🚀 go-pugleaf

"Ken M." wrote:

> "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.

Ten seconds.  If it takes longer than ten seconds to pass anything up to
a double-trailer semi, it shows that the driver is not paying sufficient
attention to the task at hand, or is too timid about passing and needs
further driver training.

>
> Drivers could always say that they were intending to pass when
> they were pulled over.

And if they were in the lane longer than ten seconds, it'd still be
ticket time!

Heavy trucks might need a little longer, say twenty seconds (no passenger
vehicle is slow enough to warrant that), however they should additionally
simply not be allowed in the far left lane of any highway with more than
two lanes in each direction, period.

> "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."

It shows that inhabitants of the east coast megalopolis, as a group, seem
to have no clue how to make efficient use of the roadway.  Rush-hour not
considered, that is.

This is also a problem in other very large urban areas, tollbooths (such
as those on the Illinois tollway) seem to exacerbate it as well.
Stop-start and a free-for-all in each lane--a bad idea all around,
especially on a road designed to be an expressway.

It _IS_ safer to pass left in left-hand-drive countries, and when faster
traffic is given the right of way in a tiered lane system, traffic flow
_DOES_ become much safer and more efficient.

People in the United States also must be taught that they need to _WAIT_
for faster traffic to pass before initiating their own pass, some
never-corrected competitive instinct seems to make most of them jump out
in front of a faster car from a farther-right lane in order to pass
first, sooner than they needed to and getting in the way, whereas if they
had waited no one would have been slowed down.

Aardwolf.