Some politician wants to try and pass a bill where driving in the left lane of a highway would be a ticketable offense, unless it were being used for solely passing. Yeah no, that’s not going to happen in Atlanta, a city where there’s traffic between the hours of 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. every single day of the week, relegating the left lane to just another lane that gets clogged full of incompetent and inconsiderate drivers.
Yes, I read the entire article, and I know that it’s not illegal to be in the left lane as long as it follows certain guidelines. But I still contest that such a bill’s not going to happen, and even if it does, it’s just going to be another law that is ignored by the incompetent Georgia police, and won’t change a single fucking thing.
Most of the roads in Atlanta are really crappy too; anyone who genuinely nurtures their cars to the point where they drive on the smoother side of the road, which in a lot of cases might just be the left side. Yes, I am one of those people, and out of the roads that I regularly drive, I have a fairly good understanding of which lanes on which highways are pockmarked with bad potholes, divots and unnecessary stresses to my car’s shocks, springs and suspension, and I avoid them as often as I can.
And let’s face it, there are far worse thing that happen on the road at any given time than people driving in the left lane of an interstate. Like for example, those who drive 110 mph and get away with it regularly. People driving 70 mph+ on donuts, completely disregarding the fact that spare tires should barely even be driving at 55 mph. Retards driving with busted headlights and/or tail lights, and the countless number of assholes who are still texting while driving, and letting their cars weave precariously within and outside of their lanes. And my favorite, the legions of people that violate the HOV lanes, because nobody fucking enforces them.
There are also parts of the Metro Atlanta highway system that kind of creates a degree of entrapment for this kind of law; immediately what comes to mind is like where I-20 westbound, you can get onto I-285 southbound, but it spits you out in the left lane. Imagine it’s late at night, or there’s not a car in sight, and you go from I-20 to I-285, and then you simply don’t get out of the left lane, because frankly, there’s not a car in sight, and you’re just kind of cruising. And then you pass exit 7, and some fucking cop pulls you over for being in the left lane of a deserted highway. How pissed would anyone be at that?
And that isn’t the only spot in which something like this could occur; as someone who responsibly carpools, I take full advantage of HOV entrances, and the shortcuts that some of them provide as a reward for sharing the ride, but almost every single one of them involves entering the highway at the left side. So what does this stupid law mean for HOV riders? If it’s not a rush hour, and you don’t really have to be in the HOV lane, it’s now illegal to be in the HOV lane? That would be bullshit. Sometimes, I hop in the HOV lane when I have one or more extra riders in my car for absolutely no fucking reason than that I can legally be in it, regardless of the time of day it is.
If the state is so hard up for money, and wants to levy in some bullshit ticket revenue, then perhaps they should do what I’ve been griping about for years now, and actually enforce the HOV lanes. Every single fucking morning there are undoubtedly more violators in the HOV lanes than there are actual carpoolers, but it’s because they know that at worst, there’s literally one cop actually enforcing it, if any at all. Once that one cop is out of sight and out of mind, single-occupant riders flock into the HOV lane like it were the line at Foot Locker on the day of Air Jordan XXXIX’s release, and capitalize on the benefits that they’re not legally entitled to. I’m fairly certain that if Atlanta police ticketed every single HOV lane violator, every day for a month, the United States could probably take a gigantic bite out of the national debt. LITRALLY.
I guess in the end, it really doesn’t matter if this bill passes or not, although I’d err on the side of it failing like T-SPLOST, because much like the HOV lane violators, I doubt the police would actually remember to enforce it.
