There is a practice on the highways in Texas that I haven’t run into anywhere else. On 2 lane highways, if a car is traveling slower than the traffic behind him, he/she is expected to move over and drive on the shoulder.
In the same vein, oncoming traffic seeing this take place are also expected to move over on the shoulder and allow the passing vehicle plenty of room. In effect, you end up with a three lane highway.
It takes a lot of trust to accept that everyone is aware of these unwritten rules. I’m pretty good with the moving over part but I’m still leery about passing someone when traffic is coming towards me.
Someone needs to write a book to get all these “unwritten” road rules written down.
We ran into this when I visited Texas a few years ago. I remember hoping that every car that was coming at me was actually from Texas, and therefore knew the drill.
They seem to do that throughout the midwest.
Here in Chile you just pull into the middle and just assume everyone else will get out of your way. Pretty frightening the first time I actually saw it… imagine the first time I tried it!