Drive Too Slow & Get a Ticket
One evening I got stopped twice by the police, once for going too fast, and once for going too slow.
I was driving west of town to take my teenage daughter’s boyfriend home. It was really dark with little-to-no street lights, and each time I asked Mr. Dream Date a question about the road, he just said “Uh…” And there was no other traffic, so I couldn’t just “follow the flow.”
I failed to notice when the speed limit changed from 45 to 35mph. That’s probably because the sign was about as big as a playing card. When the officer pulled me over, I apologized for my oversight, and he just warned me.
But even without getting a ticket I was really upset about it! The last time I had been pulled over was 1980 in Oregon, when a state trooper wondered why I drove by his stake-out every day in a car with Pennsylvania plates. (Got a ticket for that one, but the judge dismissed it.)
So after I dropped off the boyfriend, I drove eastward toward home, hyperventilating, eyes darting everywhere. I knew the speed limit was going to change but I didn’t know, when so I stayed at 35. Before I knew it there were spinning red lights shining in my rearview mirror again. It turned out, this different officer explained, the speed limit on that stretch was actually 55 mph. He was suspicious of my nervousness because I kept saying “Uh…,” so I had to tell him what just happened. Once he understood he laughed good-naturedly and gave me my second written warning of the night.
As a result I can say you will find nobody more sympathetic than I am when it comes to driving slow and getting a ticket. And in my defense I would like to make certain you understand there was no traffic flowing in either direction for me to hold up.
But under normal conditions it’s important to drive at the speed limit because by going too slowly you can impede others on the road. Fellow motorists who tool up behind you on the highway are in danger of misjudging how slow you’re going. And they can’t predict what you’ll do next. Yes, it’s true that they carry the responsibility of driving carefully no matter what’s in front of them. But if they’re speeding and you’re creeping, it’s a very unsettling feeling to have someone whomp right up on your rear bumper. It creates road rage!
The rule of the road requires everyone to keep to the right unless they are passing. That doesn’t give speedsters the right to burn up the left lane. The speed limit sign doesn’t say “55 mph, Scofflaws Keep Left.” But there’s nothing more frustrating if you want to maintain that five-mile comfort range above the speed limit than the driver who crawls along even a tad below the speed limit in the left-hand lane.
Nor do the states make it easy on us! Each state has its own version of what you’re allowed to do in the left lane. In Pennsylvania, you can pass only on the left. So if you are driving happily along in the right-hand lane and you come across Slow Moses chugging slowly along in the left-hand lane, technically speaking you are not supposed to pass him on the right.
In several states, including Maine and Kentucky, you can only use the left-hand lane for passing or turning left. I can visualize that working for Maine’s laid-back fishermen or Kentucky’s blue grass farmers. But this same law applies to Illinois and Massachusetts. When’s the last time you drove the Loop around Chicago or drag-raced with your right-lane buddies on the Boston freeways?
There are a lot of useful reasons for driving slowly. Raise your hand if you saw a movie called “National Lampoon’s Vacation.” Remember that, with Chevy Chase? Remember how he put the grandma in her rocking chair on the roof of the car after she died? If he’d been driving at the speed limit, she would have fallen off for sure. And let’s not even talk about the dog.
There are decals you can buy for your windshield that tell the driver in front of you to move over. They actually spell out the words in reverse-image letters so that said driver can read them in his rearview mirror, and they even come with a big arrow kindly showing Slowpoke which side of the road is his. Nobody wants tailgaters coming up so close behind them they can read the labels in their BVDs, so most people reportedly respond cooperatively to these signs. Caveat driver, however, if you live in one of the states—of course this includes Pennsylvania—where it’s illegal to apply recreational decals to your windshield.
So the next time you look in your rearview mirror, if you see traffic backed up behind you, these are your choices. You can pull nicely over to the right lane and keep going. Or you can stop and tie a rocking chair to the roof of your car.
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Filed under: Driving Tips
the problem is that people need to learn how to drive. What annoys me greatly is either people drive too fast or drive too slow. I just want to drive the speed limit at a steady pace. But when some motorist get behind me they want to run me off the road and probably when those same motorist get in front of me they drive at a snails paste under the speed limit. I beleive that if a motorist drive too fast, he should get a ticket and I also beleive that if a motorist drive too slowly, under the speed limit, especailly with traffic behind them, they should also be tickeded. The reason is that slow drivers are just as hazardous to the road as speeding drivers. If a person find that his pace is holding up traffic, just have the common courtesy of pulling over and get out of the way