New Jersey To Slow Drivers: Get Out Of The Way Or Prepare To Pay

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Editor’s note:  This article was originally posted on aol autos.

Speed limits apply to slow drivers, too, on highways like the New Jersey Turnpike. (Photo courtesy Doug Kerr, Flickr).

Get moving or get out of the way.

That’s the message a New Jersey lawmaker wants to send slowpokes who block the flow of faster traffic in the left lanes of the state’s highways and aggravate their fellow motorists.

State Senator Donald Norcross (D) has sponsored a bill that would toughen the penalties for clogging the left lane.

“Being trapped behind a slower vehicle is one of the biggest triggers for road rage,” he told the Philadelphia Inquirer last week. “Some people have told me the fines we’re proposing are not high enough. They said, ‘It should be execution.'”.

Not one to get carried away, Norcross’s bill merely proposes an increase in the minimum penalty from $50 to $100 and a boost in the maximum penalty from $100 to $300. The state’s Senate Transportation Committee approved the measure last week in a 3-1 vote, and Senate Bill 530 should reach the state’s Senate floor within the next two weeks.

Police officers wrote 5,127 tickets in 2011 under the state’s existing failure-to-keep-right laws.

Without endorsing the new measure, a spokesperson for the New Jersey State Police tells the Chicago Tribune that slow motorists in the left lane “definitely is a problem.” The Triple-A Mid-Atlantic organization has voiced support for the Norcross bill.

Noting that many of the offenders are from out of state, Norcross said some proceeds from fines would be earmarked for signs at New Jersey’s borders educating out-of-state drivers on expectations for driving speed and left-lane behavior.

So, for those visitors following the pleading of Simon and Garfunkel to go “counting cars on the New Jersey Turnpike,” feel free to do so. Just don’t take too much time, and do it from the right lane or a rest area.

 

19 COMMENTS

  1. I can’t advocate for any new laws, but I have seen brake checking in action.

    Once was with my Grandfather in his Delta 88 diesel Royal with a very large hitch on the back. Hitch vs radiator, can you guess who won?

    By the way that delta was another geeky car, that got handed down to me. It was hell on the highway, but what a smoker. Even so I wonder what I could do with it today.

    I didn’t have it for long, but I think it was a 5.7 and might have been the same engine that was in the Toronado. Correct me if I’m wrong.

    Again I know I am a car dork, but I thought some of the Toronado’s were cool.

  2. That anyone reading and commenting on this site would advocate laws that would enable the state to penalize other drivers for their unexplained and unknown behavior completely astounds me. We don’t know why people do what they do *even when they’re in the left lane*! We just don’t know. This is exactly why we have courts.

    Let’s not lose sight of the ball here.

    • Dear Scott,

      Democracy, as market anarchists know, is thinly-disguised coercion.

      Democracy tends to generate situations in which victims of legalized coercion — trapped within in the system — retaliate with legalized coercion.

      As James Madison noted,

      “Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.

      This is why whenever Western “champions of democracy” self-righteously demand that mainland China adopt democracy, my blood boils.

      Three hundred million human beings beings forced into a spectacle of turbulence and contention is bad enough. Democracy’s internal logic has led inexorably to today’s Bush/Obama style American fascism.

      Can you imagine what 1.3 billion would be like? What it would do to a nation as large as China?

      • Until you mentioned it Bevin, it hadn’t really occupied much of my attention. Now that you do, I would have to agree it would most likely be absolutely horrible.

        What can we do other that convince every single person on the planet that they are Siddhartha? Mahasamatman? The gautama Buddha?

        Nothing. And so it goes?

        • Dear Scott,

          I’m convinced it would be horrible.

          The intelligentsia on Taiwan is totally clueless. This applies to both the Blue camp and the Green camp.

          The Blue Camp is somewhat more free market oriented. The Green Camp is considerably more welfare state oriented.

          But both camps have swallowed Frances Fukuyama’s “End of History” crap hook, line, and sinker. Both camps believe that liberal democracy signals the end point of humanity’s sociocultural evolution and constitutes the final form of human government.

          But when the problems created by democracy arise, one after another, they blame everything except democracy.

          They blame populism for “betraying” democracy. They really don’t get it. They don’t realize that populism didn’t betray democracy. Populism is democracy. Democracy is populism.

          Democracy, by resorting to coercion, sets people at each others’ throats.

          It’s bad enough that 23 million Chinese on Taiwan have gone down this Road to Perdition. Do we really want 1.3 billion Chinese on the mainland repeating the same mistake?

          Can we enlighten them and encourage them to take another direction?

          Good question.

          Often people must learn the hard way. They must hit rock bottom before they become open to radical alternatives. Look at the USSA.

    • All’s well that ends well. 😉

      How dumb can someone be? Cop was dumb to tailgate the van, but the van should have Kept to the right and not check the cops brakes.

      I thought the van was going to get off the road at the exit.

  3. While a nice article, I will believe it when I see it (Keep Right Pass Left) enforced.

    Time will tell if this law makes a difference. I am not holding my breath about it.

    • I’d like to add to my earlier thought.

      We cal them “Clovers” and denigrate them. They are “the other” the “not like me”. They do things I would not do.

      there are, according to Orson Scott Card the “Four Degrees of Strangeness” from Scandinavian thought, Utlanning, framling, raman, varelse.

      “Demosthenes’ History of Wutan in Trondheim: The Nordic language recognizes four orders of foreignness. The first is the otherlander, or utlanning, the stranger that we recognize as being a human of our world, but of another city or country. The second is the framling… This is the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another world. The third is the raman, the stranger that we recognize as human, but of another species. The fourth is the true alien, the varelse, which includes all the animals, for with them no conversation is possible. They live, but we cannot guess what purposes or causes make them act. They might be intelligent, they might be self-aware, but we cannot know it.”

      We MUST NOT attribute the degree of strangeness of the varelse to Clover. We absolutely MUST NOT do that. If we do, there is no other solution than total war.

      • Dear Scott,

        You know the joke about how all the answers to the problems in life can be found in The Godfather? The same could be said of The Matrix.

        Morpheus: The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.

        Our situation resembles that of the kin of a person who has been indoctrinated into a cult. We must attempt to deprogram them, somehow. They will fight us. We will be forced to fight them. At the same time, they must be distinguished from Agent Smith.

        But in order to deprogram them, we may need to resort to “tough love.” Regrettable, but necessary.

        It goes without saying that everything we do will of course adhere to the non-aggression axiom.

        • I’m sorry Bevin but you will need to go much further than analogies based on a popular movie to convince me I must change my moral position. I don’t believe I’ve cornered the market on truth or righteousness.

          If I’m to respect the sovereign nature of the individual, I can’t stand in judgement over him. I can’t be the sole purveyor of justice. Calling him a “Clover” and sending him to the showers doesn’t work.

          He has the right to disagree with me. I would defend that right. I see no difference at all between calling someone a “Clover” and calling them a Jew, or a Pollack, or a heathen Chinee (that one’s in deference to your own heritage). We must not use these age old techniques. They are not only crude, they’re immoral and they lack a logical foundation. That is what I think.

          • Dear Scott,

            You wrote:

            “He has the right to disagree with me. I would defend that right.”

            If by “disagree” you mean express a different opinion in a debate, then of course.

            Didn’t I say that everything we do will adhere to the non-aggression axiom?

            But if by “disagree” you mean that a person can express a different opinion in an ELECTION, and use the machinery of the state to deprive others of their lives, liberty, and property, and still expect courtesy in response, then sorry. No can do.

            If a mafiosi thug extorts protection money from me, then he is a thug.

            If a socialist extorts taxes from me by supporting taxation, then he is a Clover.

            He has already violated the non-aggression axiom. He has already initiated violence against me.

            And I am suddenly the bad guy? I am suddenly a racist bigot? All because I verbally denounced him in response to his physical violence?

            Sorry. That won’t fly.

          • Hey Scott,

            I second Bevin. The issue isn’t disagreement per se – that is, agreeing to disagree. I will defend anyone else’s right to disagree with me. What I will not defend – or rather, what I will do all in my power to defend myself against – is someone else attempting to impose their differing – their evil – ideas on me against my will.

            There is a huge difference between calling someone who has done you no harm, nor announced his intention to, a “dirty Jew” – and sending them to the showers – and calling someone who trumpets his desire to steal your rightful property, control your life – even enslave you – a “Clover” – and being prepared to do whatever is necessary to contain such a person.

    • If the money from all fines went to the state instead of local communities where infractions are alleged to occur, then I think local authorities would focus their activities that are low cost yet have a big impact on improving safety.

      Lengthening yellow lights, countdown timers for remaining green light time, improving visual cues to intersections, timing of traffic intersections are only some low cost areas that can improve general safety on the road.

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