Middle lane whta talkin abot...?

Now, what I am about to rant is what is happening out there and I hope this does not turn into another century of debates. The star of the topic is which lane to drive on when we are using our Malaysian highways, expressway, lebuh-raya etc..

A quick check in the internet will review many variants debates that mix and match logic, common-sense, and lawfully the right way to drive.

In ancient Ford-T time, there were only one carriage way. And it has to be shared with the blood veined horse and the petrol one. There wasn't any law enacted until some poor sods got hit or startled horse starts to galloping away without its handler.

When dual carriage way comes into existence, everyone was peaceful and happy. All bliss.

But then as more and more powerful metal horses gets to the road, situation becomes more congested. Horse and metal horse jostled for a piece of the road. And no one ever knew how one should react properly when they are sharing the ever congested roads with other users. So some geniuses gets together and come to an agreement that if one is not going any faster than the bloke behind, he should move to the left in the UK, or to the right as in the case of the US drivers. 

Blah blah blah...later, comes to Malaysia. When modernisation and tons of cars are put onto the road every month, dual carriageway seems to be extremely congested and vehicles are being driven on road shoulders. So clever government of the day comes out with a brilliant idea. Making it a three laned highway. Now, we have a shoulder lane aka emergency stop lane, a left lane, a middle lane, and a right lane.

Now, the dilemma is which lane is the appropriate lane to be on when under different circumstances. 

If one is driving slowly or probably trying to chat up his girl companion, he would probably be driving on the most left-est lane, happily tailing the rows of lorrys and commercial vehicles. And for the normal guys who just want to reach his destination smoothly, he would probably drive on the middle lane because he hated the clueless drivers who drove so ever slowly on the left-est lane, and despises the speed maniacs on the rightest lane. He like many others routine freak, will stick to the middle lane and declared it the cruise lane. Doing within the speed limit and gingerly following one another. For the speed maniac, any vehicles on the left is a total whuss. Its like Hamilton on his MP4-12C overtaking the Jeremy's Kia Cee'd...Loser.

Okay, now that everything is in its place where they should be, right? No.. No .. No.. The righteous folks out there would scorned and spit at this writer for suggesting that the middle lane is a cruise lane. They will pour petrol on this issue and lit it up just so to cleanse their mind from this utter non-sense of driving in the middle lane for as long as one like. They swore allegiance  to the law of "when not overtaking, stay left" .

But the routine obsessed folks would say otherwise. They would say logic and common-sense dictates what's right or wrong when using such lanes. 

Logic and commonsense is after all the fundamentals of a law being made. They argued that, rather than wheezing in and out of the slow lane and endangering their lives and that of other road users, by remaining on the middle lane at a constant speed will in fact be safer. It is also much safer than speeding on the rightest lane. Studies have shown that a constant driving situation will actually smoothen out traffic than juggling a stop and go driving condition on the slow lane. They also argue that by staying on the slow lane and tailing a train of slow truckers and drivers above 70 years of age could actually increases the chances of a rear collision of happening. Not exactly brilliant too to pull out of the slow lane only to be "lazer-ed' by high beamed lights from "cruising cars" and the loose of dignity of sort for having to be "shoved" back into the slow lane. That would really cheesed off the drivers.

Right, what should be the right and left and center of this issue? Negatively obedient to the law, or common sense prevails?

Before the Kukri and AK is drawn out, I do agree that when not over-taking slower vehicles, you should move aside and not to hog the road. Period. But when it comes to when one is on the middle lane of a 3 lane highway, does this applies? Yes and no. Again, common-sense prevails.

You move aside if there's lot of space upfront for one to happily cruise on by. You move aside briefly if you do not want to speed up to close the gap in front of the car. You move aside if the bloke behind is in an emergency.

Kesas toll nightmare

Being using it since it was built back in the early 2000.
The highway or rather expressway (at some section) were quite taunting to drive on. Its undulation condition can be quite unnerving to the unsuspecting speedsters which could bounce their car off the tarmac.

Besides the undulations condition of the road surfaces, debris such as chunks of tyre rubbers, stones, pebbles, rubbish etc. were considered quite normal in this part of the highway. If you are unlucky enough to have ran over one, be prepared for some heavy car repair work.

Resulting from such debris as well is pebbles thrown up by ill shielded backends of lorry and trucks. This flying pebbles sometimes the size of a 10sen will cracked if not shatter windscreen.
During my days with my Wira, I have had 3 windscreen changes in a span of 5 years resulting directly from pebbles thrown up along Kesas highway.
Not to mention also the dins and scratch on the bonnet of the car from these projectiles.

Now lately, there seems to be some sort of riot happening at Kesas.
1. Heavy vehicles are no longer following the rules to drive on the slow lane. I have noticed this lately with many truckers preferred to drive either on the middle lane or some on the fast lane. Hogging up the road.
Without being prejudiced, I checked if the left aka slow lane were clogged which explains why the truckers were on the middle lane. And to my disbelief, the slow lane were actually empty for at least quarter of a mile. With this distance of emptiness, the truckers have no reason whatsoever not to be using them but instead hogging now the middle lane.

2. Heavy vehicles have found themselves a new habit of using the light vehicle toll booths instead of the designated ones situated usually on the leftest side of the toll plaza.
Now, this have created a massive disorientation situation where heavy vehicles begin to jostle for position to use light vehicle lanes.
It is not much of an issue if the booths were also located on the far left of the plaza, but with some of these light vehicles only booth on the right side, these heavy lorrys just crossed over from the slow lane to the rightest part of the approaching toll plaza.
Can you now imagine the danger of these crossing over of long heavy vehicles to the right?
It would be a massive vehicle pile up if one such drivers were to span his lorry across the toll plaza and causing other vehicles to collide with it.

3. In relation to the above point, when exiting the toll, these heavy vehicles were more and often slower to accelerate to speed. Causing faster and nimbler vehicles needing to overtake them from the left. Now, by law it says overtaking on the left is illegal, and with such unlawfulness of the heavy vehicles, it has created a more dire situation of choas.

Kesas is a life line of industry. The lifeline for many importation of goods and exportations of local manufactured products. Needless to say, it is extremely important to the growth of the nation. With such importance put on, Kesas authority should be more perceptive  in ensuring the the safety of the users of this highway and to ensure all measures are taken to prevent accidents from happening.