Not to poke you in the eye, but, you could plan on obeying the posted speed limit and giving yourself enough time to get to work when you do obey them.

What I find annoying and dangerous is to drive in the HOV lane past stalled traffic and to have a jaboney (civil epithet for a**hole) cross over the divide to escape the stop-and-go about five car lengths ahead of me when traveling at 60 mph that requires me to stomp on my brakes. It takes the joy out of traveling in the HOV lane and turns the air inside my Volt blue.

 

Not to poke you in the eye, but, you could plan on obeying the posted speed limit and giving yourself enough time to get to work when you do obey them.

Your limited experience is showing.

Most highway HOV lanes in my area of California are posted at 65MPH. Typical speed is either right around that (which might be 68-70 indicated on the speedometer) or nearly stopped. It's annoying to have to pass slow HOV drivers by dropping out of the HOV lane into the faster-moving middle lanes.

 

They do come with instructions for placement. You must have missed them.

 

The speed limit is what you should be driving at; more than 5 over you're becoming a danger to those who obey the law. I agree with JBaker. Give yourself enough time for your commute and your stress will be lower in the process.

 

It's the Goldilocks theory of traffic.

Everyone going slower than you is an idiot, everyone going faster is a maniac.

Your preferred speed is "just right".

 

Love George Carlin.

 

And this is why in the US we have traffic laws. Everyone doesn't get to choose what speed suits them best, whether or not to use turn signals, or the direction to drive in.

 

Traffic laws are for suckers. Just like only the little people pay taxes.

 

I tend to drive around 60mph (100kph) in our HOV lanes. The speedlimit is 100kph. If traffic is dead stopped in the other lanes, It feels a we bit dangerous to be speeding next to full stopped cars. If traffic is slightly jammed, I'm still going significantly faster than the other three regular lanes, and if traffic is flowing naturally, well, if you want to go at 75mph, get out of the HOV, seriously.

This is common sense.

 

Ideally every driver would be courteous and not hold up the flow of traffic in the HOV lane. But that is just one of numerous examples of discourteous and even dangerous driving that can be observed on every outing. Probably more in the congestion of So. Cal. You will never make every driver courteous, so you have to learn to take them in stride or it will make you crazy over time. I think of stuff like that as just part of the driving landscape that I have to either avoid, deal with, or factor in to my drive time.

 

If you want to hypermile you should be in the rightmost regular lane. That's just courtesy. But it seems some people do expect the HOV lane to be a super-express lane that's always flowing faster than the regular lanes. My favorite is when I'm following a long line of cars in the HOV lane and someone zooms up behind me and flashes his lights, the concept of a "line" obviously being beyond him. That's happened to me in Toronto and in SoCal.