Spreading a little happiness on the highway

This one time a couple of months ago, I was driving along on the highway (probably somewhere between Sydney and Canberra). My mind was quite active as usual. While observing the behaviour of my fellow drivers on the road, I realized something interesting. I'll tell you what it is, but first some background information to put it into context.

Generally on Australian roads the rule is, "keep left unless overtaking". The reason of course is to keep slow vehicles (vehicles travelling under the speed limit) in the left hand lane. If any vehicles are travelling at (or above) the speed limit, and they come up behind a slow vehicle, they use the right hand lane to overtake the slow vehicle(s). After overtaking, they return to the left hand lane.

Officially, you're not meant to drive in the right hand lane if the left hand lane is free, no matter what your speed is. Presumably if a cop sees you driving in the right hand lane for no good reason, he can fine you (although this has never happened to me, but more on that later).

Now, being a hypermiler, I sometimes choose to drive under the speed limit to save a bit of fuel. If the limit is 110 km/h, I sometimes drive at 100 km/h. The trouble with doing this is that this can be an annoyance to other drivers going at 110 km/h because they have to do an overtaking maneuver. I know this can be annoying because I myself do get annoyed when I'm driving quite fast to get somewhere in a hurry and come up behind a slow vehicle. It's doubly annoying if there are other cars around and you have to wait until it's clear, and then once you start to overtake, the slow vehicle speeds up! This tends to happen often on hills. A vehicle will slowly struggle to the top, and then as you're overtaking them, the hill crests and then the they speed up going downhill.

Anyway, back to the present. So I'm driving along at 100 km/h and I then realized that I would be less of an annoyance to other drivers if I was in the right hand lane. As long as there were few cars on the road, and most of them were travelling at the speed limit in the left hand lane, they could just speed past me and not have to worry about overtaking me. This strategy actually seemed to work quite well the last few times I've been to and from Sydney.

This strategy only works when the conditions are right:

1. There should be few cars on the road. If there are many cars on the road, then there will be a lot of overtaking going on, and all the lanes will probably just be full of cars. There will be lots of slower vehicles in the left hand lane and the right hand lane will be mostly populated by cars going quite fast, either overtaking (and returning to the left hand lane) or just plain trying to be somewhere in a big ol' hurry. Trying to drive slow in the right hand lane is obviously a bad idea in this situation.
2. There should be a fair amount of spacing between cars. A car is more likely to overtake another if they're close together. If the probability is high that an overtake is going to take place, you probably don't want to be in the right hand lane when it happens because you'll most likely be an annoyance.
3. Most cars should be going at the same speed. When cars are travelling at different speeds, there will be a lot of overtaking happening. In this situation, it is best to be in the left hand lane.

Sometimes you'll see a car coming up behind you travelling in the right hand lane the whole time. Just move to the left, wait for him to pass, then move back to the right. This is what I call an "undertake" maneuver.

So while the rule is called "keep left unless overtaking", a more accurate description that takes this strategy into account is "keep left unless travelling above or below the speed limit". But since it only works when all the conditions are right, there's no way to fit a description that takes all the factors into account on a road sign. But it's probably a bad idea for "normal people" to do this. I haven't thought too hard on it, but perhaps it won't work if everybody does it. Just like how if 1% of the population in a society are thieves then it kinda makes sense, but if 100% of the population are thieves then it doesn't really make sense. Sorry but I don't really know how to explain it better than that.

The strategy is probably "illegal" because it's a violation of the "keep left unless overtaking" rule, but I've not noticed any serious enforcement of the rule. If you get unlucky, it's unlikely that the police or the courts will take you seriously if you try to claim that you're doing good by describing this strategy to them.

Sometimes though, this strategy can backfire, as it did today on the way back from the bush dance at Bundanoon. Cars A and B were travelling at the same speed in the left hand lane, probably around 105-110 km/h. I was doing 100 km/h in the right hand lane. I had been keeping an eye on them for quite a while in my rear-view mirror, and thought it was a low-change, low-risk situation, so I just waited for them to pass by me (on my left). As Car A came up alongside me, Car B suddenly decided to come into the right-hand lane behind me. I couldn't go into the left hand lane as Car A seemed to be taking forever to pass. Car B flashed me. Finally Car A passed me, and I moved behind him. Car B then passed me on the right. Both cars went ahead some way, and then Car B went back into the left lane, behind Car A! I thought this was pretty bizarre as both of them could have just passed me on the left, and exactly the same situation would have resulted with less stress and annoyance.

Anyway, if you think you're up for the challenge, try it and let us know how you go. I'd be keen to see what others can build upon this.