A $200 ticket for driving 'too slow?'
North Carolina lawmakers are considering a bill that would fine drivers for driving too slow in the left lanes on highways.
An overturned truck and trailer block all lanes of southbound Highway 99 at Atlantic Street in Seattle on Tuesday, March 24.
Mark Hrrison/The Seattle Times/Ap
Have you ever been on the highway, in a rush, only to get bogged down by someone with the audacity to drive the speed limit in the passing lane?
Well North Carolina's lawmakers are sick of those drivers as well. So much so that Mecklenburg County Sen. Jeff Tarte has introduced a bill that would subject slowpokes in the passing lane to $200 fines, according to WSOC TV of Charlotte, N.C.
Drivers who are driving under the the legal maximum speed limit or driving slow enough to impact the flow of traffic will be targeted by highway patrol if the bill passes. According to WSOC TV, the bill had been approved in its first reading in the state Senate and has now gone into committees.
North Carolina isn't the first state to take a stand against drivers who sit in fast lanes on the highway. In July 2013, a similar law went into effect in Florida, which fines motorists traveling 10 m.p.h. below the speed limit $60 for failing to move over to the right lane when a vehicle driving at a faster speed comes up behind them, according to the Huffington Post.
Georgia also has a "slowpoke law" that went into effect in July of last year. The law was designed to reduce tailgating, road rage, and traffic congestion, WTVM Television reported. These laws all include provisions that won't see motorists driving the speed limit get ticketed unless they are seriously disrupting traffic flow. Also, drivers can drive at reduced speeds during poor weather conditions or road construction.
“People who are driving faster sometimes get upset at people who are impeding them, causing them to make evasive maneuvers to get around the slower vehicles and sometimes lose control and crash,” Corporal Tracy Webb of the Georgia State Patrol told the Athens Banner-Herald.
Traffic engineers encourage that speed limits should be set to the speed that 85 percent of the road's motorists drive at, according to the National Motorists Association. A survey from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that 98 percent of respondents said that it was safe to drive over the maximum posted speed limit when on an interstate interstate highway. Also respondents agreed that 70 m.p.h. was a safe speed to drive on highways even if the posted speed limit was 65, according to the survey.