I personally believe non-use of pullouts is more about the sorry state of the other drivers, not the RV drivers. (Assuming reasonable road conditions, which as you note, is not always the case.)
> coming to a complete stop
You're not meant to come to a stop. That absolutely kills what momentum you do have. It's exceptionally difficult to start a heavy vehicle from a stop. You're meant to pull out, maybe slow down a little, then pull back in, cars be damned. Some cars will pass, maybe not all. The new lead set of cars will get by at the next pullout, and so on in incremental fashion.
But what happens in practice is that the first or 2nd idiot behind you does not prepare in advance and then does not race like mad when you go into the pullout, thereby allowing as many following cars as possible to also make the pass. Even if that first car did execute it correctly, the 2nd car likely does not. Then the 2nd or maybe 3rd car is "in the breach" when the pullout lane ends, blocking your (RV) re-entry and forcing you to stop. Then you're doubly fooked. You have to start from a complete stop and you're at the very end of the pullout lane, with no speedup zone at all.
... this is why we can't have nice things ...
My daily commute involves a 2 lane highway (ie, 1 lane each direction) with a pullout for slow moving vehicles. Semi trucks and other heavy construction type vehicles use this road a lot, as it's the only viable route. They do almost always use the pullout, but they pull back in at the end without regard for anyone in the traffic lane. They have to -- they are even worse than any RV on getting started from a stop again. So I see this crap driving from the auto drivers almost every day. If I happen to be the first car waiting behind a truck, I race on past and then it's always the case that only 1 other car in a long line also make it past, when 6-7 should be making it. I also frequently witness the slow passing fool have to slam his brakes as the truck re-enters the lane.
I don't fault any RV for not using the pullout lanes.
> You're not meant to come to a stop. That absolutely kills what momentum you do have. It's exceptionally difficult to start a heavy vehicle from a stop. You're meant to pull out, maybe slow down a little, then pull back in, cars be damned.
The "cars be damned" part would be a collision, with the RV at fault. No thanks.
And the pullouts are not long enough to keep rolling, you have to come to a stop to have a chance to pick up speed again when there's a gap, otherwise you've just rolled to the end of the pullout and now you're sitting still with no room to accelerate before pulling into traffic.
I've not seen that kind of pullout. Well of course I have but they aren't designed for a slow moving vehicle to let traffic pass. They are just for safely stopping. Like fishing something out of your back seat, taking a quick break, sometimes there's a vista there, that kind of thing.
The turnouts designed for slow moving vehicles to let others pass, at least to my experience these are almost always signed far enough in advance (I'm sure there's a vehicle code mandating distance of signage) and they are at least ten or tens of car lengths long.
I think you are asking too much for any vehicle to pull out into one of those tinier kind of little turnouts for the sake of normal kind of driving/passing activity.
> The "cars be damned" part would be a collision, with the RV at fault. No thanks.
Agreed and this is why i would never use them were I driving an RV, and I don't blame others for not doing it. I'm just noting that I see the big trucks do this all the time. I'd estimate once a month I end up behind slow car panic stopping when he realizes the truck isn't having it.
I've driven just about everywhere west of the Dakotas. You're talking about the kind that's sort of like a new lane opening on the right, going parallel with the road for a good while, right? Those are incredibly rare, I think mostly in one region of California, like maybe the Yosemite area.
Ignoring those clearly-marked, friendly, and predictable pullouts, practically everything else is a total crapshoot you really don't know what it's going to be like until you've already driven past it. With a 38-foot 31,000 lbs class A, we made it the passenger's job to call out whether a pullout was safe or not, because the driver just didn't have enough time to notice it. Often we did manage to pull out of traffic for a moment and let 3-10 cars pass, but sometimes it just wasn't feasible.
> coming to a complete stop
You're not meant to come to a stop. That absolutely kills what momentum you do have. It's exceptionally difficult to start a heavy vehicle from a stop. You're meant to pull out, maybe slow down a little, then pull back in, cars be damned. Some cars will pass, maybe not all. The new lead set of cars will get by at the next pullout, and so on in incremental fashion.
But what happens in practice is that the first or 2nd idiot behind you does not prepare in advance and then does not race like mad when you go into the pullout, thereby allowing as many following cars as possible to also make the pass. Even if that first car did execute it correctly, the 2nd car likely does not. Then the 2nd or maybe 3rd car is "in the breach" when the pullout lane ends, blocking your (RV) re-entry and forcing you to stop. Then you're doubly fooked. You have to start from a complete stop and you're at the very end of the pullout lane, with no speedup zone at all.
... this is why we can't have nice things ...
My daily commute involves a 2 lane highway (ie, 1 lane each direction) with a pullout for slow moving vehicles. Semi trucks and other heavy construction type vehicles use this road a lot, as it's the only viable route. They do almost always use the pullout, but they pull back in at the end without regard for anyone in the traffic lane. They have to -- they are even worse than any RV on getting started from a stop again. So I see this crap driving from the auto drivers almost every day. If I happen to be the first car waiting behind a truck, I race on past and then it's always the case that only 1 other car in a long line also make it past, when 6-7 should be making it. I also frequently witness the slow passing fool have to slam his brakes as the truck re-enters the lane.
I don't fault any RV for not using the pullout lanes.