In the USA are there not rules about which lanes you use? Various dash cam videos from the US seem to show drivers choosing any lane, though I could viewing then wrong.

In the UK you use the outside lane if you are a slower vehicle and use the inside lane(s) as overtaking lanes, with the inside for the fastest speeds (within the limit) . If you are using one of the inside lane and are travelling slower that traffic in the outside lane you can get stopped by the police and fined, and will certainly feel the ire of of other drivers.

The dash cam videos would be correct, outside of high-occupancy lane (2+ people) there are no lane speed restrictions, and if someone feels like getting into the left-most lane and driving 5 miles below the speed limit, they most certainly act on that impulse.

As you can imagine, anybody intending to use the left-most lane for high-speed driving is now forced to use the brakes, execute a [rarely safe] lane merge to the right, pass the slower vehicle on the right, and then aggressively execute a merge back to the left.

Roughly 100 people die in car accidents on a daily basis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths... For further context, the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001 resulted in 3,000 deaths and has led to a brief but complete shutdown of air traffic, complete overhaul of homeland security, passage of PATRIOT Act, at least one major war and countless "military operations" that don't count as wars.

I only recently discovered that in the US many people driving in the left lane will not move to the middle lane to allow cars approaching from behind overtake them.

That's incredibly selfish, not least because it's incredibly dangerous for the driver that has to weave into the middle lane and back again.

Seems bizarre. Then again, you Yanks also don't have kettles, so nothing surprises me ;)

> you Yanks also don't have kettles

Mind blown. What on earth do they boil water with?

We typically don't drink beverages that require boiling water, aside from coffee which is brewed in machines. Everyone that I know that drinks tea or uses a french press has an electric kettle, though.

> The dash cam videos would be correct, outside of high-occupancy lane (2+ people) there are no lane speed restrictions, and if someone feels like getting into the left-most lane and driving 5 miles below the speed limit, they most certainly act on that impulse.

Depending on state there are laws about using left lanes only for passing, which implies you must be travelling faster than the lane to your right. Those laws are rarely enforced though.

My driving instructor and parents all told me that driving in the left lane when not passing is illegal and that people who do it are dickheads. I see signs reminding people to stay in the right lane when not passing on a regular basis.

Is it just the state I live in (WA) or is the rule not as solid as I thought?

It seems like even in WA the "Slow Traffic Keep Right" is more of a suggestion than a hard rule. There's also subjective interpretation of the rule - someone driving 71 in a 70-mph speed limit zone might not qualify themselves as slow, while someone behind who's okay with going 80 mph might disagree.