🚀 go-pugleaf

I don't see this being too bad of an idea as long as a couple of changes are
made to make it more "friendly" in heavier traffic areas.

Specifically, there does need to be some sort of expemtion in heavy
traffic...personally I think that's a given. It would be crazy to completely
close off a lane to traffic during the peak of rush hour.

Obviously, it also needs an exemption for traffic that is merging in the
left lane, as well as traffic that has a left lane exit.

I think this is a good idea, because I don't live in a rural area by any
means, but on a very consistent basis, when I'm driving on the area
freeways, I routinely see people get on the expressway, and move all the way
over to the left lane, and do about 5-10 mph less than the prevailing
traffic for that lane. In fact, I'd say that the traffic concentrates itself
over there, the far right lane is almost totally vacant, save the semis
which are required by state law to stay in the far right, or the 2 far right
lanes, depending on how many lanes there are.

At the very least, the Virginia lawmakers could hand down a "decree" or
whatever to instruct the LEO's to start enforcing the laws that forbid
driving slower than the prevailing flow of traffic in a lane, regardless of
how fast people are going. Only in very extreme circumstances have I ever
seen this law enforced, usually because someone's doing less than the limit
in the left lane. Even when someone is ticketed for this its usually a
little old lady, who promptly goes into court and uses what I call the
"little old lady defense"; "How dare he give me a ticket!! I've been driving
for xx years and I'm always safe and I wasn't going over the speed limit, I
should be able to drive wherever I want to if I'm not going over the limit!"
Usually, I've found that this defense gets the ticket dismissed, or the
sentence suspended. Then the little old lady, after leaving the courthouse,
promptly gets back on the road, and plants herself in the left hand lane.

Of course, this problem is going to remain with us as long as people don't
change their attidtude driving, although I could see legislation like this
go a long way in possibly curing and preventing some of these traffic jams
in the first place.

Bart
Ken M. <poboxdc@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:3A868BB7.F3EEE25B@ix.netcom.com...
> Rural Lawmaker Wants to End Life in Virginia's Fastest Lanes
>
> By Lisa Rein
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Sunday, February 11, 2001; Page C01
>
> RICHMOND -- Rural lawmakers incensed by slowpokes who swoop
> to the left side of a highway and refuse to budge have pushed a
> bill through the Virginia House of Delegates that would resolve
> once and for all who owns the fast lane.
>
> If the bill becomes law, drivers could not merely motor in the
> left lane. They would have to use it for passing only.
>
> "People can't get by. They blow their horns. They blink their
> lights. They take chances," said Del. Joseph P. Johnson Jr.
> (D-Washington), the bill's co-sponsor and a self-described
> country lawyer from the town of Abingdon, pop. 7,400, 14 miles
> from the Tennessee line. "It creates what we refer to as driver
> rage."
>
> Did he say rage? Try telling commuters in Northern Virginia
> they could soon be denied the right to travel millions of
> precious cubic feet of asphalt on their slow crawl to the office
> and some road rage will follow.
>
> "That sounds pretty crazy," said William Weaver, as he pumped
> gas at a station off Interstate 66. Weaver knows from traffic
> on his daily journey from Capitol Hill to his Tysons Corner
> car dealership. "Don't they know the passing lane is an available
> lane for drivers?"
>
> In the Old Dominion, where the 1,118 miles of interstate
> highways connect suburbs, with their daily horror stories of
> traffic congestion, to sleepy regions dotted with dairy farms,
> one man's quest for driver courtesy is another man's lifeline
> to sheer survival.
>
> Rural drivers may say they have nowhere to go behind a dawdler
> hogging the left-hand lane on a four-lane highway. But drivers
> who use the Capital Beltway, I-95 and other parking lots that
> Northern Virginians call highways during rush hour say that
> being shut out of the lane unless they are passing would leave
> them with nowhere to go -- literally.
>
> "Now you've got everybody in the right two lanes, and you're
> going to create a madhouse," opined Mark Davis, a long-haul
> trucker from Stafford County, at a rest stop off I-95 in Dale
> City. "It's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
>
> House Bill 1646 will go before a Senate committee this week.
> It would prohibit use of the left lane on limited-access
> highways for anything but passing other vehicles traveling in
> the same direction. Lawbreakers would be cited for a moving
> violation. The bill also would make it illegal for cars to pass
> on the right, a practice now allowed on Virginia roads and highways.
>
> The travel ban would apply not only to the interstates that course
> through Northern Virginia -- I-66, I-95, I-395 and I-495 -- but
> also to the smaller Fairfax County Parkway, Route 28 and Dulles
> Toll Road in Fairfax and the Route 234 Bypass around Manassas.
>
> The bill sailed through the House 63 to 32 last month after winning
> unanimous approval in the Militia and Police Committee. Gov. James S.
> Gilmore III (R) has not taken a position on the measure,
> spokeswoman Lila White said.
>
> Most highway drivers have watched a passing-lane lingerer hold
> up the flow of traffic -- and felt their own temper rise.
> Twenty-one states, from Utah to Rhode Island, have some
> passing-lane restrictions. In Kentucky and Maine, the ban on
> continuous left-lane travel is limited to rural
> roads where the speed limit is 65 miles per hour. Illinois
> allows only cars traveling at or above the speed limit in the
> left lane.
>
> The American Automobile Association, in a poll of Northern
> Virginia motorists last year, found overwhelming support for
> regulations that would ensure that slower drivers keep to the
> right lane. And one rural Maryland lawmaker exasperated with
> left-lane stragglers has tried to push a far less-restrictive
> measure through the General Assembly two years in a row. The
> measure would have required cars to move to the right
> when a faster car came up behind them.
>
> Del. Kevin Kelly (D-Allegany) was 10 miles out of Annapolis on
> his way home one weekend three years ago when he got stuck
> behind a driver clocking 50 mph. "I picked up my cell phone
> and said to the staff, 'Draft me a bill!' " he recalled last
> week. But his bill was torpedoed by suburban and urban
> legislators, and he did not bother to submit it this year.
>
> "The best way to summarize it is, the rural guys viewed this
> legislation as common-sense courtesy. The urban guys viewed it as
> advocating speeding," he said.
>
> Seventeen years ago, the same kind of rage incited a pillorying
> in print of Arlington doctor John O. Nestor, who wrote in a
> letter to the editor of The Post that he liked to set his
> cruise control at 55 mph and drive in the far left lane of
> the Beltway. His idea, which he described as a kind of
> vigilantism of the road, was to slow down speeders.
>
> Washington area drivers exploded in a torrent of Nestor-bashing,
> saying he was interfering with their rights. The doctor's name
> entered the local lexicon as a verb for loitering in the left lane:
> "Nestoring."
>
> That was 1984. Passing isn't even an option on today's suburban
> highways at certain times of day. Take a recent Saturday
> afternoon on I-66 at 4:35 p.m., where weekend traffic from the
> malls at Tysons Corner crawled past the Nutley Street
> intersection. It's the busiest stretch of the
> highway, crossed by 200,000 cars every day. The left lane
> was a sea of brake lights.
>
> Back in Southwest Virginia -- Johnson's home -- 40,000 cars
> a day pass over the junction of I-81 and Route 611, Washington
> County's busiest intersection.
>
> "We have intersections that handle 400,000 cars a day," said
> Del. John A. "Jack" Rollison III (R-Prince William), the
> lone lawmaker to speak against the bill when it came to the
> floor of the House. "All of a sudden, we're going to legislate
> that people have to drive single file. Wait until
> this law becomes effective. Then you'll see real road rage."
>
> While there appears to be no hard-and-fast data to document
> the effect of slow cars traveling in the left lane, traffic
> engineers and state police agree they can create a safety
> hazard. Angry drivers behind them start weaving into the lane
> to the right to pass. And the so-called lane discipline that
> promotes safe travel can become very undisciplined.
>
> But critics say that the law would be close to unenforceable.
>
> "How is the trooper supposed to figure out how long you were
> in there, 30 seconds? A minute?" asked Hayward Corley, a parks
> worker who commutes to Arlington County from Upper Marlboro.
>
> Drivers could always say that they were intending to pass when
> they were pulled over.
>
> Virginia and Maryland have both passed laws making it illegal
> to drive too slowly, especially when a faster car in the
> passing lane honks or flashes his lights. But the laws rarely
> are enforced.
>
> "We encourage motorists to travel at the speed limit" and not
> too far below it, said Lucy Caldwell, spokeswoman for the
> Virginia State Police. But she acknowledged that troopers
> rarely write violations for the little-known violation known
> as impeding traffic.
>
> "It's interesting this had to be made into a law," said Lon
> Anderson, director of public and government relations for
> the AAA's mid-Atlantic chapter. "This used to be known as
> driver courtesy. What these people are attempting to legislate
> is good manners on the road."
>
> ===============================================================
> http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54605-2001Feb10.html
> --
> (ken)
>
>
> Is this photo an optical illusion -- or is it real?
> http://www.zyworld.com/maryland/1-illusiont1.JPG
> ------------------------------------------
>
> To respond to this place (-) between x and d.
>
>
>         Because e-mail can be altered electronically,
>         the integrity of this communication cannot be guaranteed.
> (Version 1.91)