To the Editor:
True, the highways have a lot of cars on them, but is that the real problem? Too many drivers are poorly trained and do not use the proper rules of the road.
One point is that too many cars are driving side by side, on roads with multiple lanes, at the same speed. If I’m not mistaken, the laws read that the right lanes are for traveling and the left lanes are for passing. I find people driving slower speeds in the left lane than the people in the right lane. That seems to be one of the problems.
Also, if I’m not mistaken, the laws say that it’s illegal to impede the flow of traffic. When you have multiple cars driving side by side, leaving no open lane to allow faster vehicles to go by, then they are violating the laws.
Then you have people who never use turn signals to change lanes or make turns. If they do use their turn signal, it is often within a few feet of actually making the turn, which is a violation of the rules that say you should signal several hundreds of feet or a reasonable amount of time before the turn.
You also have people making right turns into the left lane or left turns into the right lane, which is another violation of the law. On multi-lane highways, right turns are to be made into the right lane and left turns are to be made into the left lane.
I believe the problem is that a lot of drivers are poorly trained, rather than it just being an issue of too many cars on the roads.
How about we start ticketing people for turning and changing lanes without signaling. Or ticketing people for making right turns into the left lane or left turns into the right lane.
And, of course, let’s not forget impeding the flow of traffic when cars are driving side by side at the same speed on multi-lane highways.
I have had many drivers intentionally block the roadway so that I couldn’t travel past them on State Road 40 or other highways like 301/441. It seems that many drivers think it’s their privilege to block the flow of traffic.
I have also had drivers speed up to prevent me from passing them in legal passing zones on our roads. That is beyond my understanding as to why they think they can prevent somebody from passing them. That is against the law.
It’s too bad that all the traffic laws aren’t enforced.
Bob Larensen
Ocala resident
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