Monday, February 22, 1999
COMMUTING COLUMN
Tristate fast lanes surely make you lose your mind
BY TANYA ALBERT
The Cincinnati Enquirer
We've all seen it on the interstate. The driver in the far left lane cruises at the speed limit or slightly below. Traffic stacks up behind, blood pressures rise.
Drivers behind him become impatient. They honk horns. Flash headlights. Tailgate.
When they see an opening, they cut to the right and then swerve back to the left, cutting off the left lane holder.
Still, the driver holds that left lane. Oblivious.
I've gotten a lot of calls and e-mails from people asking what they can do about those drivers, so I did some digging into state laws.
It turns out a driver cruis ing along at the speed limit in the far left lane in Ohio may be irritating, but he's not breaking any traffic laws.
“If you are maintaining the speed limit, you have every right to be there,” says Sgt. Gary Lewis of the Ohio State Highway Patrol.
Police can't do anything unless the driver is “impeding traffic.”
No tickets unless they're going slower than the minimum speed and backing up traffic.
Cross that Kentucky border, though, and he could face a $75.05 ticket. “It's a passing lane,” says Trooper Curtis Finley of the Kentucky State Police.
And drivers passing shouldn't be going faster than the posted speed limit.
The law changes again when drivers cross into Indiana.
Any driver can use the far left lane on Hoosier interstates.
But if a faster driver is coming from behind, the slower driver is expected to get out of the way. Indiana State Police Sgt. Mark Mitchell says “it really doesn't hurt anything to let them pass.”
I've always thought of the far left lane as “high speed” or “passing lane” reserved for drivers trying to get around slow traffic, and I was surprised to find out how Ohio's law isn't reserved for passing.
So was Beth Koehler. But the Morgan Township commuter who drives 37 miles to get to her job in Northern Kentucky pointed out that although the laws are different from state-to-state, you wouldn't know if by driving on the roads.
“Even though it's a law in Kentucky, people still stay in the left lane,” Mrs. Koehler, 38, says.
On just about any interstate, drivers encounter slow drivers in the left lane, “usually in a fog, cruising along, not paying attention.”
And when Selena Hariharan has passed slower drivers to the right, she's watched them “make obscene gestures” as she passed by.
Ms. Hariharan 27, asks drivers in the fast lane to “just please be considerate, look in the rear-view mirror occasionally and don't take it as an insult. Let people pass you.”
That's good common sense.
On today's hurry-up-get-there interstates, slower drivers run the risk of getting run over.
“People start tailgating if you don't get out of the way,” Trooper Finley says. “They get frustrated they can't pass and you get road rage.”
While drivers on Ohio interstates may have the right to hold tight in that far left lane, they need to weigh the risk of not moving right and letting another driver pass.
“Commuting” column appears each Monday in the Metro section. Contact her at 768-8389; fax: 768-8340; mail at 312 Elm St., Cincinnati 45202 or by e-mail at tmalbert@enquirer.com.
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