For the record: I think this piece is no more than cheap hedonism: “it feels good, so I’ll do it”. As such, it’s totally immature and unimportant. Baruch cheapens himself with such material. It’s sad that a writer with such talent wastes it on stupid things.

And it’s only because I’m not allowed to voice an opinion on what this says about TTAC’s editorial policy that I won’t.

To be honest, with the roads being smaller in size and “lorries” (heavy goods trucks/semis) being similar in size to the US, plus overall crowding on the roads, and so forth, you HAVE to be more competent in the UK/Europe to stay alive.

Hence, the governments are responsible enough to mandate better training before allowing folks out as drivers, on the public roadways.

Yes, it is true. There is no way for a handful of people (like TTACers) to try to get the slow-pokes out of the fast lane.

Flashing lights only infuriates them; they do not understand that you are simply saying in Euro-driver-signal-language “please move over to the right so I may go past thank you.”

The typical driver here takes it as an affront to their manhood (or perhaps femininity) and you are likely to end up going slower yet. Then eventually slowly passing them on the right (assuming a two lane road in your direction), regretably.

Passing on the right at speed differentials higher than about 10 mph is potentially lethal in the US.

But I see it all the time, especially in southeastern Michigan where drivers’ brains obviously all fell out.

got caught rolling a cigarette once (in college) if that counts, no ticket.

Let’s escalate…How about road head at 70+mph?

1. Jack Baruth’s obit after he dies in single-car accident. (This would be the least tragic scenario.)
2. Jack Baruth’s arrest for negligent homicide after causing an accident where innocent drivers or passengers were killed.
3. Jack Baruth becomes a ‘born-again’ safe-driving advocate, lobbying for better driver-training standards, increased traffic-law enforcement and slower national speed limit after a member of his family is killed by a driver who read and followed his ‘advice’ from one of these socio-pathic articles.

Driving styles between Europe (I’ve driven in France, Germany, and Switzerland) are very different than what we experience over here. Your reality is not ours. Of course everything would be safer if we practiced proper lane discipline, but unfortunately it goes both ways. People simply WON’T get out of the left lane. I spent the first few years of my driving life trying to “force” the European (and logical) convention of “stay right except to pass,” and the reality is that it just doesn’t work. At best you wind up stuck behind someone in the left lane going 5 under the speed limit, even if he’s the only car on the road, and at worst, they slam their brakes on you for having the gall to flash your high beams to suggest they move into the right lane.

In this driving culture of doing whatever you want, the rapid driver must find the clearest, most predictable place to pass. Often, this is the right lane.

Other parts of it, such as passing on the right to avoid being ticketed, is something I cannot safely respond to in a family oriented manner.

High speed differentials demand one thing: Lane discipline. Never, ever, ever, pass on the right. If a German passes on the right on the autobahn a few times he faces a few months of driving ban.

if you want to speed on a public road, get a flight ticket and drive the Autobahn, if Germany is too bureaucratic, go to the back highways of the UAE, endless stretches of 6 lane highways, with not one car in sight, and in the back roads, cameras do not exist… there you can easily top out a car for sustained periods with no worries of other traffic to deal with, and whole lot of room to spin out of control and stop without hitting anything, if you happen to spin toward the right that is….. just watch out for Camels,

Your note caused me to ponder the pathologic and sociopathic aspects of the behaviour described in the article… and I think the following gives a nice summary…

“Common characteristics of those with psychopathy are:
- Grandiose sense of self-worth
- Superficial charm
- Criminal versatility
- Reckless disregard for the safety of self or others
- Impulse control problems
- Irresponsibility
- Inability to tolerate boredom
- Pathological narcissism
- Pathological lying
- Shallow affect
- Deceitfulness/manipulativeness
- Aggressive or violent tendencies
- Lack of empathy
- Lack of remorse, indifferent to or rationalizes having hurt or mistreated others
- A sense of extreme entitlement
- Diminished levels of anxiety/ nervousness and other emotions
- Poor judgment, failure to learn from experience
- Lack of personal insight
- Inability to distinguish right from wrong
- ein echt winzig Schniedel”

And then I realized that we may have found the adult manifestation of at least the first symptom in the MacDonald Triad. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacDonald_triad)

They get just a little over-stimulation / emotional-overload and then go right back to whatever they were doing. I tend to let the weather be my guide. Generally, if it is a day when no one would want to stand next to a car, the road is pretty much yours.

In the state where I live, we also have to keep an eye out for State Patrol airplanes. The highways have marks that measure-off a mile and they use those marks to calculate your speed. When it is really overcast, that system does not work well.

As you are well aware 130-135 is totally do-able and not at all scary in a Pheton. That’s all mine will do, but it does it very well.

1.Lets say you know the stretch of highway like the back of your hand and you see that the right lane is perfectly open (like it usually is and you know for a fact that there is no merging lane or exit for a few miles), with the common tendency of traffic (including tractor trailers) to stay in the lane next to the right lane. Maybe one would go ahead and use this lane to pass (I’ve done it when I lived in an area closer to interstates). This is what I’m assuming the OP meant.

2. Lets say you are driving down a divided two lane highway (2 lanes in each direction), and somebody is perfectly content driving 5-10mph under the speed limit. The right lane is wide open. Are you going to honk your horn and flash your high beams? Maybe you’d opt to pass on the right.

I used to drive fast(er), but I don’t own cars anymore and the appeal really disappeared after a few events in my life happened and after gas shot up to over $4.50 a gallon in the states. Plus where I live now state troopers will pull over multiple offenders for going 2mph over the posted speed limit. Just doesn’t pay for me, so I’m usually the guy bumbling along in the cruising lane going exactly the speed limit. I’m not at all opposed to driving above 100mph on desolate roads (if nobody else is there the only person you are likely to hurt is yourself). However, 100 should be a cutoff in more urban areas for those with a “need for speed”. I’m not here to scold, if you want to drive fast by all means, just don’t complain about gas, vehicle maintenance/issues, or tickets. But if you drive at those speeds you have a lot of money to blow or somewhat immature (for me it was the latter).

dolo54:
To me, there’s an art and style to going fast. And it’s not about a white knuckle grip on the wheel and heart pounding adrenaline. It’s about being patient, relaxed, staying back, not tailgating, waiting for that pocket 1/2 mile up ahead to open up, then punch it and leave everyone far behind, including the guy in the SUV tailgating 20 over 10 feet from your back bumper in the left lane.
+1 more. When I was into speeding, this was pretty much how I drove. Never tailgated, just waited for a patch of empty highway.

Anyone else ever roll a joint while steering with your knees on the interstate?

Nothing’s as impressive/stupid as changing into uniform on the way to work at 55. Bonus points for juggling a cup of coffee and a sandwich at the same time.

Ah. The things we do as kids when we’re young, stupid and immortal.

http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/editorial-the-truth-about-driver-training-and-the-myth-of-active-safety/

We all do stupid, irresponsible things occasionally. Having lots of skill and/or a competent vehicle raises the limits of what you might get away with. So does luck. I recently bought a 1000 cc sport bike, and hitting triple digits is cake. I did it during my 15 minute morning rush hour commute just this morning. I was not pushing the bike, nor my comfort level. The same could/would not have happened in my ‘92 Jetta. Of course, all arguments wouldn’t matter if something actually went wrong…

This is a car- and driving- enthusiast website, yet judging by these responses a reader is led to believe that no one here is ever interested in playing with the limits of their car, nor engaging in challenging driving. Of course respect for your fellow motorist/man is important, but no one here has advocated getting in other traffic’s way. Much to the opposite, actually.

I don’t go on “The Truth About Being a Trophy Wife” and call people names when an SUV nearly swerves into me because the driver’s turned around fussing with her kids, nor do I rant on “The Truth About Being a Pompous Businessman” when someone on his cell phone runs a stop sign because he was busy checking his email. I accept that people do stupid shit sometimes, and as long as nothing was harmed, I continue my day and try to keep a watchful eye out. Is it so much to ask that people don’t come at me with flaming torches because I passed them at a higher rate of speed than they were expecting?

I hope Jack keeps up with these articles, because if nothing else, I look at it this way: presumably whether he posts this stuff in public or not, it’s probably not going to change Jack’s driving behaviour. So his in-your-face writing style and brass-balled antics may as well provide me with some entertainment.

Crashes in the right shoulder are actually quite common, and often deadly — generally the moving vehicle is speeding, and it hits a non-moving vehicle. Air bags and seat belts aren’t going to help you much — you might as well just grab a handgun, load one bullet, and play Russian Roulette. Your odds are pretty darn similar.

I subscribe to a free service called “flashnews” in my local area — most of the “news” is in the form of up-to-the-minute press releases by law enforcement agencies. Gosh golly, there are fatal accidents just about every day. And the agencies provide plenty of pictures — it’s just a daily parade of, usually, “plain and simple poor judgement.”

Speed is fun, but you only live once. And all of the other people on the road who you put at risk aren’t having fun when you risk their lives, either. You might be the best driver in the world, but you just can’t know whether that one car in front of you is going to stomp on the brakes when you have no-where else to go — it just takes one move by one car, and you could wind up with some guy sweeping parts of your skull off the pavement, and tossing them into the garbage.

The concept is “respect” — respect your life, respect the lives of the passengers in your car, and respect the lives of all the other people who have to share the road with you. If you insist upon “learning the hard way,” it’s quite likely that you’ll take a few of these other folks out along with you.

I’ve got no problem with hustling a little bit, “making time” on a road trip, and so on — but there are times when it’s worth your while, and times when it’s not. The game isn’t “push it and try to get away with it” — it’s “drive competently with safety as your number one priority.”

If you really want to drive fast for the sport of it, well, there’s plenty of “sport” to be found on local racetracks all over the country. Wherein you can find “controlled” environments, and protect your life and limbs with safety equipment on your vehicle and on your body.

Here’s hoping that my fellow TTACers with the “need for speed” will satisfy it on a race track, rather than winding up in some “flashnews” message in my Inbox.

The article and actions are really about pecking order. Pecking order on the racetrack, the highways and this website. A mentality so disturbed by associating with better racers that they have to turn to the highways to achieve the rank of BEST. Since the other “competitors” are such easy prey because obviously they aren’t even playing the game, it requires taking the game to psychotic levels to disgiuse how hollow are the “victories”.

Then there’s the attempt to coax more mileage out of the wins by describing them, and the superior skill and equipment that allows such lopsided triumphs, on this car/driver-oriented website.

Practically every website with discussion has an undercurrent of pecking order dynamics. It’s too bad the most ardent pecking order competitors don’t have a website set up for just that purpose where they could duke out who’s the meanest, toughest, wealthiest etc hombre out there. Rather than the hot players spoiling innumerable websites with their easy pickins and snobbery.

Fast drivers ask us to believe they sometimes must speed to save time. Well, if they count the time needed to acquire the vehicle and some skills needed for this negligent activity, they sure don’t save that much time speeding.

This is merely neurotic if they only talk about it or confine it to venues where everyone is playing the same game, like a racetrack. But forcing this game on people who aren’t playing it, to the extent of risking their lives to the degree described, is pathological. No one’s ego has a valid claim on someone else’s life.

I agree with the poster who describe how developing your “flow” of driving can be deeply satisfying, despite it not being in other driver’s faces like going 200mph.

I would venture that great achievement at driving skill is less impressive than, say, working one’s way up the pecking order of those who contribute to making the world a better place. In that context, street racing seems kind of infantile.

Having said that: You’d think there’d be a satellite, cell and/or CCTV tool that could give a driver with Mr Baruth’s idioticparticular tendencies traffic data 5-10 miles ahead. Average/hi/lo/σ speeds, vehicle density, & law enforcement locations. Maybe Google can manage something with Garmin.

dolo54:
To me, there’s an art and style to going fast. And it’s not about a white knuckle grip on the wheel and heart pounding adrenaline. It’s about being patient, relaxed, staying back, not tailgating, waiting for that pocket 1/2 mile up ahead to open up, then punch it and leave everyone far behind, including the guy in the SUV tailgating 20 over 10 feet from your back bumper in the left lane.

+1. You can speed on public roads without being a hazard.

If done frequently enough, it’s civilized life that gets broken.

didn’t he get the same response in his VW Phaeton escapades at over twice the national speed limit?

does he actually drive like that? does he actually condone or carry out what he writes? who knows? who cares? maybe it’s just plain fiction

it’s just words on a screen… you can watch videos on youtube of that stuff if you really want to

i kinda believe the author was probably born at the wrong time… he sounds like he belongs in the same era as brock yates

That said, interesting piece… though I wouldn’t condone using the shoulder on an unfamiliar road. If you don’t know the condition of the pavement or the level of garbage/dust/detritus on the shoulder, it’s not advisable. The best places to do good highway pace have at least three to four lanes, giving you ample space to pass those idiots doing 45 on the left lane… legally.

It takes a fair amount of telepathy to anticipate the actions of the cars in front of you. And learning this is perhaps more important than learning how to drive… and is something even “slow” drivers should learn.

Threading the fastest line through traffic without eliciting honks, brake squeals or middle fingers is quite satisfying. Especially if the guy in the Bimmer who was riding your ass fifteen seconds ago is still stuck in the wrong lane tailgating a semi.

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/810998.PDF

Bottom line – young males shouldn’t drink and drive!

Btw, only 12% of speeding fatalities occurred on Interstates.

(Note: Not condoning speeding…just looking at facts.)

Pass me on the right,
like a moron,
and I call the cops,
on my cell phone,
and give them your,
twenty, vector, desctiption and plate,
and I’m gonna pray the cops bust your ass,
before you kill someone.

(sorry the 2nd stanza doesn’t rhyme,
but then the sentiment is more important that the form here…)

“Sometimes innocent people get hurt—if any of us are truly “innocent” in this world. Sometimes the driver will go to jail or beyond that to the penitentiary. Sometimes people die. “

Jack’s conclusion: sometimes people die, but they’re all suckers and I don’t give a shit.