Posted on 06/05/2005 10:11:23 AM PDT by qam1
With summer just around the corner and visions of vacations dominating Americans' thoughts, our highways will experience a dramatic increase in traffic. To enhance the travel experience for motorists, the National Motorists Association (NMA) has designated June as Lane Courtesy Month and is kicking off the campaign with the slogan "Do the RIGHT Thing!"
Lane Courtesy, also called Lane Discipline, has a powerful influence on highway safety, traffic flow, and congestion. Arguably, its effect is more important than speed limits, traffic enforcement, or any other attempt to control driver behavior. Ask almost any motorist what most raises their ire when using major highways and the answer will be "failure of slower traffic to keep right or yield to the right when faster traffic approaches."
The concept, or ethic, of lane courtesy evolved in the United States with the development of the Interstate System. However, the concept of slower traffic yielding to the right for faster traffic has its origins in the older system of two lane highways. Almost all states have a provision in their traffic law that requires slower traffic, upon being signaled by a following vehicle, to pull to the right to allow the faster traffic to pass.
Prior to 1973, rural speed limits reflected typical travel speeds. Consequently, slower vehicles were not driving the speed limit and there was no rationale for deliberately blocking the progress of faster traffic. The 55 MPH National Maximum Speed Limit changed all that.
After 1973, there was a serious disconnect between speed limits and the actual speed of traffic. There was also a total breakdown in lane courtesy. The slower traffic that would normally stay in the right hand lane could now linger anywhere on the highway, in any lane, and still be traveling at the legal maximum speed of 55 miles per hour. This counter productive process was reinforced over a period of 21 years, influencing a whole generation of new drivers.
In 1995 the 55 MPH National Maximum Speed Limit was repealed and several states raised speed limits to put the limits more in concert with the reality of highway travel. However, the almost quarter century habit of wallowing anywhere on the highway did not disappear with the advent of new speed limit signs.
The lane courtesy ethic must be reinvigorated, promoted, and recognized for the contribution it can make toward safer, faster and more enjoyable travel. We hope the NMA's "Do the RIGHT Thing!" campaign and declaring June as "Lane Courtesy Month" will reawaken interest and support for this incredibly important and positive traffic safety concept.
That is stupid cop trick #143. Collect them all!
Failure to control speed and failure to yield right of way are the two primary causes of accidents.
A speeder has NO right to speed and must yield to traffic already ahead of him. First come first serve. Can you jump a line of cars at a stop sign? I've seen jackasses DO this but they have no right to do so.
Speed limits are dropped when weather conditions are bad (and some make this clear by dropping highway speeds after sundown).
Yielding right of way applies to merging on and off a highway, giving left lane traffic changing lanes to the right lanes "right of way", yielding at driveways, intersections, and red/yellow lights.
And the judge should toss it because obeying the speed limit is more important.
It's not an accident that traffic accidents have been on the rise since they removed the national speed limit.
You know, there are some people who have to drive slow in the left land because well, they have to make left hand turns at intersections, of course no one cares about them, they'd rather them miss their turn just so they can be Dale Earnhardt on the city streetsI'm talking primarily about interstates. In Cleveland people are usually pretty good about keeping right while going slow. In Tulsa, where I've also driven a lot, they are horrible about it. In both, virtually all exits are on the right.
I-71 between Cleveland and Columbus and the Ohio Turnkpike between Cleveland and Toledo have more left-lane bandits than they should. Both are limited access highways with (right lane) exits every five miles or so, with at least one mile in every five perfectly straight (they were intentionally designed that way to serve as emergency airstrips in time of war). There's absolutely no reason to drive below the prevailing rate of speed in the left lane, and that includes a artifically low speed limit passed for revenue enhancement reasons.
-Eric
That's okay, isn't it?
It's not an accident that traffic accidents have been on the rise since they removed the national speed limit.Where in the Constitution is the federal government permitted to establish traffic laws?
-Eric
Probably a cop cam just before he lit her up.
For this thread, you should feel kinda greenish-icky, and want to yell at your television.
I do feel a bit icky, I have a sunburn.....oy....
Where in the Constitution does it say a person is allowed to violate the law?
Me personally, I'm tired of having to use all the favors owed me to get my son's tickets ripped up.
LOL.
We were in a supermarket shopping lot a few years ago and an old woman was trying to squeeze her car into the shopping cart return area. Even though it was about a foot narrower than her car, she kept trying.
One of the employees told her it wasn't for parking but she insisted that since there was no sign prohibiting parking a car there, she was welcome to use it.
She finally gave up and drove off in a huff.
Talk about great theater!
Going the Speed Limit is not driving slow, it's called obeying the law, if you drive faster, you are a lawbreaker and you deserve to be fined.
Those signs are not there as "suggestions", they are there because in order to drive, you need to be able to have a certain breaking distance between each car, and you need to be able to be able to adequately control the car.
I'll have to see your Jewish Membership Identification Card if you are going to bandy a Jewish Power Phrase like 'oy' about.
Unless you are using the Australian 'oy', and then it would be spelled 'oi'.
Just another helpful hint from LazWorks.
In Mass you cannot be sited for a seat belt violation, unless you are pulled over for another infraction. Now I am driving down 93 doing 75 passing all the Staties on detail, chance of a ticket small, a:) Because every one else is doing 85 and B: It is a frigging work detail, not a traffic detail.
That's okay, isn't it?
I'm running out of missiles thanks to idiots like you.
No, I don't live in Massachusetts, I live in the birthplace of Mardi Gras (not New Orleans) and you can be cited for simply speeding here, and thats how it should be.
Everyone knows that speeding makes them more likely to be in an accident, yet they do it anyway. The reason speeding tickets are given out is so we can identify insurance risks so that those of us who follow the law aren't penalized as much for the bad driving of the speeders.
That is simply not true
Page 8 & 13 are the graphs that prove you wrong
Even though there are more drivers on the road today the number of people killed is less than it was in the past.
Speed doesn't kill, People driving at different speeds does.
And my Patriot ABM's are starting to run low, too.
Truce?
Just get used to doing 40 behind me and we can save a lot of taxpayer money.
Speed Limits on interstates are not correlated with safety at all. In Germany the open Autobahns were as safe as US highways even when speeds were unlimited -- until they had to absorb a bunch of East Germans in Trabants, who drive like Americans.
And most of those Autobahns were two lanes, with trucks going 50 being overtaken by everybody else. But everyone moved over.
Of course, in Germany, lane discipline is enforced by the law, by insurers (if an overtaking car hits you in the left lane, you were wrong), and by an extremely thorough driver training program that costs serious money and takes serious time. Also, the Germans did (when I lived there) not allow you to get a license until age 18. That would eliminate a number of the worst drivers in any country.
Ask any cop how many times he's responded to an accident of a car packed with teens. More than he wants to think.
Another reason we have poor lane discipline in the US is the large numbers of minivans and SUVs. These high-centered vehicles feel unstable in lane changes, so when Suzy has lane changed into the left she isn't going to change for anything -- unless she sees the highway patrol coming in her rear view mirror.
I find that most big Winnebago campers are driven with a view to their limitations, but most SUVs are not. I know several guys who bought their wives SUVs because the gals were accident prone -- in one case, because she was much given to drinking and driving.
I can (and do) drive all day without seeing a competently driven SUV. On the other hand, most commercial trucks, not just the big rigs but Joe the Electrician, are driven well. Go figure.
And while I am ranting -- how about the old senile geezers who respond to cataracts or macular degeneration by simply driving as before, but way slower? I had a ringside seat an an accident one of these guys caused three weeks ago. His reaction time was so bad that he was still on the gas for a half minute after his vehicle had come to rest.
I wish these guys luck with their courtesy campaign, but as long as we will licence any testosterone-addled yout', blind senile geezer, or illegal aliens who can't read even in their own savage language, it's gonna be a bloodbath out there.
One final rant -- it is graduation time and we're going to get all the "Nine teens die in high-speed rollover" stories by thumb-sucking liberals with all their prattle about lives cut short and the poor victims and how they ought to sue GM because a Suburban couldn't take that corner at 95 MPH. Yeah, right. That's just the process of natural selection exerting a eugenic effect.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
_________________
On Tuesday, May 24, there was a power outage in the downtown area. Traffic signals were out. Evidently, a great number of drivers do not know, or else care to observe, the law that applies in such an event. A non functioning traffic signal is to be treated as a four way stop. This does not mean that the street with the largest amount of traffic becomes the through lane. It means that each and every vehicle is to stop and then proceed through the intersection in order; one at a time.
Of course, those who were blasting through the dead signal are probably the same ones flying along I-26, twelve inches from the car in front of them, while talking on the phone, eating a biscuit, yelling at the kids and checking themselves in the mirror. Then fifty feet from their exit, they cut across traffic, often in front of a big rig (whose numbers are growing daily.) Then when navigating the surface streets, go at two or three times the speed limit. When they do arrive at a functioning signal, for that extra edge on the restart, get the nose of their vehicle as far into the intersection as possible.
They probably will not recognize themselves, but for the rest of us, my only suggestion is drive as if the other driver is out to kill you. It may be no ones actual intention, but is a natural result from irresponsible driving habits.
They are there to raise revenue, and as a comfort for the senile whose reaction times are shot, and should be riding the bus from Elderly Services. (Which also isn't in the constitution).
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
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