Counterintuitively, in stop-and-go traffic everybody spends more time watching others pass them than passing others. Let's say you have to drive 100 km. Half of the distance your lane moves at 100 km/h, and the other half your lane creeps along at 10 km/h. So you'll spend 50 / 100 + 50 / 10 = 5.5 hours in the car, at an average speed of 18.18 km/h. For every one minute you spend passing other cars, you'll spend 10 mi…
Excellent observation! Sometimes I pick a car in the next lane to track and compare my progress with. Although one of us will sometimes leave the other behind for a few minutes, usually we return to rough parity eventually.
Back when there were tollbooths where you had to pay cash, I remember seeing aggressive lane-changers, tailgaters, etc. pass by and then seeing them waiting in line, having gotten no further than us, at the toolbooth.