I have not observed that to be the accepted rule in MA whenever I drive there!
Two years ago my car was totaled by a truck that sideswiped me on the drivers side while I drove in the right lane. Feel fortunate to be here today. Now I take my time when I drive if at most drive at 60 or max 65 on the highway. Hate the feeling of being in the middle lane with a truck on my right and left-hand side. I take my time and if someone is following me too close I switch to the right lane. The idea of driving above 70 makes me anxious. I hate driving into MD where it seems that there are traffic cameras in every other corner.
My point is that I will pass you if I get within ten feet of your backside and you’re not moving faster. After years of enjoying wild Boston driving, I am very impatient with people going the speed limit here (or anywhere). 
@ChoatieMom I hope I stay clear of you. I remember one time driving back from Vermont in a snow storm on 91. No accidents in Vermont. Jillions of spin-outs for the entire length of Massachusetts and then once we hit the Connecticut border nobody on the shoulders facing the wrong way again. Just one day, but it really reinforced my opinion that Massachusetts is full of terrible drivers and Boston is the epicenter of them. (BTW my mother was from the Boston suburbs.)
When I encounter someone ahead going slower than I would like, I do not get anywhere near that close before passing (i.e. I remain at a safe following distance until a passing opportunity comes up). Indeed, tailgating makes it harder to pass, since you will not have buffer space to accelerate as you change into the faster moving lane.
9-10 over on everything other than freeways and interstates. Half the time I’m being tailgated on the surface roads.
78 is about as much as I figure’s prudent with a 70 mph limit. Pass a few but are passed by more.
There’s always someone driving faster, which for the last several decades, has kept the cops busy.
A doctor was tailgating me on an icy road. Yep, he rearended me.
A few years later, he was piloting a small plane and it crashed. It was ruled pilot error.
I read a book called “Traffic” a few years ago, by Tom Vanderbilt. He will tell you that doctors are notoriously bad drivers.
I think he said the worst case scenario was driving a pickup truck on a rural road in Montana on Super Bowl Sunday, with the driver being a doctor.
Yep, it was a doctor who totaled my last car. I was at a red light in a school zone. He barrelled into me so fast that his air bags went off and I was pushed into the car in front of me. We’d just paid off that car and I’d been planning to drive it another ten years.
Boston has the worst drivers I have ever seen. They think the middle finger is a turn signal. Now I’m wondering if it’s because there are so many doctors there?
Boston is almost all landfills, and having little order to the city plan doesn’t help with driving habits!
I’ll take Boston drivers any day over drivers from the tristate area down to Philly.
Amen! Driving through Northern VA yesterday I was astounded by the number of idiot drivers.
NJ drivers are not any better than the NY drivers as far as speeding! If you drive the speed limit on highways here, you will be the slowest car on the road. I keep up with the flow of traffic but typically that is 5 to 10 miles over the speed limit, but not more than that. In other parts of the country, I have noticed that people actually drive at or just over the speed limit, but not in the NYC suburbs. People also actually wait for green lights to cross the street in other cities, but you would never get anywhere if you did that in NYC.
Tailgating is the worst. Many times I have gone into the left lane to pass someone going slowly and then they must realize they were going too slow and speed up to block me from passing. The frustrated person that wants to go even faster, then comes up behind me and I am stuck or end up speeding up to get out of their way. The tailgater then goes up to the next car and does the same thing. Especially frustrating are those that tailgate in the center or right lane, even if the left lanes are open.
Ha, if you want to see the worst driving in the world, go to Beirut. I cannot even begin to describe the chaos. Traffic lights and stop signs are ignored. People drive the wrong way on one-way streets. They suddenly start backing up on major roads. When they pull out onto roads, they do not even GLANCE to see if someone is coming. If you dare to slow down for someone, they honk furiously at you. Lane striping is ignored. A four lane highway will have six “lanes” of traffic, but those lanes aren’t straight. I could go on and on. This is the city in which my 24-year-old drives a motorcycle. I try not to think about it.
Driving in Boston now seems like kindergarten.
Boston Driving Rules:
- The number of lanes is determined by the size of the cars.
- If you look at another driver, you've just given him the right of way.
- Traffic lights/signs are merely suggestions.
Typically 5 above , 5 below. However, you likely will not be pulled over for 7 or 8.
On my state’s interstates, the troopers will usually give you up to 10, so I’ll drive 7-8 over (and our speed limits are generous anyway). On the state highways, it depends on the town. Smaller towns will often have zero tolerance, but larger towns will usually give you about 5, and uninhabited rural areas don’t tend to have cops so I go what I please. In my city, I rarely drive more than 5 mph over because of traffic congestion. If I’m in a different state, I’ll adhere to the speed limits or close to them because it seems as though many are itching to pull over out-of-state drivers.
I use the WAZE app…it tells me where all the police officers have situated themselves.
Typical daily commute is 80 in a 55, and I am keeping up with left lane traffic.
No speeding ticket in 33 years, knock on wood. I think my practice of buying white “sleeper” cars helps. Nobody notices white cars. And as the above poster wrote, Waze also helps.