FITM-K t1_itqs5ek wrote
Reply to comment by JustDubbinAround in Left lane campers by CPgang
I was asking about which was safer in general (i.e. leads to fewer injuries/accidents overall), not which was safer specifically for the driver of the car being passed. Obviously, if the only concern is your own safety, letting speeders pass is the safer approach.
> Additionally, the right-hand lane is the safest lane on an Interstate highway (unless you're near an active entrance).
"Unless" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, lol. It doesn't look like that's true, though. Crunch the data and it turns out the right lane is actually the least safe -- it's the slowest, yes, but also the most crowded and the one people are filtering in and out of for exits and entrances every few miles.
That said, I still prefer to travel in the right lane in most cases, and it's worth mentioning that the data above was accidents, rather than only serious or fatal accidents. The left lane had WAY fewer accidents, but I would imagine if it was limited to just fatal accidents the data might look different.
JustDubbinAround t1_itr76h6 wrote
I'll look at the study a bit more later, but as far as whether letting folks go is overall safer, I think that it is. The motorway fatality rate in Germany, for example, is only 1.74 per billion vehicle-km traveled. In the UK, it is 1.16. In the US, it is 3.38 (stats pulled from Wikipedia).
In the US, lane discipline is virtually non-existent. In fact, in my experience, Mainers are better about it than the rest of the east coast. People in other states just hang out in whatever lane they want on a multi-lane highway, and pass on whatever side they want, and it gets significantly worse if there are more than two lanes. In Germany and the UK, though, they are more strict about it. You only pass on the driver's side, and you move back over when done. No passing on the passenger's side allowed.
So, while I can't claim that getting out of the way is specifically what leads to the lower crash rates overall, there does appear to be a correlation. Of course, they also have stricter licensing standards in general, and bad drivers can take the bus or the train and stay off the roads, which is not really an option in most of the USA, so there's definitely more than one factor at play.
WikiSummarizerBot t1_itr78el wrote
Autobahn
>In 2014, autobahns carried 31% of motorized road traffic while accounting for 11% of Germany's traffic deaths. The autobahn fatality rate of 1. 6 deaths per billion travel-kilometres compared favorably with the 4. 6 rate on urban streets and 6.
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