The left lane is for passing

You can tell a great deal about a society by observing how people drive. Additionally, there is no surer way to insult a group of people than by criticizing how they drive. It is therefore with great bravery that I write the following words that will certainly place me firmly in the ranks of Alaskans reviled by other Alaskans: Alaskans don’t seem to be very good drivers.

Granted, the sample size that this observation is based upon might be a tad small to formulate such a bold conclusion, and a proper statistician would undoubtedly have objections to the methodologies employed, but I cannot escape the fact that my level of anger and disgust reaches absurd proportions each time I hit the flats on my way to Anchorage.

The left lane is for passing.

This simple truism seems to have escaped a good deal of the population, and I find myself chugging along at a cool 55 miles per hour while the person in front of me has their cruise control set to the exact speed of the car to their right. Maybe they are communicating, or passing items between the two cars. It seems that there should be a logical reason for this absurd scenario. My stubbornness does not allow me to leave the left lane even as the speed demon to the right slowly begins to pull forward and a vehicle size gap emerges in which to pass. No, I must stay the course, pressuring this sloth in front of me to speed up or merge right, teaching them a lesson in how to navigate these roads safely and properly. I daydream that the social pressure of a compact car with an angry driver directly behind them will cause such guilt that they will not only use the left lane for passing for the rest of their lives and reform other nefarious actions that they engage in, but also pull over and thank me for pointing out such an essential life lesson. Soon my wife grows impatient with my vigilantism and urges me to use the right lane to pass them, an action I would classify as short-sighted and unpatriotic.

Bad drivers are spread across the entire world of course, and certain vehicular peculiarities emerge based on the different societies. For instance, the French are legendary for leaving their turn signals on inadvertently. For miles and miles and miles.

Italians have been known to scrape the front bumpers of cars as they merge in front of them.

The drivers of Indonesia regularly ignore rules to such an extent that traffic patterns may change permanently making road signs obsolete.

The creativity of drivers in Russia is such that in busy times sidewalks are commandeered for cars.

The United Arab Emirates is famous for drivers that can somehow tip their vehicles on to two wheels and drive. In fact, there is a clip of this online in which a passenger climbs out on to the side of the car while it is on two wheels and changes its tire.

German drivers are famous of course for their seemingly reckless speed as they streak across Deutschland on the autobahn. Fortunately for Germany, its good citizens also are legendary for fastidiously applying rules, which makes for a seamless and pleasant driving experience there, providing you never, ever, go slow in the left lane.

So it’s not just Alaskans. Each society seems to harbor some idiosyncrasy, translate it and apply it to the road. Why we have chosen this particular one, this fantastically annoying, inconsiderate gesture of driving slow in the left lane, the world may never know.

I suppose to some of you it sounds trite and you are probably thinking: “So what, he gets to Anchorage five minutes later, what’s the big deal?”

There is more to it than that of course. If we let this go, if I no longer fight this with all of my being and give in to my wife’s tasteless nagging, where will this slippery slope lead us? Will the sorry drivers that now flaunt this rule take this win and choose some other automobile regulation to attack? Will Anchorage be known in the future as the city where drivers signal right when they are turning left? Will we welcome double or triple parking as the norm? Will some lawbreakers decide that red is the new green?

We cannot let this happen. We have already surrendered the sanctity of driving at illegally fast speeds in the left lane to these lawbreakers; we must not give them another inch.

Now if the driver in front of me was going slowly in order to balance on two wheels while some daredevil was out changing a tire that would be a different story.

Pete LaFrance grew up in Palmer and has moved back to the area after a number of years living abroad.