Impatient drivers.

You are best to just slow down, not violently, just ease off the throttle, they soon get the idea and drop back, you can then accelerate again as needed.

Erratic drivers may have mental problems and looking for a fight, best to ignore completely.

I had an incident with one just last week, I was stationary, and a small van backed toward me, when he was about three feet from me and showing no sign of deviating from a collision, I hooted. He leapt out screaming and jumping up and down in rage. It was completely bizarre. This was at 8.30 in the morning. The van was marked PCC solutions.

Best not to provoke them in the first place and let them just bugger off into the distance and pick the fight with someone else.

He clearly expected you move out of his way to permit him to continue reversing for as far as he wanted to go.

And do drivers of other vehicles never take offence?

Do these drivers always stay in lane 1 on those motorways?

The lanes were full

My belief is that he had not looked in his nearside mirror and could not see me in his offside mirror, my unexpected hoot gave him a shock and he reacted badly, he then could not climb down from his idea that somehow I was in the wrong, perhaps he worked it out later.

Then they can not be taking offence at you driving at the same speed as the vehicle in front of you.

There were plenty of space in front of me because most other drivers completely ignored the 30mph gantry signs, but I didn't want to.

They've recently introduced 20 mph speed limits on pretty well all other than main roads round here. On one particular road it changes from 30 to

20 half way along. Which doesn't suit white van man. And they don't have the performance to overtake between bollards. So can often be seen going the wrong side of them.

Top of my wish list for car accessories is a ray gun capable of completely vaporising middle lane hogs (especially when there is what we physicists would call a population inversion: Outer lane packed, middle lane busy, inner lane empty).

I saw a car hogging lane three of four the other day, doing about 55 or so, I and many others undertook it, I could see it just stayed in the third lane when I was a half mile or so further on.

As to a ray gun, I would like a self aiming mirror to reflect back some of the dangerously glaring/mal-adjusted headlights that abound now.

So why not concentrate your wrath on the outer lane hogs first? Since (as you say) outer lane is busier than middle lane, then why are they staying in the outer lane?

the outer lane is full because of the middle lane hogs

Not in my experience. Outer lane is more full because the drivers just want to stay there. (because they're afraid of losing their slot) Sometimes just the same as the middle lane drivers prefer to stay there. (because of lorries and/or joining slip roads).

MrCheerful wrote: [ [snip]

Several years ago I used to drive in Germany occasionally - on motorways. No middle lane hogs there, partly because there was no blanket speed limit. After passing a slower vehicle, you always moved over promptly because the person coming up behind you might be going

***very much*** faster. I would cruise at perhaps 120kph and I'm sure I was passed by vehicles doing over 200kph. The situation as regards a blanket speed limit may be different now.

Having said that, where there was a speed limit (perhaps for roadworks) it was obeyed by everybody.

Maybe the German population is generally better disciplined ...?

If traffic is moving in queues then you SHOULD stay in lane

I think that there are only few stretches now left with free speed in Germany. Incidentally, road surfaces for such stretches of German autobahn's are frequently monitored by road services for smoothness. Just shows that high speed is not just about pedal to the metal...

There is a funnly rule here that you're strictly not allowed to 'undertake'... I saw a clip on youtube where a guy was nicked by police as he was forced past the police car on the wrong side since that lane was slowed down. In the opinion of this driver, it looked like a set up by police to fill their book. Hence he challenged this in court and the case was dismissed.