A couple of notes to readers: Starting Tuesday, Roadguy will be on vacation, so guest bloggers Chris and Kitty will be filling in for several days. Meanwhile, Roadguy’s column from this Sunday’s paper is pasted below; if you’ve already read it elsewhere, skip down to the comments and share your thoughts.

After reading his mail this past week, Roadguy might never drive in the left lane again — it’s a hotbed of discontent.

Competition for the left lane “is not merely about the law,” wrote alert reader Kim of Minneapolis. “It is about whether humans … [make] a conscious choice for cooperative behavior and respect, rather than to play the same old losing ‘domination game.’ That which causes us no end of human trouble all over the globe. …”

A reader calling herself Left Lane Lucy was somewhat less apocalyptic, but she sent along a five-point essay about why she drives where she does, including the severe bumpiness of some right lanes and the fact that some right lanes disappear without warning. Like numerous other drivers, she cited a desire to be away from merging traffic, and she said that she moves out of the way of left-lane speeders when traffic conditions allow.

Even after last week’s comments from the State Patrol, some readers questioned the legality of behavior like Lucy’s. Alert reader Jim, an Illinois transplant, quoted the Minnesota Driver’s Manual: “If you are driving at a slower speed than other traffic, stay in the lane nearest to the right side of the road.” Others dove deeply into the statutes and excavated the very definition of “roadway” to argue that drivers do indeed need to move right in Minnesota.

Roadguy gave Maj. Kent O’Grady another call.

O’Grady noted that the manual is intended to guide new drivers through the learning process. “It’s not a law book,” he said. “We can’t haul someone into court for violating the driving manual.”

As for the other statutory interpretations, O’Grady says he has never seen any case law to support them — a driver going the speed limit in the left lane isn’t going to face legal penalties.

That’s true, writes alert reader Shawn of Alexandria, noting that drivers “are not legally obligated to drive faster than 45 mph as well. But the issue at hand is not the legal implications — it is a matter of courtesy.”

O’Grady agrees: “I don’t think there’s a statutory solution to the problem.” For one thing, he said, requiring slower drivers to move right doesn’t really work on busy metro freeways when all lanes are near capacity.

He and several drivers said greater enforcement would help make motorists more mindful of what they’re doing overall and cut down on the number of speeders trying to push past everyone else. But O’Grady noted that the number of troopers in Minnesota has not kept pace with the growth in population or miles driven.

One study cited by the State Patrol said Minnesota ranked 46th among states in the number of troopers per capita.

Even with more officers, though, there would still be speeders, and general cooperation isn’t easy to enforce. Jim, for one, isn’t optimistic that things will improve on our roads:

“The rest of the galaxy drives with slower traffic moving to the right to allow people on the left to pass. … Even without any traffic laws, people after a while would figure out that the best way to get from point A to B would be to have the faster traffic pass all the time in only one lane — except here, of course.”

Given the impasse on passing, the “domination game” seems likely to continue in our little corner of the globe.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 8th, 2007 at 6:10 am and is filed under Transportation conversations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.