this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Sounds like you're not familiar with driving in the US. Passing along the shoulder is both illegal and incredibly dangerous. These long roads without passing lanes, often with frequent curves making a safe line of sight for passing impossible, create a situation in which courtesy is suggested: if traffic builds up behind while you travel drastically below the nominal speed of traffic with no opportunity to pass coming up, pull over to let them pass.
Unfortunately, the middle of nowhere exists and that's where people tend to vacation when they want to exist outside of a concrete jungle. The middle of nowhere also lacks funding for significant road infrastructure; that will not change and changing it would be so inordinately expensive that doing so would be foolish. The answer here is simple courtesy as a driver.
Also, emergency vehicles aren't going to be stuck behind am RV - they obligate everyone to pull over by law. The issue is that emergency vehicles do not exist in these areas. None. No help available. No funding, no people to do the job. The US is vast and significant portions of land exist with barely any residents.
You can also be sure that hospitals are at least an hour's drive away in these locations where no opportunity to pass exists. There's no way around it: someone impeding the flow of traffic significantly without allowing faster traffic to pass is dangerous, both because of emergencies and the inevitable human tendency to pass in risky situations due to frustration.
You're correct, I am unfamiliar with driving in the US - I've lived here my whole life, but have made it into my mind 20s without a license. Needless to say, I don't live in a particularly rural area (I live in a suburbs where I can ride my electric bike to nearby stores or the train to commute downtown). I wasn't trying to suggest people pass on the shoulder though. I hadn't thought of winding roads, but that's a fair point where there could potentially be two lanes but it's still not safe to pass. For the single lane scenario I still don't think it makes sense to suggest a giant RV regularly move into the shoulder (if it's even present), especially not "any time there is a car behind them" as has been suggested elsewhere in the thread.
Regardless, in general I think it's more important to strive for systemic solutions rather than expecting/hoping for/pressuring all individuals to act in the way you want. In this case, since we're talking about rural areas, I think fixing our broken rail network would help immensely. Building the network and corresponding culture around trains for inter city travel would be cheaper for individuals and the government, better for the environment, would allow everyone on board to relax, and it'd even be faster than driving. For popular vacation locations the frequency could even be high enough to eliminate the last barrier of it being on a sometimes inconvenient schedule! Now, of course the locations themselves may not be easily traversable without a car (and trust me I'm aware of how often that applies), but if you're trying to escape concrete jungles anyways then perhaps walking around was the goal anyways. Otherwise, you can probably rent a car (or a bike!) and still save money compared to the fuel and maintenance cost on driving the vehicle there.