I am convinced that when I took my driving test in 1983 I was asked by the examiner, ‘What lane of a three-lane motorway should you use when driving at a speed of 70 mph?’ And I am equally sure that the ‘correct’ answer to this question at that time, as given by the early 1980s version of the Highway Code, was ‘the middle one’.
My memory is that the three lanes of a motorway back then were designated 1) the slow lane, 2) the fast lane and 3) the overtaking lane. Whenever I mention this, however, no one else remembers anything of the kind. Rather predictably, about one in three people then takes the bait and embarks on a long rant about people ‘hogging the middle lane.’
In reality, this practice is much rarer now than it was a few years ago. As one motoring writer observed, middle-lane hogging is one of those problems — along with people leaving their rear fog lights on — which seem to have largely disappeared, but which are permanently retained on the list of things people like to rant about.
What is the rule? Some teutonically minded people say the rule is perfectly clear: you should always pull over to the left when there is space available to do so. Other people (wisely, I think) argue that it makes no sense to make traffic in the left-hand lane any denser than it needs to be, since that will slow everyone down.
I used to take the side of middle-lane ‘hoggers’. However, I now might answer the question in a rather perverse way. Which is to say that the only rule for using the middle lane is that there should be no rule; our instinctive ability to solve the problem may be superior to our ability to codify the solution.
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