My father, during his lifetime, and I had a continual discussion regarding the proper terminology of the left-hand lane on a 4 lane divided highway. My father, many people, and many police call that left lane the outside lane, presumably called that if one considers only the 2 lanes. However, it being a 4 lane highway, I maintain that it is the inside lane, being close to the middle of the entire 4 lane highway.
England, and other countries, insist on driving on the opposite side, and therefore would be driving in the right lane. And they insist on claiming that it is the outside lane, although clearly it is the inside lane if one considers it being a 4 lane highway.
What is the proper terminology? If it is correct that it is called the inside lane rather than the outside lane, is it possible for past violations and fines to be reversed?
I have had this discusssion in many countries, all of which I was the stand-alone proponent of outside lanes. And, at no time was anyone able to convincingly support the inside lane theory (and they admitted that fact).
Please help straightening out this long-standing issue.
On the road to the navel base they refer to them as the innies and outies lanes.
For a more serious answer they can be called what ever the local populace understands the terms to mean. The people I know would refer to the lanes as the passing or fast lanes and the slow lane.
The “inside” lane is the one near the centerline of the entire road (both directions). The “outside” lane is the one near the periphery. In drive-on-right countries, the “inside” would be left and the “outside” the right.
At least that’s the only way I’ve ever seen it written or understood. I cannot concieve of anyone thinking otherwise. How could someone logically name something “outside” which was at the interior, and something “inside” which was at the edge?
In proper US parlance for multi-lane roads, the innermost lane is #1 (pronounced as in “I was driving in the number one lane”), the next is #2, and so on. Very wide highways may have #1 through #8 or more.
Though I can’t fault your logic, this is at odds with my interpretation, and that of everybody I have ever spoken with where this usage occurred (which is admittedly not a large sample). In the UK, the inside lane is the left lane, i.e. that closest to the edge of the road, and the outside lane is the right lane, next to the central reservation. The only logic I can come up with for this is that you have to “pull out” to get to the outside lane, and you then “pull in” to return to the inside lane. This seems logical enough.
I am not a lawyer, but I think this is extremely unlikely. Firstly, as others have already hinted, the police officer writing the ticket should do so in an unambiguous way. Thus it is far more likely to number the lanes, or say “leftmost lane” or whatever. Even if this is not the case, the use of inside/outside lane can’t really be described as factually incorrect, because AFAIK there is no official terminology for it - the definition of the word is determined by its usage.
It may help to think of it like this. When you enter the road, you enter into the nearest lane. You are then inside the lane. If you want to pass somebody, you need to go outside of the lane to do it, so you are then in the outside lane.
I completely agree with your reasoning, but have to agree with Dead Cat that many locales apply the terminology the other way around. This wiki page has a diagram purporting to use Irish terminology: the “inner lane” is near the edge of the road, and the “outer (passing) lane” is near the middle.
I don’t get it, either.
That page also claims that in Hungary and Australia the usage is more like what you and I would expect (i.e., backwards from Ireland). I’d never heard this - can anyone confirm or refute?
Thankfully for my now-aching head, the terms “inner” and “outer” are rarely used here for this purpose.
I know it’s seperate from public driving but most forms of racing (auto, horse, olympic running, speed skating, etc.) that go around a circle or oval do so in a counterclockwise fashion. The leftmost lane is always the inside lane.