Interstate driving politeness

We were driving my mother home today, after her visiting with us for a week. She only lives three and a half hours away from us, so it's not too bad untill you get on the road with idiots. We live about thirty minutes from Nashville, TN, and she lives a little past Knoxville, Tn. so we have "regular" interstate driving and then there is mountain interstate driving. There is a minimum speed limit on the interstate for safety reasons, just as there is a lane designated mainly for people who want to stay around the speed limit and then the left lane is typically the passing lane unless you have a HOV lane, then the passing lane is the one beside the HOV lane. The passing lane is for passing not strolling along doing the speed limit as the right lane is empty. I should not have to pass you on the right lane. I'm not one of those people doing 90 mph when the speed limit is 70, maybe 75-80. It's frustrating to me to see four cars behind one car barely doing the speed limit in front, not passing anyone but preventing others from passing them. Is it a control thing? Do you want to feel you are controlling the flow of traffic? I'm not one of those people who have road rage but the simple thing of not moving over to allow faster traffic to pass angers so many; to honk, to flick their high beams, to do "wonderful" hand gestures you may not want your children to know just yet or to simply ride your butt till you move over. But in turn you get mad at that driver for wanting to only go faster than your current speed, so you decide to slow down. It's traffic courtesy to just move over when traffic is clear to do so. It would relive your stress and the stress of all those people driving behind you wanting you to move over. This request especially goes for people driving up and down a mountain. If you're afraid to pass a big truck on a sharp curvy road then get behind him, don't drive right beside him, because HE CAN'T SEE YOU!!!!. You are in one of his many blind spots, if he chooses to change lanes to pass a slower vehicle you are endangering yourself, the truck driver and other vehicles around you. This is all common driving courtesy, nothing more, nothing less.

Another safety problem I saw while driving home tonight were, headlights being out. You can tell on a dark road if both your headlights work or not, it's a ticket to drive without all your lights working properly mainly because it's a safety law, just like tail lights and if one happens to go out while you're driving then don't ride that middle line. Those little bulb only cost a few dollars to replace but without replacement it could cause terrible wrecks with most people driving on the interstate going 70 mph.We should all know this but obviously some don't remember or don't care about sharing the road with all the other drivers just wanting to get to their destination safely.

As you read this, maybe you're one of those kind of people I'm talking about that rather drive in the left lane than the right and if you are, then speed up a little or move over, those are your two options. And if you're a road rage kind of person realize the person in front of you may be in La-La land at the moment and just not realizing what they are doing right that second and give them just a few extra seconds to come back to reality and move for you before you start with the list above to get them to move. The less stress we create for ourselves driving the less chance accidents can occur. There are enough distractions inside the vehicle we are controlling as it is, do we need to continue adding outside distractions?