Why do car owners drive in the middle lane?

I love the middle lane, you don’t have to think about other traffic when you’re in it.

I think everyone should use it instead of the other lanes.

(I don’t believe this)

no one is asking you to police anyone but yourself.

The reason people drive in lane 2 is because other idiots drive in lane 2. Its that simple. Stop driving in lane 2 unless you are actively overtaking and the roads will be better and faster for everyone.

You wouldnt have to continuously do it if there werent other MLMs sitting in lane 2.

Its got nothing to do with moral high ground, its about making the motorway work they way it was designed, make it faster to drive on and remove phantom tailbacks.

If you cant drive on a motorway safely then thats your problem and no one elses.

Exactly I cant change how other people drive so I adapt my own driving style to compensate. Again, in the real world I cant stop people from hogging L2 so Im not going to be the moron to use L1 and having to continously drive around L2 slouches. Be my guest if you want to be this person.

On certain sections of the M50, religiously moving from L1 to L2 to L1 to facilitate mergers, while also maintaining a safe distance to traffic both in front and behind you, can be totally impractical, and certainly does add unnecessary risk at busy times.

There is a distance of 500m between Ballymount and the N7 (Red Cow). At 100km/h (27m/s), that's just 18 seconds.

Spread at correct 2s intervals, that's just 9 cars allowed in L2 between the exits at any time, not that anyone maintains that anyway. Even if just one or two cars try to move from L1 to L2 to facilitate joiners, there becomes very little time to match speed, look for a safe gap, and move out, while also maintaining a safe gap to the car in front of you in L1, who is at the same time trying to slow down to find a gap to merge onto the Exit Slip.

Equally, religiously following the rules to the letter, is clearly a sign of lack of driving experience.

Nail on the head there, if the gardai actually enforced lane discipline on the M50 then this unproductive discussion would be moot.

However, until such time as this happens, Ill just have to suffer the ignominy of being slagged off on an anonymous internet forum for not being able to achieve the theoretically correct motorway advanced driving standard as I will continue to avoid the dance from L1 to L3 and back to L1 to overtake the perpetuall dawdlers in L2 during busy M50 traffic.

As previously mentioned by another poster, in reality for the most part this involves staying in L3 unless there is a safe gap in L2 traffic to move across or until L2 traffic is actually moving slower than I am (unless I spot a car coming up behind me travelling above the speed limit as Im certainly not going to police speed limits by holding any driver up) which tbh is pretty rare given the high volume of dawdlers in L2 these days.

Well of course yep, but @_Kaiser_ did refer to some of the middle sections only.

What we on a motoring forum often forget too is that it can be genuinely hard for a sub 70bhp car to get upto 100km/h (or more if needed) say when entering on a short slip roads. Even more important say when going Northbound form Knocklyon, the Tallaght exit lane can be blocked quite far back, and people driving in L1 make no account of this and pass stationary traffic in the next lane way too fast.

The odd time I've borrowed my sisters car I'm reminded to always move out to L2 to give joiners more room. My car has well over 3 times that power and lots of torque low down so I can accelerate hard whenever I need to match speed.

Presumably you would never exceed the legislated speed limit to safely overtake a slower moving car, or for that matter never exceed the legislated speed limit period😂

What's wrong with auld lads? Or peak caps for that matter! There's a lot of drivers out there who think driving a motor issue kind of art form. It's no big deal ,drive along nice and handy and as for those fukkers who reverse into a space turning the steering wheel with the palm of their hand, they should be shot if only for being gobshites. And when it comes to some fella driving up my arse on the motorway, i simply tip the rear foglight, you can almost see the sudden fear on their faces!

Accept Im being pedantic but I take it then that, despite doing your best, you do at times drive in a non compliant manner. Hopefully, for the rest of us, when that happens, you're actually aware of it and continue to drive in a safe, if not fully compliant manner

There is one person you can stop from hogging lane 2. Thats the only person I am asking you to stop.

Again living in a theoretical world. Sorry sir/miss I live in the real world

Well, in my case ... If all of the other 9 lanes were filled with traffic moving slower, or jumping between lanes and cutting each other off as they merge/exit, or weaving/undertaking dangerously across multiple lanes to get a car length ahead (as is a regular feature on the 3-lane M50/N7), or just so busy that they were all effectively driving lanes, then I would absolutely sit out in L10.

But then I don't dawdle, and have no issue keeping up with the flow of traffic or driving at the limits when no reason not to. It's pretty rare that I'm overtaken actually because most people seem incapable of this.