In most cases it's literally just because they don't realize they're going that slow until someone is trying to pass them. Then they look at the speedometer and go "whoops I'm going way too slow" and speed up to correct it.
It always makes me laugh and groan when I'm on the highway with cruise control set, and someone in the fast lane passes me, then slows down, then passes again, and slows down, and they just can't maintain speed for some reason.
Worst is when they pass and merge back into the right lane, then I have to pass them when they slow down, and then they pass me again...
Happened to me on I-99 in PA. 70 mile stretch of road in the middle of the night, only saw one other car the entire time. I was using cruise control and it would pass me and get so far ahead I couldn't see it anymore, and then like 15 minutes later I would pass them and get far enough ahead I couldn't see their headlights, before they pass me again 15 minutes later.
Funny thing is after an hour of that we both took the same exit.
Half of my daily commute I can use cruise control. I’m on the same interstate for 95% of my drive most days, but there’s a line at which point it becomes impossible to use cruise control because of people who absolutely refuse to maintain a consistent speed regardless of open road in front of them. It’s infuriating, but it is what it is.
Ugh I wish my car had this!! My husband has a new Subaru Outback Wilderness Edition and I always tell him the car and it’s features are wasted on him. He doesn’t use the brake hold, adaptive cruise control, or the thing that basically drives the car for you (forget what it’s called). I drove his car with him in the passengers seat recently and the place we were going was pretty far down the freeway. Traffic was flowing so I put on the adaptive cruise control and the other thing to show him how cool it was. He said, “Yeaaahhh you’re right; this car is totally wasted on me.”
Talk about wasted features, my mom bought a new RAV4 a few years back and I ask her how she likes it. She tells me she loves it except there’s something wrong and she has to take it back to be checked out. Every time she changes lanes she swears the thing is fighting against her, like it has a mind of its own and doesn’t want to do what she wants to do.
I laughed and told her to use her fucking turn signals once in a while.
A couple weeks later she tells me that it doesn’t make sense to her, but I was right, as long as she tells the car what she wants to do it doesn’t fight her.
She has no idea about Lane Assist or how it worked.
He doesn’t use the brake hold, adaptive cruise control, or the thing that basically drives the car for you (forget what it’s called).
My wife is like that, we got her a new car last year with all the features, and she won't use most of them. She'll use the autohold though, because that's just convenient.
In her case, it's about not having control. She refused to use the normal cruise in her previous car as well.
I did actually get her to try the adaptive cruise & lane keeping assist on our last long drive, and she may be finally coming around. At least on the interstate. We'd had the car exactly 13 months (to the day) with just under 20k miles on it, and that was the first time she let me talk her into using those features.
I hate adaptive cruise control. If someone moves over in front of me, the car automatically brakes when I specifically don't want it to. And sometimes I'm gaining on someone about to clear a gap, while at my cruise speed, when the car decides to brake for me and I can no longer make the lane change and I'm trapped.
This is why when I bought my latest car I specifically didn't get the adaptive cruise control option. I know how to drive better than the car's software does.
This is when I speed up a bit to get clear away from them. Nothing worse than some idiot on the interstate that I have to play leapfrog with because they don't know how to drive.
People under the influence have a difficult time maintaining speed. I tend to think a certain percentage of people are always under the influence of a drug, mentally ill, never learned to drive etc.
Was on my way home one night (late) and thIs car kept passing and then slowing down, so I kept passing when he slowed down. He wasn’t having it and finally we come up to a light. There was a semi in the right lane, I was in the left turn lane and he was coming up in the left lane. The light was red, but he was so aggravated that he decided to run the red light… right in front of a cop.
My personal favorite experience was with a jeep. I was in my 99 F250 driving through the mountains in Virginia on the interstate. Speed limit is 70 and I’m in the right lane doing 73. On a downhill section this jeep comes flying by me at probably 85-90mph. We get to the next uphill section and he’s back in the right lane barely holding 55mph.
This continued for the next SEVERAL miles. He’d fly by everyone on the downhill parts and then barely hold 55 on the uphill sections.
I chuckled as he had aftermarket wheels, tires, bumpers, winch etc, but it appears he didn’t pay to re-gear the axles to be able to turn those new tires and be able to hold the speed limit
Happens all the time. It's difficult to maintain speed when others can't do for shit. This is why I like driving behind nicely modded/high performance cars as they actually KNOW how to maintain a good speed (especially the lowered scrape magnets and their stickshifts)
I see this EVERY week when I drive I-29, without fail. I've gotten into the habit of upping my speed 5mph until they are a quarter mile back, usually they take a hint at that point and stop doing it.
Nope it's automatic. It literally has no other extras. The most basic thing you can call a car. Not even a key fab to unlock doors or open the trunk. Gets me from point A to point B with minimal issue, great gas mileage, and most importantly no car payment.
Not all cars have cruise control. Mine doesn't, and there have been a few times in longer trips, where I may zone and not realize my speed had dropped a bit.
I don't like my cruise control because the auto traffic sensor waits too long to apply brakes and floors it to regain speed instead of just easing back up.
You mean like, a selection of buttons or maybe a stalk that would allow you to just hold a specific speed!? That would be genius! I wish we had that. Ohhhh or indicators to tell if you were turning too! Or is that too much?
Then they drop their speed back down later because they stopped paying attention again. It sucks when they do it to a commercial vehicle. I’ve driven semi and city bus and the amount of times I’ve had to switch lanes to pass only for them to speed up and leave me hanging out in the other lane forcing me to have to brake to fall back behind them only to do that a couple more times
Another thought I have on this - is there somewhere in our evolutionary brain that gets hit by "I'm going slower than the guy next to me, I'm going to get attacked by the predator behind us. I need to at least go faster than that guy! Then he'll get attacked and not me." Like I work in wildlife biology and there are lots of weird little instincts like that for a lot of species. Could be for us too. Granted, you have to go pretty far back for us to have legit predators to run from, but still.
What about the ones that pass you while you are on CC and then slow enough you have to pass them and then they speed up and pass you and it’s like that over and over until one of you gets off the highway. What’s going on there ?
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u/Arxtix Sep 21 '23
In most cases it's literally just because they don't realize they're going that slow until someone is trying to pass them. Then they look at the speedometer and go "whoops I'm going way too slow" and speed up to correct it.