not linear with speed (hello deer), gas usage is not linear with speed.
That's why I'm talking specifically about long, flat, straight stretches of road with effectively infinite visibility during the daytime. These are common in the American midwest, there are plenty of stretches where you can literally see the road disappear off over the horizon in a perfectly straight line. The same sorts of situations where the Germans go to unlimited, and it works just fine for them.
> No one who drives over 80 has grounds to complain about gas price, especially in large suvs or pickups.
No argument here. My car gets better MPG at 100 MPH than a lot of SUVs get at 65 MPH so I could not possibly care less, but you also won't ever hear me whining about gas prices.
Posting like this will get you banned on HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Posting like this will get you banned on HN, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
Being able to pass allows me to create separation from other vehicles which means I can establish a good following distance. When selfish assholes block the passing lane, it creates a big moving traffic blockage that will turn into a multiple car pile up if anything goes wrong. The ideal highway traffic density is less dense, not more dense.
Safest speed is maintaining the same speed as the traffic around you.
Deliberately driving at a faster or slower speed than traffic for no good reason is the definition of unsafe driving. Please surrender your driver's license before you kill someone with that attitude.
What do you mean by "holding everyone up?" I'm constantly self conscious about this.
I refuse to drive more than 5mph above the speed limit after a particular incident a few years back. I drive quite a bit on a 3 lane 75mph highway. Consistently, I'll end up behind someone who doesn't know what speed they want to go in the middle lane, something between 65mph and 75mph. They're mostly 18 wheelers. I'll usually move over to the passing lane and go between 75mph and 80mph until I pass them.
Inevitably, there's some asshole that wants to go 90mph that appears out of the ether as soon as I start passing. They always want to be less than a second behind me, and never seem to understand that I want to keep at least 3s between me and the car in front. I always imagine they're saying the same thing you're saying in their heads.
The US version (varies by state) of the fast lane is garbage which is why nobody follows it. If you want a passing lane then you need a non passing lane and I don’t think US drivers are willing to make that concession.
Typically, you stay out of the left lane unless passing in the US. It's that easy. In many states, the person failing to yeild to faster traffic is ticketed, but not all.
It's easy in theory. In practice on many busy freeways such as I-5 through California the right lane is often clogged with heavy trucks for miles at a stretch, and the road surface is in terrible condition due to wear from those trucks. All the car drivers, even the slow ones, then hang out in the left lane so as not to get caught behind the trucks. I'm not defending this poor driving etiquette but the road conditions make it inevitable. The only real solution would be to add a third lane.
>All the car drivers, even the slow ones, then hang out in the left lane so as not to get caught behind the trucks.
Most of them go back to the right/slow lane when they're done passing any trucks and other slow traffic. Even on the I-5 it's not like the right/slow lane is an unbroken line of trucks from Mexico to Canada, you know.
But you can still pass in the right lane. So a slow driver in the left lane has someone riding their tail and are also getting passed in the right so they can’t even change to the slow lanes anymore. Add in left exits, moving over for vehicles on the shoulder, and speed limits that adjust based on road conditions and you have the perfect storm of it only being enforced in the worst cases.
> So a slow driver in the left lane has someone riding their tail and are also getting passed in the right so they can’t even change to the slow lanes anymore.
> If it's the fastlane, then there are other lanes.
In these scenarios it's usually two lanes in each direction, and the slow lane is filled with a line of semi trucks that have hard limiters set somewhere in the 65 MPH range and can not go faster no matter what, even if the highway limit is 70 or higher. Those truck drivers will do anything they can to maintain their max speed.
Some utter jackass then decides they don't want to be behind the trucks, but they also don't want to go faster than the trucks, and we end up with a line of annoyed traffic led by one dipshit.
> I suspect the person is doing the speed limit, maybe a bit over, in the fast lane -- and you're just and ASSHOLE.
Your position assumes the posted speed limit is set reasonably. Here's a hint: It's usually not on highways. I mean ffs there are eight lane divided highways with 55 MPH posted limits. You can't possibly defend that nonsense.
Most controlled-access highways the speed limits should start at 75 and as proven by the Germans beyond any doubt ∞ is a perfectly reasonable limit for rural stretches with good visibility and quality pavement.
Beyond all that, you are not the cops. It is not your job to enforce posted speed limits. If you are intentionally choosing to get in the way of a line of traffic when you have a reasonable option to not do that, YOU are the asshole.
I just can't even contemplate the level of selfishness it would take to be in the passing lane, looking at a line of annoyed drivers behind you and open road in front, thinking "man all those people are assholes for wanting to get past ME".
The last few times I've seen this happening (> 1 vehicles blocking anyone passing) behind me I've slowed down in the fast lane, let the "blocker" catch up to me, and then slowed down even more so the blocker has to also slow down, breaking the wall of cars and allowing people to switch into the passing lane to get by. I get a real kick out of it. Dunno how safe it is, but w/e.
Lol, my wife has an aunt that's famous for this. She'll go whatever speed she wants in whatever lane she wants on a major 4-6 lane hwy (401 in Toronto) and will righteously swerve her finger at people flashing their lights and honking behind her: "you can GO AROUND!".
(For record and clarification I do not condone that approach :)
Definitely agree with the first and second points above. I absolutely will if I can see it with enough time to safely slow the RV, and the terrain doesn't look like I might blow a tire or damage the RV doing it. I'm usually less concerned about time when traveling in the RV. I try to do what I can to build up good karma with other drivers, but it's not always a good idea to pull off.
On the other side. someone with road rage isn't going to care about others so much either (you) and possibly risk their own life, and yours, just out of frustration.
Being excessively considerate of others on the road is safer from my experience.
Are those terribly paved slow vehicle lanes a California thing? In New England they are the exact same quality as the other lane. I have never once had to navigate a drop to let faster traffic pass.
That sounds like a passing lane, we have those too. Those are usually nice although occasionally they are only long enough for 1-2 cars to safely pass. It doesn’t help that slow vehicles seem to often speed up for passing lanes.
But a pull out is just that. It’s a pull out. They are typically very short such that one has to pull in and fully stop. They are often found are on narrow roads in windy coastal, mountain or river canyons where putting in a passing lane is not feasible.
I don't know why anyone would expect a vehicle to pull off onto one of those just to let people pass.... So weird. I'd expect that to only be for someone who actually wants to stop and take a rest or something.
Oh I dunno maybe because it’s courteous and not selfish, or maybe it could be because posted signage often informs drivers that it’s Mandatory for slower vehicles to pull over if x number of cars are following.
I personally believe non-use of pullouts is more about the sorry state of the other drivers, not the RV drivers. (Assuming reasonable road conditions, which as you note, is not always the case.)
> coming to a complete stop
You're not meant to come to a stop. That absolutely kills what momentum you do have. It's exceptionally difficult to start a heavy vehicle from a stop. You're meant to pull out, maybe slow down a little, then pull back in, cars be damned. Some cars will pass, maybe not all. The new lead set of cars will get by at the next pullout, and so on in incremental fashion.
But what happens in practice is that the first or 2nd idiot behind you does not prepare in advance and then does not race like mad when you go into the pullout, thereby allowing as many following cars as possible to also make the pass. Even if that first car did execute it correctly, the 2nd car likely does not. Then the 2nd or maybe 3rd car is "in the breach" when the pullout lane ends, blocking your (RV) re-entry and forcing you to stop. Then you're doubly fooked. You have to start from a complete stop and you're at the very end of the pullout lane, with no speedup zone at all.
... this is why we can't have nice things ...
My daily commute involves a 2 lane highway (ie, 1 lane each direction) with a pullout for slow moving vehicles. Semi trucks and other heavy construction type vehicles use this road a lot, as it's the only viable route. They do almost always use the pullout, but they pull back in at the end without regard for anyone in the traffic lane. They have to -- they are even worse than any RV on getting started from a stop again. So I see this crap driving from the auto drivers almost every day. If I happen to be the first car waiting behind a truck, I race on past and then it's always the case that only 1 other car in a long line also make it past, when 6-7 should be making it. I also frequently witness the slow passing fool have to slam his brakes as the truck re-enters the lane.
I don't fault any RV for not using the pullout lanes.
> You're not meant to come to a stop. That absolutely kills what momentum you do have. It's exceptionally difficult to start a heavy vehicle from a stop. You're meant to pull out, maybe slow down a little, then pull back in, cars be damned.
The "cars be damned" part would be a collision, with the RV at fault. No thanks.
And the pullouts are not long enough to keep rolling, you have to come to a stop to have a chance to pick up speed again when there's a gap, otherwise you've just rolled to the end of the pullout and now you're sitting still with no room to accelerate before pulling into traffic.
I've not seen that kind of pullout. Well of course I have but they aren't designed for a slow moving vehicle to let traffic pass. They are just for safely stopping. Like fishing something out of your back seat, taking a quick break, sometimes there's a vista there, that kind of thing.
The turnouts designed for slow moving vehicles to let others pass, at least to my experience these are almost always signed far enough in advance (I'm sure there's a vehicle code mandating distance of signage) and they are at least ten or tens of car lengths long.
I think you are asking too much for any vehicle to pull out into one of those tinier kind of little turnouts for the sake of normal kind of driving/passing activity.
> The "cars be damned" part would be a collision, with the RV at fault. No thanks.
Agreed and this is why i would never use them were I driving an RV, and I don't blame others for not doing it. I'm just noting that I see the big trucks do this all the time. I'd estimate once a month I end up behind slow car panic stopping when he realizes the truck isn't having it.
I've driven just about everywhere west of the Dakotas. You're talking about the kind that's sort of like a new lane opening on the right, going parallel with the road for a good while, right? Those are incredibly rare, I think mostly in one region of California, like maybe the Yosemite area.
Ignoring those clearly-marked, friendly, and predictable pullouts, practically everything else is a total crapshoot you really don't know what it's going to be like until you've already driven past it. With a 38-foot 31,000 lbs class A, we made it the passenger's job to call out whether a pullout was safe or not, because the driver just didn't have enough time to notice it. Often we did manage to pull out of traffic for a moment and let 3-10 cars pass, but sometimes it just wasn't feasible.
Your own safety is concern #1 when driving. For a very simple reason: if you're not safe yourself, you cannot make it safer for others.
Others will have different ideas on what is safe. They may feel comfortable breaking traffic rules or pushing you(r vehicle) past your/its safety limits. Some have new cars and new tires and can go much faster than others in slippery conditions.
Spoiler: none of that is ever an excuse. Not with traffic police, not with accident investigators, not with emergency services. I don't know what condition your vehicle is in. I don't know how worn out your brakes are, how much grip your tires have. I don't know what happens in your car above that certain speed. I don't need to know; I need to be able to rely on you to operate your vehicle sufficiently safely. That is: such that it doesn't make the roads less safe for me.
> Many RVs I encounter even go out of their way to prevent passing.
Only you would know, but this could be something other than what it seems like.
When I had a motorcycle, I'd tail a slow vehicle for miles in anticipation of a passing zone. When we got there, they'd all of a sudden accelerate-- which I always assumed was them fucking with me, until one day I realized I do the same thing myself when in a car.
We speed up when we perceive it is safe to do so (long stretches of straight road), similar to unconsciously letting off the gas when you notice a cop running a speed trap.
If this is what you encounter, it may be an unconscious thing, or the RV driver consciously speeding up for your convenience. If they're swerving, consider that they're tall and wind pushes them around easily.
> When I had a motorcycle, I'd tail a slow vehicle for miles in anticipation of a passing zone. When we got there, they'd all of a sudden accelerate-- which I always assumed was them fucking with me, until one day I realized I do the same thing myself when in a car.
There's a mountain pass I travel a few times a year where this happens.
The limit is 45 mph throughout the curves, and that's a reasonable speed, though I prefer to go a bit faster, but will inevitably get stuck behind someone going 35.
We reach a point where there's a passing lane, and the limit is 55 mph. I try to pass the person that was going 35 mph before, and suddenly they seem to think that 70 mph is a reasonable speed. I have to pass these people regardless of how fast they want to go when there's a passing lane, because otherwise, I'll get stuck behind them once the passing lane ends and they decide to drop back down to 10 under the limit.
Luckily, these days, I have a car that can easily pass 98% of the other cars on the road, and the remaining 2% are already going at speed.
passing lanes usually open up on straight stretches of road with good visibility. Its like, here we are twisty, turning, and the speed limit is like 35 around these curves, and then we get to a 2 lane stretch straight up a hill with the 55 speed limit. What are we supposed to do?
be aware of the other people on the road and show some courtesy? before speeding up check and see if there are people behind you and let them pass before coming up to speed.
The sped limit is the speed limit. If it goes up, we go faster, if it goes down we go slower. It isn’t rocket science. The other person can still pass if they are willing to go over the speed limit, you aren’t in the left lane unless there is someone even slower than you in the right.
It’s in the name: speed “limit”. It’s not called “only allowed speed”. There are many reasons one should travel slower than it such as rain or to let vehicles pass.
for clarity, a safe driver would maintain a lower speed to allow the car line to pass.
Again, the speed limit, you aren't supposed to go faster than it, and if you want to go faster than that, its not really my problem.
> a safe driver would maintain a lower speed to allow the car line to pass.
They can totally pass, I'm just going the speed limit. Generally the passing lane is open for a couple of miles going up, they should have time to pass.
(this only applies to mountain highway driving anyways, where I'm at, the passing lanes are designed for trucks who can't go very fast up the hills, it isn't for idiots who want to go 85 around 35 MPH curves)
As a 25 foot Class C RV driver, I've encountered what you describe from heavy trucks, Class A's, other Class C's, Priuses, and Teslas. It's all over the place. I have to have a certain calm about it, especially on summer weekends on 101/SR2/SR20/etc in Washington.
The thing people don't realize is that speed limit advisory signs (on turns or downhills usually) are essentially mandatory for high CG vehicles - to avoid rollover risk.
To help you understand some reasons to refuse a pullout, here are the conditions that I think must be true for an RV or heavy truck to safely and practically use a pullout: (Maybe I'm missing something)
1) Vehicle is slower than the speed limit or lower than the safety speed advisory by more than 10 mph. (Yes, this is annoying for people that want to exceed the speed limit, but they can use passing lanes.)
2) Pullout must be visibly paved and clear for entry in advance of safe braking distance. (This is often a problem.)
3) The pullout must have good visibility behind it so the vehicle can safely get back up to speed from 0 after stopping. (Sometimes a problem.)
4) Traffic must be light enough such that rejoining the travel lane is feasible in less than a couple minutes. (This is often a problem.)
5) The pullout must have a safe path to return to the travel lane. (I have had to balk pullout attempts after nearing the pullout because this is not always immediately clear at a distance.)
6) Most importantly, the vehicle must not be followed either at an unsafe distance or by someone driving erratically. (I am not going to risk damage to my vehicle by braking for someone following too closely.)
Ah, Washington drivers! Paying no attention at all until someone nears their space, then all of a sudden VERY attentive and territorial yet unwilling to be actually aggressive, so instead just kind of interfering.
>>Ah, Washington drivers! Paying no attention at all until someone nears their space, then all of a sudden VERY attentive and territorial yet unwilling to be actually aggressive, so instead just kind of interfering.
>>Highway driving at its finest.
>>> Every single place you have lived has the worst drivers. Except for you.
>>> How does this make you feel?
It's the darndest thing: anyone who drives faster than me is a maniac and anyone who drives slower than me is a moron. Curiouser and curiouser.
I know this is an unusual strategy, but typically I want the people who drive faster than me to be as far in front of me as possible. That way when their terrible driving causes them to crash in a fiery explosion, I'm not anywhere near them.
And I want the people who drive slower than me to be as far behind me as possible. That way when their terrible driving causes them to crash in a fiery explosion, I'm not anywhere near them.
But I've never had much trouble getting the people who want to drive faster than me to go in front of me by just... letting them pass. Whereas the people who drive slower than me, now those are the assholes.
I'm in a different country, but I think drivers here are generally very reasonable. Very rare to see someone going well beyond the signed speed limit (unlike the US where it is shocking how much people speed). Always someone willing to let you in when you're trying to merge into a busy commuting route. I can't think of a bad driving experience (rude driver, etc) that I've had in my home state in at least 1-2 years.
I drove around southern France and parts of Germany and Portugal for a month last summer and didn’t see a single accident. I was impressed.
In DFW, when a gentle rain starts the calming sound of raindrops is followed by police and fire truck sirens as everyone loses their mind and starts crashing into each other on the roads for no reason.
I had to drive a windy, steep road near Santa Cruz last year (probably the 17 from San Jose down towards Scotts Valley) and local friends couldn't decide whether I should drive that road later that night (they said chance of drink drivers was fairly high) or in the morning after heavy rain (they said accidents were all but guaranteed). I went in the morning and there were indeed multiple accidents.
I can't think of a road or situation here in South Australia where anyone would need to be worried about either of those things to that heightened level. Yeah, take it easier when wet or foggy, or when tired, and drunk drivers exist, but not to the point of seriously warning people on a particular route.
Hwy 17 here is notorious for being windy, slippery when wet, difficult to see very far ahead, blind curves, poorly-marked entrances and exits, and: the only path between Silicon Valley (Los Gatos in the south) and Santa Cruz and points south. Over the years, I've seen better signage, more aggressive road clearing of debris after rain, and more police enforcement.
When I lived near Santa Cruz for a year and had to commute to Silicon Valley, I got very good at driving that stretch, knowing when I could do the curves fast, and when I needed to be cautious.
But if you're not a 'regular' on that road? Your advice was well-warranted.
In my experience most drivers are not very aware of their surroundings and just seem to do stupid things like form rolling roadblocks by accident. I wonder if RVs are just more noticeable because they are longer, and so their accidental traps tend to be bigger. The other vehicles that size are typically driven by professionals, who are at least a little more with-it. Usually.
My big pet peeve about RVs is when they're in the mountains on 2 lane roads and insist on driving with a foot of their RV over the centerline when going around blind curves.
I used to live in a small tourist town, and people died on a regular basis because of RVs doing that. You could spot the local drivers because they're the ones hugging the fog line when going around a bend.
I don't think people insist on it, it's just very technically challenging to drive any larger vehicle precisely. A Semi, a dump-truck, probably anything with air brakes, these have more stringent licenses and testing. You have to learn to drive them. You can go out today and buy a 3500 diesel truck that can tow 30,000 lbs, weighs close to 10,000 lbs on its own, a crew cab with a long bed coupled to a massive RV that is 45 feet long with triple axles, and the only thing you need to drive that is to have passed a driving test when you were 16 in your mom's Honda Civic.
Many RVs are 8.5 feet wide. Common highway lanes are 10 feet wide. There are curvy highways like route 1 that I swear are only 9' wide. I worry more about line selection and holding my rig inside the yellows than I worry about line selection when I'm racing my motorcycle. It's challenging for me and I drive things as a sport. I'm not covering for someone who went over the yellows, that's unforgivable, but I wanted to add some context for you.
Oh, I really do understand. When I lived in that town, I also had an RV and drove it on those same roads. It is challenging. What I (and most of the locals) would do, though, was to go very slowly around those bends. That takes a lot of the danger out of it.
In fact, there are advisory speed signs for those curves that are accurate -- if people followed them, there would rarely be an issue. Part of the problem, I think, is that if you're driving a car, those advisory speeds are far too slow (15-20 MPH on a 50 MPH road), but if you're driving an RV or big rig, those advisory speeds are critical. I think most non-pro drivers are used to driving cars and have trained themselves to ignore those signs.
I honestly think that people should have special training to be allowed to drive RVs, or at least the larger RVs. Something like a motorcycle tag.
> Common highway lanes are 10 feet wide.
These roads are also narrower than modern ones (they are some of the earliest "highways" built in the state). When I drove an RV on them, I tended to white-knuckle it. They're rather nervous-making.
I think that RV drivers are the least of the problems in mountainous areas. I find the big dualie drivers towing boats blasting by me at 10 over the speed limit on a rainy night the type of issue. They may know the roads (if they're local), but they don't know the weather and the wildlife. A tree could be down, or a deer in the road. But they sure love to ride my ass when I'm going a hair below the speed limit.
Most drivers think they're above average at minimum in their driving skill; most could use to take both a basic math course and a driver's safety class.
These lanes and pull outs aren't common everywhere. When I visited NZ, it took me a day or two to realize they had a purpose. RVers usually are not driving in their home country.
I just recently tried to use the side lane in DK to let others pass (set signal, decelerate, pull over as far as possible). It actually confused the other drivers so much that they didn't dare to take over, even when there was lots of space to do so.
Seconded, I was really confused until I watched a video shared. Never seen one of those in my life and I've done a lot of back road driving on the east coast. Typically we'll just have labeled passing zones.
It depends. If it is a passing lane and the RV is not passing, shame on them. If it is a small pullout you often cannot slow down fast enough to catch it unless you are really paying attention for it. Remember, slowing down a big rig (especially one with all your belongings in it) can be near impossible to do. But mainly the reason is probably that there is no training or licensing required to teach folks how to drive these things.
Often they are a short paved lane meant for slow vehicles to pull off onto to allow slower traffic to pass, but often on mountain roads, it's a gravel off-road area that serves the same purpose. But pulling into one can be a bumpy ride, and the gravel service means it's hard to accelerate quickly until you get fully back on the road so you need to be sure you have a lot of clear space behind you (which can be hard to ensure on twisty mountain roads).
My understanding is that these aren't like the overtaking lanes we have in Australia (where what was a 2 lane road becomes 3 lane with one additional lane for a period of time).
I think they are more like what we'd refer to as truck stops - an area off the road where you can pull over to stop.
I'd note this quote:
> Second, often times (in the USA at least), these pull-outs have rough terrain going in an and out of them. There will be a little bump or uneven ground that most vehicles wouldn't mind hitting every now and then, but in my rig, that causes the whole thing to sway back and forth ...
> Pulling into the pull-out, coming to a complete stop, waiting for everyone to pass..
No, it's neither of those things IMO. (I've driven a lot in Australia and in the US.) The latter you mentioned sounds like a truck-specific rest-stop - there are loads of those on the Stuart Highway, or heading over to Eyre Peninsula.
What they're talking about are turnout lanes which are a lane beside the road with no median/barrier and you're expected to slow down or maybe stop very briefly, purely to let faster traffic through. There are some up on the road past Pichi Richi Park to Quorn if you ever drive through the Southern Flinders, but they're not overly common in SA.
I've seen them formally in northern USA (Idaho going into Washington state, maybe) where they are risky and unclear, and I've seen informal ones on roads east of the Sierra Nevada which are like your quote - rough, unpredictable poorly laid asphalt or gravel.
Is there a distinction between turnout and pullout?
An RV is 20-30+ feet long. Thirty feet isn't enough time to slow and stop at speed. Let alone build up speed and reenter the main route. Even the one in your picture (much longer than 30') is an example of one that is risky for an RVer to use. People would use that to stop and take a photo or take their kid to the toilet, but proper ones are closer to an actual lane as in, same surface as the road, and longer. And no one would stop on them other than for 10 seconds to let traffic pass. Here's one on the southern side of Flinders Ranges Way here in South Australia (where I assume @NL still lives):
No, its literally a 100 feet or something, maybe 3 or 4 rv length, or 10 car length strip, in California its asphalted. You get off the road lane, you have to stop in it. Others pass you. Now you come back to road.
Same, never heard the term. Nor have I seen the lanes (I'm east coast).
Scotland has tons of these in rural areas, where the roads are literal single-track (only one lane wide). Used for on-coming traffic instead passing. It works fine, because the speeds are low and people are used it.
I was stuck behind a big RV recently who was driving part way over the center line most of the time. I eventually realized he was trying to avoid clipping all the low branches along the edge of the road.
I noticed the slow (right) lanes in California are the most beat-up. My guess is because the shipping trucks use them. This could be a possibility as well.
Perhaps this is the law, but unlike some other states, there is rarely signage to remind drivers (though I doubt even still it would the followed or enforced).
I've driven plenty of windy roads for years, and I've only been "stuck" behind a slow RV (with a line of traffic) once.
I've been behind plenty of RVs who don't drive as fast as I want to. But that's what happens on a public road. (These RVs still drive at a reasonable speed, just not as fast as I want to. IE 48mph in a 50 when I want to drive 55.)
The big problem is obvious drivers, who often are in passenger cars. I've been stuck behind far more oblivious drivers than RVs. These drivers do 20 in a 50, and ignore the long line of cars behind them.
Ha. I always do when I’m towing my trailer. People like that annoy me to no end. I first helped move an old Winnebago class A up to the small mountain town of Idyllwild above Palm Springs in California. The highway is steep and switchbacks up the mountain with great views of the desert below. I must have stopped 15 times on the way up to let others pass.
Gotta disagree here. Almost always when I get stuck behind something going 20 under, whether it's an RV or a Corolla, the driver of that vehicle blows past every available pullout and accelerates to 30+ over when a passing lane appears. Drivers are just raging assholes, no matter what they're driving.
I had the reverse experience last time I was driving in the US. Most RV owners seemed to be aware of people behind them and used the pull-outs fairly often. Drivers of Honda CR-Vs and similar vehicles, on the other hand, seemed oblivious to the idea that they might be holding other people up, and never got out of the way at all.
I'd imagine it's because it takes so much effort and gas to asymptote up to 40mph or whatever, that they can't fathom electing to stop and do it all again. Most tractor trailers have a large enough engine to handle going up hills with common cargo at highway speeds (exceptions exist, of course). From what I've observed, most RV's just don't.
I spent several months living out of my car+tent in national parks/forests and often referred to them as Ruins Views. Breathtaking scenery in those national parks, that you can't focus on when you're stuck in a line of twenty cars riding your brakes and smelling theirs, because Big Bob doesn't want to get his tippy palace going too fast.
I do get the appeal, but lugging around so much tonnage seems like a recipe for a bad time. Now I'm at a different life stage where I've been doing a bunch of towing with an underpowered SUV, and I make it a point to get out of peoples' ways. Luckily most of that has been on multilane highways where it's easy to do so.
If you’re driving you just can’t focus on scenery period, no matter how many cars you’re stuck behind. Whenever I ride as a passenger on roads I drive every day, I’m amazed at the details outside that I don’t see when I’m driving.
Just keeping a car on a road with no traffic takes a fair amount of focus: for evidence, just see how many people don’t do it and plow into objects that are alongside the road.
These kind of comments trying to invoke some tangential hobby horse ("safe driving") by taking a word out of context are soooo web forum.
Obviously, driving requires attention and is always one's main focus. Having driven various sizes of vehicles, it's quite clear that this amount of attention varies. For example, the sheer amount of work required to drive a 26 foot box truck gave me a healthy respect for truck drivers. On the original topic, I'd imagine a lot of RV drivers don't pull over or are actively hostile to being passed because they're so overwhelmed they don't want to pile on any more requirements. And while this means that they should be taking the opportunity to stop and recover, try telling someone who is drowning to stop thrashing.
Piloting a 2500 lb manual coupe barefoot in a non-wooded area on an empty road requires the lowest amount of work I've experienced. Driving that same car while having to continually gauge how hard the person in front of you is applying the brakes takes much more. Braking extra and creating more buffer room gives a slight reprieve, but at the ailing speeds ruined views tend to go on non-straight roads you'll inevitably catch right back up.
The person driving the RV that you're complaining about has just as much right to enjoy the national park as you do. My point is that if you want to enjoy the scenery, you need to get out of the driver's seat.
> The person driving the RV that you're complaining about has just as much right to enjoy the national park as you do
This makes no sense. If someone was blasting a trunk-shaking car stereo and I was complaining about that instead, would you say they had just as much right to "enjoy the national park" ? How about someone using a dirtbike on a trail? The way we keep these things enjoyable is by setting standards. And the examples that come to mind are roads where the prevailing speed was something like 35-40mph, but these big rigs were clogging them up at 15-20mph.
> My point is that if you want to enjoy the scenery, you need to get out of the driver's seat.
This is obviously false. Even the park maps point out scenic driving routes.
I really really wish turnouts were designed more like passing zones, with an actual lane.
Driving a huge RV I have trouble seeing and pulling off at my destination, let alone a fall-off-the-road-into-dirt pullout that comes up quickly around a turn.
I don’t think it’s RV specific - there are two types of people in this world people who drive in the passing lane and the people that hate them, some of them just own RVs…
