It’s really quite a terrible safety risk to push past on that left lane? 
So, all braked trailers and heavy traffic should just get out of the way from dawdling, right?
Might as well get them off the main roads too, if someone’s just in a bit of a hurry?
I don’t understand?
Honestly, the dirt on the windshield hasn’t been a problem, nor have there been an unreasonable number of cracks from stones.
The biggest point, however, was probably the potential cost savings in fuel.
For me, at least, fuel costs make up a really large part of driving expenses. Roughly about 1/3 comes from refueling, so this is also an excellent area to try to save something. Many don’t really consider this, though. 
The situation in 2024 looked like this:
This includes only maintenance and fuel costs. With a heavier foot on the gas, you could easily increase fuel costs by 10-20%.
Rarely do car queues actually go at 100 km/h. There’s always some elderly person, a trailer, an RV driver, a truck, a slow driver, or similar, causing a queue. Just turn on adaptive cruise control and cruise along behind them. Once you overtake one, the next head of the queue is less than 10 minutes away.
I’ve always just wondered why the leader of the queue, who has been calmly cruising along, finds the accelerator pedal just when an overtaking lane begins on the highway.
This phenomenon somehow became more pronounced last winter when I was driving on a highway with an 80 km/h speed limit, but 100 km/h in sections with central barrier overtaking lanes. The driver ahead, calmly cruising at 70-80 km/h according to their speedometer, miraculously finds the accelerator pedal, and I have to accelerate to somewhere around 115-120 km/h to get past them. And then, as soon as the overtaking lane ends, the speed drops, and the queue starts forming again.
They probably don’t do this intentionally. I assume they don’t use cruise control because their speed fluctuates quite a bit. Perhaps the two-lane road just scares them, and then when the wide overtaking lane section begins, they dare to press the accelerator.
Those who do that on purpose are truly awful. When I just cruise with cruise control, luckily I don’t cause such problems for others.
I am a bit surprised that speed limits have not yet been changed to be consistent with heavy traffic limits.
Safety would increase significantly due to the collapse of the need for overtaking and lower speeds.
In addition, fuel consumption and traffic emissions would decrease significantly. Probably also the wear of tires and road surface would decrease.
As an environmental act, this would be much more significant than all household waste sorting and treatment activities combined. Not to mention all the world’s paper straw moralizing or plastic bag usage restrictions, which achieve nothing more than giving people the feeling that something is being done for the environment.
Hopefully, speeds won’t be lowered any further. Especially here in the north, where distances are long and there isn’t much traffic, it would be really frustrating to crawl at eighty on empty roads. As for the south, they can lower the limits to fifty for all I care. That way, moped riders won’t have to fear overtakers on the road, and even more fuel will be saved.
In addition to the environmental perspective, the productivity perspective should also be examined. Quite a lot of movement related to work and ownership is still done by cars, and last time I checked, the Finnish economy wasn’t doing very well. However, in Finland, the condition of roads and driving culture are relatively good compared to many other European countries, and in many other countries, speed limits are still higher.
If one genuinely wanted to influence the environmental impacts of traffic, then taxation on electric cars and hybrids should be lowered even further, and taxation on these old internal combustion engine cars should be raised.
I don’t want to crawl either, but I don’t believe that a reduction in passenger car speeds would significantly affect Finland’s productivity. The extra time spent driving caused by reducing the speed would actually be quite small, and only a small part of that time would occur during working hours.
I know many entrepreneurs who drive 50,000 km a year. Many sales reps crisscross the roads. Logistics also travels in passenger cars and vans. Taxis transport people from one business meeting to another. These are just examples. Surely it has some impact if travel times are extended in the aforementioned cases?
It’s not the first car in a queue that creates it, but the one driving behind it who either doesn’t overtake or fails to leave enough space in front for the car behind to merge after their own overtake.
Slow drivers don’t bother me personally, but those “cautious tailgaters driving second in line” can sometimes be annoying. Especially if there are five of them in a row and you want to overtake six cars at once while driving at the speed limit. I have made sure that such an overtake is possible with my own vehicle, but not everyone likes such maneuvers, and they inevitably carry risks. For example, someone in the middle of the queue deciding to start an overtake without looking in their mirror.
Those who dare to overtake, do, and those who don’t, stay puttering along behind. The longer a caravanner drives without a break, the more of these “tailgaters” accumulate behind them.
Understood, your uncertainty was caused by financial risk, not the discomfort of a car potentially breaking down.
Thumbs up, I agree with everything you said. I myself have used the other side of this equation by buying a four-thousand-euro car and more thinking time when I couldn’t find one I liked for 50 thousand. I’m currently driving one of those “thinking time” cars because I wasn’t willing to pay what was asked for an electric car I liked, and absolutely nothing for other types of electric cars.
A couple of years ago, when fuel prices were over 2 euros, my father made slow driving his hobby (it should also be mentioned that he is very frugal).
My parents have a 50km commute to work one way, and my father concluded that the most economical consumption comes at a speed of 60km/h. Usually, my parents always go to work in the same car because their workplaces are close to each other, but after a week, my mother said, “Feel free to save as much as you want, but then I’m going to start driving my own car to work :D”
I do believe myself that by slowing down a bit, one can save a lot of money on fuel annually, but I would personally rather save by choosing a diesel or electric car instead of petrol if I drive a lot of kilometers per year. Time is money, as is often said…
One might slyly ask, with a twinkle in the eye, if the tank is leaking when the range is so insignificant. But let’s leave it at that, because not all manufacturers offer a 5-liter AMG V8 fuel tank with a four-cylinder diesel for a few tens of euros extra. A large-capacity fuel tank is almost standard equipment in new registrations in Germany. In older four-cylinder diesels, an 80-liter tank, and in newer ones, a 66-liter “large” tank, ensures 1500 km refueling intervals in summer conditions.
The previous W212 sedan was blueprint-lowered with an Avantgarde chassis but with the Classic’s narrow 205 tire size. My average over 10 years and 210,000 km was within a deciliter of the car’s normal performance in real-world traffic, well-described by NEDC consumption. WLTP, on the other hand, is a less accurate description of the car’s performance but a more realistic figure for heavy-footed drivers, which is easier to beat as a long-term average. This W212 did not go a single summer with its normal consumption, but undercut it by leaving its summer average consumption in the four-digit range. This is not about a single summer holiday day but a 10-year average consumption according to the fuel log, including holiday trips, a 24 km commute, diligent Webasto use in winter, mountain bikes on the tow hitch, and occasional tons of firewood to and from the cottage. Still, it ranked fourth among similar cars on a Europe-wide consumption website. The winter in Northern Finland compensated quite precisely for the effect of higher Central European motorway speeds on consumption:
My wife drives with less consumption, but her slightly shorter commute and the newer diesel engine and 9G-Tronic transmission in her car place her slightly further down the list. Additionally, she doesn’t want dents in her car, so she drives all the way to the top floor of the parking garage at work, where lazier people don’t bother:
These figures are not achieved by sacrificing speed, but with a completely opposite strategy. Our cars are driven with a diesel-appropriate driving cycle, aiming to keep the average speed constantly within the window between the “lollipop” (speed limit) and the intervention threshold. Lowering the average speed increases consumption in our conditions when the motorway has a 100 km/h limit.
Exactly, but the first one in the queue also has responsibilities.
A slower driving speed than others is not just a right but in some situations, a duty. A speed-limited towed device, animal transport, an old car or motorcycle, or engine power restricted by the driver’s license might make a speed of one hundred either impractical or downright impossible.
There is a right to that, but at the same time, one must understand that not all of Finland is on a summer highway driving vintage cars with ancient equipment or hauling their horses from one racetrack to another. Therefore, one must choose a suitable speed for oneself and let others do the same.
Exactly, but here too there are two independent choices. One choice is driving slowly, which is sometimes necessary and often sensible. Creating a queue is an independent choice that cannot be justified by any acceptable reason.
Even a highly motivated 17-year-old who has completed their first basic driving safety course (EAK) knows how to avoid queues even when driving slowly. If someone doesn’t know how, then park the vehicle on the shoulder and let someone who knows what they’re doing drive.
The first couple of thousand-kilometer summer motorcycle trip with a young A1 license holder and a Euro-spec light motorcycle (kevari) was a bit nerve-wracking, and it took a while to adjust to the routines at first. The light motorcycle rider wondered about others’ dawdling in traffic, and the Blackbird rider leading the queue said that it’s difficult for someone riding a powerful, over-a-ton bike (flying like a plastic bullet) to estimate where the light motorcycle rider will get to, and he didn’t dare pressure the young rider into bad overtakes with insufficient power. We switched the order of the queue. The light motorcycle in front, the next destination in the navigation, and earphones inside the helmet. If the light motorcycle rider unexpectedly catches up to someone (a caravan), they can overtake if it’s sensible. After overtaking, there’s no need to wait, because in traffic where the light motorcycle finds an overtaking spot, the liter-class bike follows quite effortlessly.
Even though our pace was Rahtari-80, i.e., below the intervention threshold, we didn’t create any queues. Five motorcycles on a highway form an open queue of over half a kilometer, which an experienced rider overtakes easily, and an inexperienced one is helped to overtake. A car fits into every gap, and when a passenger car catches up to us, the rear guard signals it forward whether it wants to overtake or not. If you’ve caught up, you don’t stay sniffing behind. When the next motorcycle shows a hand signal in a suitable place and moves to the right, even a clumsy overtaker gets the idea and can eventually pass the light motorcycle rider at the front of the queue without disturbing them.
A slower speed than others is often a well-justified choice. Leading a queue is not.
Hear hear! _o/
Hit the nail on the head.
Unless a high-mileage driver operates a taxi in the city, the driving cycle becomes so favorable for a diesel engine that acquiring a petrol ‘crematorium’ is difficult to justify. For an economical driver, the options are full diesel and full electric. There is nothing interesting in between them, because all hybrid setups only increase costs.
A nice aspect of this driving cycle is also that consumption does not need to be optimized by slowing down, but rather by avoiding decelerations. The more one can drive with cruise control at the speed limit plus half of the intervention threshold, the better.
Winter driving becomes entertainment for a control freak when avoiding decelerations that destroy average consumption 
Finland needs a better driving culture. A couple of decades ago, even in Finland, at least in some parts of the country, slower drivers would move their car slightly closer to the shoulder when a suitable overtaking spot appeared, as a sign that the way was clear. In Sweden, this has been done even more, at least according to my own experience. Driving as close to the center as possible certainly doesn’t improve the chances of overtaking.
The average age of drivers is rising, and there will be even more dawdlers. On my last trip north, someone was driving at probably 60 km/h on the highway. On the same trip, somewhere around Pihtipudas, a fellow was happily driving with a trailer in the oncoming overtaking lane on a three-lane road.
It’s a wonder there aren’t more fatalities.
The productivity perspective also depends on the viewpoint. An employee can earn more if mileage and compensation for travel time are paid.
If we take the 50,000 km performance as an example and play with a 0.5 liter fuel consumption saving / 100 km, then that only saves about 250 liters of fuel. If compensation is paid for the time spent on the journey, then the approximately 20 km/h speed difference (80/100) makes about 125 hours for that journey. If you get a salary or other compensation of 10-30€ from that, depending on the agreement, then more is left below the line. There are probably about 200 working days/year, so on average, one sits in the car only about 38 minutes more per day.
I wonder if the numbers went into the box even close to correctly? 
I, on the other hand, think that if we wanted to cut traffic emissions, 100% biofuels would be a much smarter solution.
The size of the tank really doesn’t matter; here in the south, there are service stations at least every 50 km.
That also depends a lot on the gear ratios. If the maximum torque range is reached at around 1500 rpm, then that’s where you should be cruising, because of air resistance. I suspect you could probably still squeeze more out of your consumption too.