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Not so in the U.S., where you might follow this driver in a long parade all the way from Colorado Springs to Cripple Creek, or until his refrigerator runs out of propane.

Interstates raise similar questions. When a car paces itself with a slow-moving semi (as we saw at least a dozen times on our recent vacation) and refuses to pass, does the driver not see all those cars in the mirror? Or do we have a self-appointed amateur cop on our hands, who thinks it's immoral to go faster than 64 mph?

My guess is the driver is simply too lazy to pass the truck, disengage cruise control or put on a turn signal and move over. This would require physical motion, as well as a small amount of judgment. It's just too much work. Besides, in the right lane you have to deal with merging traffic. Better to stay in the left lane all day, and let people sweep around on the right. If they can.

This sort of lethargy has led to an interesting condition on American I-roads: Our Interstates have now reversed themselves.

Yes, the right lane has become the fast lane, while traffic moves in a solid, slow train on the left. Barb and I breezed almost all the way across Indiana in the right lane of I-80/90, passing bumper-to-bumper traffic on our left. Occasionally we had to merge left and go around a slow car, only to observe a full mile or two of absolutely empty right lane. But no one would move over, probably for fear of having to make a passing decision sometime in the future. Or being cut off and losing a place to someone else. It's amazing. On a busy highway, nearly half the pavement goes unused.

I don't know what you do to change this. I suggested in a column a few years ago that we needed more emphasis on lane discipline in our high school driver's education courses. Students could be asked to repeat, at least three times a day, "Stay right except to pass," and that phrase could be emblazoned over the classroom door. I got several letters informing me that I was revealing my old age. "There are no driver's ed courses in most high schools any more," I was told. "It's a thing of the past."

That's too bad. How do you disseminate a cultural idea when there's no mechanism to do so?

Private driver's schools? Peer pressure? Tradition? I don't know. Maybe these are all questions of natural courtesy that can't be taught.

My old friend and former R&T colleague Rich Homan used to say there were two kinds of people in the world, those who notice things and those who don't. (I seem to remember he ascribed this original observation to Lord Buckley, but I'm not sure). People who notice things, Rich said, will look to see if someone else is following them through a door and hold it open. Those who don't will let it swing shut in your face.

Maybe we need a national windshield sticker, one that reads backward, like an ambulance sign, so it can be read in the rearview mirror.

It would simply say, "notice things." Just like that, in small letters. No caps.

Type size is immaterial, of course, as our target audience won't see it anyway.

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