By Tim Schewe
More and more often when I drive on a busy highway I’m finding much of the traffic jammed into the left lane, each driver trying unsuccessfully to get ahead of the others.
One would think that this situation would be akin to being the proverbial kid in the candy store for anyone in traffic law enforcement — violations everywhere!
No one likes a left lane blocker. This statement is not proven by enforcement activity however. There were a grand total of 24 tickets written under section 150(2) MVA in the entire province for failing to move right in 2015. We’ll see if anything has changed with the introduction of section 151.1 MVA when I receive ticket data for 2016 from ICBC.
If you missed it, this is the new law requiring that you exit the leftmost lane when another vehicle approaches from behind when you are driving on highways with a posted speed of 80 km/h or higher and traffic is moving at a speed of at least 50 km/h. There are exemptions to this, no need to move over if you are using an HOV lane, preparing for a left turn, passing another vehicle, allowing someone to merge, or following the slow down, move over law.
Perhaps it’s time to let automated enforcement deal with some of the 163,213 speeding tickets written in 2015 and have the police refocus their attention on dangerous behaviours that need to be dealt with in person.
Tim Schewe is a retired constable with many years of traffic law enforcement. To comment or learn more, please visit DriveSmartBC.ca