Rush Hour Driving Tactics

The last few days I have had the opportunity to drive not just on the
Interstate, but also on a major secondary road lined with shopping
centers and office buildings.

As I look ahead to see the traffic in front of me, it is absolutely and
painfully obvious that a significant number of drivers accelerate
heavily in open spaces only to step on the brakes at the next stoplight.

If I can see the upcoming stoplight, and see that it's been green for a
while, and see that there is cross-traffic piling up to go east/west, It
doesn't make much sense to me to try and speed up to get around the guy
in front of me to try and make it through the light that likely will
change to red in the near future.

Indeed, many cars (Acuras, souped up Honda Civics, and VWs mostly) like
to speed up as fast as they can, just to stop at a light to let me
cruise on up to be near them.

How do these people not notice this is happening to them?

There must be the one time out of five or six chances that this mindless
accelerating actually pays off and they slip through a yellow light to
keep on going while the rest of us stop and wait. The payoff must be
worth the embarrassment they get when they slam on the brakes and the
rest of us catch up.

Likewise, I see almost every day that the "fast lane" is not fast at
all. I usually cruise in the slow lane and notice, almost every day,
that in stretches of heavy traffic the fast lane turns into a line of
stopped cars far more frequently, and for longer stretches of time, than
I do in the slow lane.

Usually, I catch up with the speeders as they wait in the fast lane to
start moving again.

I think this is because so many people want to get into that fast lane
that the slow lane is freed up for steadily moving traffic like me.

I just hope that people don't figure this out. I like my sensible
secret. It's a lot less stress.

The exception to prove this rule is to get into the middle lane around
interchanges that are known for large neighborhoods and other
entrance/exit activity. Moving over at big interchanges is the polite
thing to do, so press the gas pedal and move over to allow smoother
traffic flow around these interchanges. Hitting the gas is better than
having to brake and accelerate multiple times while passing through an
interchange.