This occurred to me while my wife and I were driving to dinner the other day.
We were in a line of traffice approaching some construction on a two lane road. The left hand lane was closed ahead, but people continued to drive in the open section right up until they were forced to merge. At that point they just pushed in front of cars who had been waiting patiently in line the whole time. Needless to say, I was mildly perturbed.
My question is twofold.
Is there any law against this or which could be used to stop people doing this?
and
If so could a police officer just sit in a car and take down the licence plates of everyone who pushed in and send them a ticket?
Traffic laws can vary by state, but I don’t know of a specific statute against this. I agree with you that it’s awfully rude. Although, to be fair, many of the people who do it probably just weren’t thinking.
Violations can be found in many of these situations – generally relating to “failure to drive in a single lane,” or “failure to drive on the right side of the roadway.”
However, I rarely write tickets in construction areas. 1. It usually isn’t reasonable because the construction is messing everything up; 2. It’s probably an easy ticket to get out of because the judge will believe that things were confusing; 3. It can be very difficult to get to or catch up with the violator because of the traffic congestion (I work in a patrol car, not on a motorcycle).
Regarding sitting and writing down license plates – no. The driver commits the violation, not the car, and I have to prove who was driving.
On my commute home there is some road construction this summer that is closing down one of 2 lanes on an interstate highway.
90% of drivers will merge over into the right lane miles before the actual lane closer. The Department of Transportation actually haulled in 3 message board, one about 2 miles out, 1 about a mile out and one at the merge. The first 2 signs actually tell people to use both lanes, the third tells people to merge at the spot where the lane goes away.
Seem the DOT in Minnesota wants people to use both lanes for a far as possible.