Get Out Of That Lane

I enjoy driving.  I especially enjoy long drives on the interstates. From New Castle, Pennsylvania, to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, for our recent vacation, it is 560 miles of interstate highway driving.   I readily volunteered my almost new car (a.k.a. the white diamond limo) for the trip, as long as I was the driver.  (To quote the Dustin Hoffman character Raymond from Rain Man, "I'm an excellent driver.")  We drove through some beautiful, if mountainous, country--Greene County, Pennsylvania; much of West Viriginia; the westernmost tip of Virginia; and Tennessee. 

I also like to drive fast.  Not Indy 500 fast, or NASCAR fast, but, I dare to say, a bit-higher-than-the-posted-speed-limit fast.  One of the unspoken rules of U.S. interstate highways is that if you drive the speed limit in good weather, you will be passed by every truck, SUV, car, grandma, and Yugo on the road.  So you have to go faster than the speed limit.  I like to go more than the speed limit, if conditions allow.  To do so, however, on the two lanes almost all of the interstate highways are, you have pass, legally, on the left.  So, as I drive, I spend a good bit of time in the left hand lane.

Except when some slowpoke is walking his, or her, automobile in the left hand lane.

I hate people who drive  incessantly, mindlessly, unawaredly, SLOWLY, in the left hand lane.  They are oblivious of their surroundings.  They don't see the cars piling up behind them which want to pass the even slower trucks or cars on the right.  They don't understand that they pose a danger to themselves and others.  

And they prevent me from going faster.

At one time I might have stereotyped these drivers.  (Yes, older women, if you are guessing.)  But after 1,715 miles of vacation driving last week, and 18 months of quasi-commuting between New Castle and Pittsburgh on Interstates 79 and 376, I can safely say I've seen all kinds of stupid people hogging the left hand lane.  These include blue-haired women of a certain age, bald-headed men of that same certain age, teenage girls, dads or moms with the family in the back, and lots of others.  White, Black. Any color you want.     

I want the state police trooper to pull them over for violating state law.  I want them to move over.  I want them to get out of my way.  I want them to learn better driving etiquette. 

And all I get is mad.

So, to all those people who love to drive in the left hand lane on superhighways, and you know who you are, get out of that lane and let me pass.