ATLANTA --- Drivers who hog the fast lane and refuse to yield to faster vehicles could get a $75 fine under legislation introduced Tuesday.
The law already requires slowpokes to move over as soon as they notice that they're being overtaken, but the sponsor of House Bill 1047 says a $75 fine would give officers more incentive to issue tickets.
"I don't think I'm alone in thinking this: There are so many times when you're on the interstate ... and people will get ... over in the left-hand lane, which by law is for passing, and just sit there using it as their own personal driving lane," said sponsor Rep. Mark Butler, R-Carrollton. "They may be going 50 mph, and it ends up slowing down traffic. It's frustrating."
Neither the Department of Driver Services nor the Department of Public Safety can readily report how many tickets have been issued to left-lane dawdlers because their databases aren't set up to instantly retrieve it.
"It's pretty much a trooper's discretion of what they see during a routine patrol," Public Safety spokesman Gordy Wright said.
Bob Dallas, the director of the Governor's Office of Highway Safety, likes the bill because it gives the public a clear signal about which lane they should use.
"A law like this would give law enforcement another tool to improve lane discipline," he said. "Driving in the correct lanes, at the correct speeds, has the possible effect of reducing crashes and increasing the vehicle-carrying capacity of our highways."
Current law only requires moving over for drivers "at less than the maximum lawful speed limit" and provides exceptions for unsafe conditions and left turns.
Butler said he isn't trying to encourage anyone to speed either or require someone driving at the limit to yield to someone speeding.
He said he considered adding it as an amendment to the "Super Speeder" law that passed last year, which adds $200 to the fines for anyone driving more than 85 mph on an interstate.
The departments have no figures on how many tickets have been issued for that since it took effect Jan. 1.
Butler's bill, if passed, would take effect July 1, just in time for the start of the summer driving season that informally begins around Independence Day.
Perhaps it would help if signs were posted stating that the left lane is only for passing. The one thing I liked about driving 100 plus MPH on German Autobahns was that eople knew whcich lane to use (far right for trucks and slow pokes), middle for non passing vehicles and far left for the 120MPH plus Mercedes and BMWs. This is strctly enforced either by the staadt polezei themselves or camera.
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