This man pulled into the fast lane to drive 55 mph—and he pissed off all of Washington D.C.
In the 1980s, John Nestor became a symbol for angry drivers
It all started when an exasperated woman wrote a letter to the editor of the Washington Post to complain about being tailgated by a truck on the Beltway. A detractor wrote in to reply, describing the woman as a “Left-Lane Bandit,” hogging the passing lane and impeding other motorists. Other partisans of truck drivers and the open road chimed in as well, condemning the woman’s selfishness and inefficiency.
The resentment, cruelty, and misplaced passions of the debate began to take on the spirit of an internet comments section, some 20 years before the form would become a primary mode of cultural discourse. But what truly prevented this episode from passing into obscurity was a letter from pediatrician and FDA employee John Nestor, which, as one editorial writer noted, “quietly raised hostilities to the level of the Thirty Years’ War,” earning the doctor a reputation as “some sort of Hitler of the Beltway or Stalin in a Sedan.”
At only 63 words, Nestor’s missive had an almost Gettysburg Address word-count-to-effect ratio.
“On divided highways,” Nestor wrote, “I drive in the left lane with my cruise control set at the speed limit of 55 miles per hour because it is usually the smoothest lane. I avoid slower traffic coming in and out from the right and I avoid resetting the cruise control with every lane change. Why should I inconvenience myself for someone who wants to speed?”
All hell broke loose.
As a Post article years later pointed out, “From the letters that followed in response, you might have thought the doctor was an ax murderer.” Readers wrote in, calling his doctrine of driving “illegal,” “dangerous,” “obnoxious,” and “arrogant.” As one correspondent put it, “There is something about this putative vigilantism that seems alien to the public good.” Another, claiming to be a lawyer, cried that Nestor “has appointed himself to enforce the speed limit with no care about what this might mean for the innocent driver.” The flurry of letters compelled Nestor to defend himself two weeks later. It was an argument he would have to mount, off-and-on, until his death in 1999.
The verb “Nestoring” was even coined to denote the act of driving below the speed limit regardless of its effect on other drivers, and, in a more general sense, “an absolute adherence to the rules, regardless of the larger consequences.”
A month after Nestor’s letter was published, an editorial in the Post attempted to identify what it was about Nestoring that compelled readers to barrage the paper with impassioned letters. Nestor, the writer determined, had “outrageously flouted” the precious but unspoken code of the American road, one perhaps “more obnoxious and dangerous” than Nestoring, but one nonetheless valued, in which a strong silent approach prevails. This scenario consists of engaging the obstructing motorist in an unspoken suicide pact by driving about 5 feet behind him, conveying a message something like this: Okay, friend, here we are bumper-to-bumper at 60 mph; do you move over, or do we both go up in a fireball when traffic ahead of us even marginally slows down?
Not everyone hated Nestor’s driving philosophy, however. One woman wrote to say, “I love the 55 mph speed limit … and all you guys, including The Post’s correspondents who make the sour comments, pass me as if I were standing still. Shortly thereafter, I have the road all to myself. It’s great. I’m going to hate having the police maintain the legal speed for everybody: then I’ll be right in the middle of all the smart alecks, and that’s dangerous.” Another reader, who decided to chime in with the most mild form of approval, ceded that Nestoring, while generally a nuisance, would be useful in the case of keeping traffic moving when a road narrows from three to two lanes.
The debate still incited passions and opinions years later. In October 1992, a letter to the editor revived the dormant controversy by decrying “Obnoxious Practitioners of ‘Nestoring.’” It asserted that Virginia law stated that “drivers are required to pull right and let overtaking vehicles pass,” making Nestor a lawbreaker, too. A man named Ati Kovi injected a scarce bit of humor into the debate, when he wrote, “The fact that many people are driving 80 mph or 85 mph doesn’t really bother me, as long as they move over to the right so I can pass.”
The renewed attack obliged Nestor once again to protect his good name. His argument for safety—and his humorlessness—remained unchanged. “Apparently Ati Kovi thinks it is all right to travel at 85 mph since it does not bother him, although it may bother others by seriously injuring or killing them,” Nestor replied. What made the discussion at once durable and tedious was that it could be revived again and again, remaining just as circular and unresolvable as ever.
In a funny side note, Nestor’s fastidious ways also extended to his professional life, though not always to good effect.
At the FDA, he was a friend and supporter of his colleague Frances Kelsey as she exposed the side effects of the dangerous drug thalidomide. Informed by her experience, Nestor’s tenure at the FDA was marked by obstructionism. In a four-year stretch from 1968 to 1972, he approved zero new drugs for use by the public, viewing the risks and uncertainties still too great. As a result, he was moved to a do-nothing job within the administration.
He protested, and was later reinstated and given an apology by the agency. The readers of the Washington Post, however, offered no such redress.
