Get the truck out of here!

I've been doing a lot of long-distance driving recently, at least by my standards. It's quite clear that the style of motorway driving in the UK has changed for the worse -- the European-style discipline that used to see most drivers move back to the inside lane after overtaking has largely given way to a more American-style practice of avoiding the inside lane at all costs, as if it was riddled with landmines. As a result it can often be almost impossible to avoid passing people on the inside, as they chug along 20 miles below the limit in heavy traffic in the middle lane, while leaving the inside lane completely clear.

I'm not sure whether this problem can be solved, especially with the ludicrous Clarkson known to boast that he never uses the inside lane. However, I do think something can and should be done about the needless congestion caused by trucks. Most of these vehicles are now fitted with regulators to stop them exceeding about 56 mph. However, this doesn't seem to deter their drivers from trying to pass other trucks if they are moving at even a slightly slower speed, which inevitably seems to result in two lanes being blocked as the trucks move side-by-side up a hill. In the worst example I saw of this recently, I and dozens of other drivers were stuck behind two trucks for almost ten miles on a two-lane stretch of the A1 before one of them finally managed to get ahead of the other.

The solution is clearly to ban trucks from leaving the inside lane, at least on two-lane motorways. The truckers might not like it, but a precedent already exists: such a ban already exists in the Netherlands. It would cost next to nothing to implement and would surely make a big dent in traffic congestion -- especially if it was also applied to caravans!