Fun Online Polls: Irish universities; motorway lanes

Thanks for your input here, I emailed my son the link and that is the end of that.
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This week, yet more bansturbation: persecuting people who stay in the middle lane on the motorway.

The full article is at the BBC, which is surprisingly even-handed, e.g. "Motorways are currently the safest roads in the UK..."

Newsthump took it to one extreme and reported that there were calls for middle-lane hoggers to face the death penalty while The Daily Mash took the other tack and reported that the middle lane was voted the "best lane".

I know that there is a lot of fancy maths involved with variable speed limits and so on - it is better to drive at an average speed of 60 mph all the way than to be alternate between 40 mph and 70 mph or more - but AFAICS, if the national speed limit is 70 mph and you are doing 70 mph (or the same speed as the cars ahead of you if slower), then it can't possibly matter which lane you are in.

[For sure, I can see good reasons for lifting the national speed limit to 80 mph or even abolishing a formal upper limit and having a variable speed limit decided from minute to minute by the clever mathematicians and motorway engineers, but let's stick with 70 mph to illustrate the point.]

Seeing as I have every intention of bowling along at 70 mph or thereabouts, to save me the faff of arriving behind a lorry or a pensioner, or somebody approaching pension age in a Mazda MX5, waiting for a safe gap, indicating, overtaking, waiting until I'm a safe distance ahead of the lorry, dropping back into the slow lane and then repeating the whole f-ing exercise half a minute later, I'd rather stay in the middle lane, thank you very much.

But what does everybody else think?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.