If you drive in the US, the interstate highway system affords the driver with ingress and egress lanes that are almost always positioned to the right of the right-most through lanes.
This ingress-egress positioning enables a hierarchy of lanes whereby the left-most lane is generally designated (or assumed by general custom) to be for the fastest moving vehicles and the right-most lanes for the slowest. The logic is to place the slower traffic nearest to the lanes entering and leaving the flow.
I believe that the typical driver does not associate the ingress-egress positioning with the relative lane speeds imagined by the designers of the interstate system. And because this driver is oblivious to this association, they naturally assume that the left (inside) lane of all roads is the customary fast lane.
However, assuming that ingress-egress determines the lane designation, a one-way, two-lane city or state road has no customary or official designation as such roads provide ingress and egress on both sides. There is no fast lane for this road, although I often observe drivers who behave indignantly as though the rules of the interstate still apply.
And in the case that a one-way, three-lane road presents, the middle lane is the logical fast lane of a state or city road.
I had not considered this until recently. I wonder if anyone else is as obtuse.
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