Peak Hour Driving - Unspoken Rules

In my continuing series on driving, today I would like to talk about peak hour driving and the unspoken rules that exist, concentrating on a couple of topic.

The first topic concern those of trucks. I, and probably a lot of other people, don't like getting caught behind trucks because due to their size, they will inevitably drive slowly. This means that many cars try to overtake trucks as soon as possible.

To try and overtake trucks require the cars in front of you to also drive quickly and overtake them first. This means there is an unspoken rule that when the truck is stopped in the left lane at a light, you only go to the middle (when there are 3 lanes) or right lane (when there are 2 lanes) if you intend to step on the accelerator real hard when the light changes and quickly overtake the truck. This manoeuvre has to be quick because all the cars in the right lane still intend to turn left after a few hundred metres so everyone needs to quickly overtake the truck and then change lanes back to the left side.

Some people though do not understand this rule and spoil it all for everyone. They go slowly and block all the cars behind them, thus meaning everyone else cannot pass the truck and have to change lanes back behind the truck and go slowly waiting to turn left. Take note if you're one of these people. If you're going to go so slowly, slower than the truck, you might as well stay behind the truck and give the rest of us the chance to go pass the truck.

In peak hour traffic, the chance to turn right at a green light is very limited. Hence, when the lights are still yellow, you KEEP GOING. Generally most people know and will keep turning right when the lights are yellow, in most cases, one or two cars even sneak through when the light has just gone red. Usually the light only stays green long enough for about 2-3 cars to turn right before it turns yellow. When there is a queue of 10+ cars waiting to turn right, if you stop when its yellow, you are denying another 3-4 cars from turning. This means if you're at the back of the queue, you might have to wait 3 sets of lights, which is probably 10+ minutes. C'mon, some of us have to try and get to work on time, and since we left it to as late as possible, we need everyone else to co-operate and keep turning when the lights are yellow hehehehe.

Finally, the last unspoken rule is that if traffic is going at a crawl, you should leave a gap if possible to let cars turning left or right from a side street to go. It could take forever to get out of a side street if no one lets you through. I'm sure we all know the frustration when we are the ones that have to do that. So why not let someone else through so they can return the favour next time. It's not like the traffic is going anywhere anyway. Its just crawling so stopping for a second to let a car through is not going to delay you at all. If traffic is moving fast, of course you can't, and in fact shouldn't stop, because you will only cause accidents.

So those are some of the unspoken rules I think that exist, or should exist, between drivers during peak hour traffic. If we all do these things, everyone will get to where they are going faster and be much happier people. :-) And that concludes this community message, hope you all can apply it soon.