Must people allow others to break the law?

Great Debates
41

Perhaps I’m being a jerk by putting it this way, but if so, I guess I’ll have to live with it…

My impression of Hayduke Lives!'s argument is, “People who are aggressive when they can’t pass (keep in mind his rant is ostensibly about those who flash and honk, not merely those who speed) are jerks. This justifies PREEMPTIVELY BEING A JERK by blocking them in the left lane.”

Hayduke, the simple fact of life is that there are other people in it, and you are as responsible for not making their lives harder to live as they are for not making your life harder. Integral to this on the roads is thinking beyond your own bumper and understanding that other people, faced with other motivations, might want to go faster than you, and you have no right to step in and decide, as judge, jury and policeman, that they have no right to exercise their own judgment as to what is safe or not, especially while you are simultaneously enforcing YOUR judgment on them.

I wonder how you feel about the fact that citizens your age are not allowed to drive without restrictions that older drivers do not have. They are also not allowed any voice in the government that made the rules you are championing, and they are not allowed to exercise their own judgment as to the ingestion of alcohol, despite the fact that older citizens are allowed to. My reading of your past posts leads me to suspect that that frosts you no end. Guess what? Those laws are every bit as valid as the ones you have declared yourself to be the enforcer of.

Another example: Your parents are LEGALLY responsible for you, which means that their rules are not merely authority, they have LEGAL WEIGHT. They are, in a very real sense, the law. Yet you have questioned and criticized their authority at every opportunity that I have seen on these boards. But where a strict interpretation of the law might be to your benefit, you find no problem in its strict enforcement. Do I detect a double standard here?

I recognize that it may be disconcerting to have someone honking behind you. I will also admit that I have flashed my lights at more than one car (I always start with low beams). I may have even pointed my [index] finger at the lane that the law says is more appropriate for them. However, it is no less disconcerting to be in a rush because you’re late for work, and have to slow down to follow some self-important jerk who is almost always speeding anyway (usually 5-10 mph over the speed limit), but refuses to go any faster than the car to their right, or to join them in the appropriate lane. Such behavior is, IMHO, much more jerkish than that of the poor guy they’ve trapped in their power trip.

My 2 cents…
-Redhawke

42

I drive at whatever speed feels safe. This is usually 5 or so miles over the speed limit, depends on the weather and time of day. If traffic in the right lane is moving slower than me or has the strong possibility of suddenly slowing (like when we are approaching an on-ramp that always causes some congestion), I’m going to drive in the left lane, even if somebody behind me wants to use it to do 90 in a 65 zone. I’m going to get into the left lane before the upcoming left exit I want to take, or before the highway merges with the slower traffic from another highway. I agree it’s wrong to use the left lane if you aren’t going any faster than the people in the right, but I don’t see that very often and I personally never do that - I get horns honked and lights blinked when I am in the left lane and going faster than the traffic in the right, but not as fast as the jerk behind me wants to go.

Fact is, on a 10 mile drive the difference between doing 70 and doing 80 is only seconds when it comes to getting there. The inconvenience to the person wanting to do 80 is a lot less than to the person doing 70 who is being urged to merge into traffic doing 60.

43

Wrong. Dead wrong.

In 1990, I had a heart attack, and underwent bypass surgery in a major hospital 70 miles from my home. After about ten days of recuperation (including one collapsed lung episode), I was released. My wife proceeded to pick me up and drive me home. About 38 miles along (32 left to go to get home) my lung began to collapse again.

The nearest hospital was in our home town, 32 miles away. Along that section of highway, ambulance and rescue squads were volunteer-only groups.

She turned on headlights, four-way flashers, and made use of the horn, got me to the hospital as I was losing consciousness a half hour later after total lung collapse, and was treated.

Now, in your opinion, was she obliged to (1) get off the highway and wait for a rescue squad – estimate 20 minutes to get to an exit, find someone who can call the rescue squad, get them to their equipment, and get their equipment to me – and anybody’s guess whether they had positive-feed air equipment to keep me breathing until they could get me to the hospital, or (2) drive according to the posted limit with the good chance I’ll die in the car while she’s doing it?

Quite explicitly in New York State at least, your obligation as a driver is to operate your vehicle in the manner least likely to cause loss of life, health, or property – obeying the specific rules of the road whenever that is consonant with the above. To take a classic example, stopping for a stop sign at the foot of a hill at a deserted intersection with the crossing highway in full view when the hill is icy and has not been sanded and there is oncoming traffic behind you is not “obeying the law” – it’s creating the likelihood of an accident by blind adherence to a regulation in defiance of the sense of the law. I don’t know whether other states have this sort of “use your head, bucko!” provision in their highway statutes or not, but I’d venture to think that most do and the others have relevant case law calling for it.

In your example, Hayduke, the law requiring “slower moving traffic to keep to the right” is just as much the law as is the “65 MPH speed limit” law. As between you and the car indicating he wants to pass you, guess what? You’re the slower moving traffic" – and if you fail to move to the right, you’re as much breaking the law as is the guy passing you at 80. It’s your business whether you break the law; let it be on his head whether he does.

44

Just because I start a thread that may have a twinge of morality to it, does not mean I follow those morals. I am not defined by the threads I start, and don’t you define me as such. I am in no way a law-and order type of guy…just the opposite. I don’t like being told what to do, whether if it’s by my parents, the law, or, in this case, some dick behind me in a car.

Heres a real life scenario that happened last friday: My brother picked me up from school. We were on I-94 west bound, Milwaukee County. 3 lanes. Speed Limit 55. Bro was in the far RIGHT lane, mostly because our exit ramp was going to be on the right, within 4 miles. Bro is driving 63 mph (yes, he was in fact speeding himself!) Suddenly, dork behind us is tailgating, and flashing his lights. We’re in the far right lane. Should he have had to pull into the center lane, so this jerk can go by, and risk missing our exit which was comming up in less than 4 minutes. Pulling into the center lane might have made it difficult to pull back into the right lane. Traffic was heavy, but flowing quickly. I say my brother did the right thing by staying put until we turned off. We weren’t in the all Holy “left passing lane”, and we were already exceeding the limit by 8. Or does flashing your lights and blowing your horn give you the same authority as a badge & lights/siren?

45

People haven’t discussed this because it is unusual - normally someone flashing is in the overtaking lane. The points mentioned earlier still apply:

  1. Legally, you can stay put, as anyone overtaking should do so in the left lane (in the US).
  2. Having said that, they might be on the way to hospital (unlikely, but do you know whether they are or not?).
  3. The overriding principle is to keep yourself and others safe. If your brother took the view that this was best served by his staying where he was, fine. For example, he might have felt that had he moved out of the way, he would have increased his likelyhood of causing an accident as he tried to edge back into the right lane in time to exit.
  4. In this case, it would be fair for your brother to feel a certain amount of “screw him”.

Don’t act set upon just because there are rules in place for your safety, as much as for anyone else’s.

No, it doesn’t. But as has been noted, you don’t know why they’re doing it. Having said that, most people (myself included) probably wouldn’t have moved in the situation you described.