When right is wrong

saxo-archive

Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2008 | midnight

Each year about 75,000 additional semi-tractor trailers join the nation's freeway traffic, creating what traffic safety officials fear is an increasing potential for collisions between big rigs and smaller vehicles.

In an effort to mitigate these potential conflicts, USA Today reports that state and federal transportation officials are increasingly embracing measures that impose lower speed limits on the big trucks and allow them to use only the right-most travel lanes.

Arizona, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois, Texas and Ohio are among the states considering the implementation of truck-only lanes. Florida, Georgia and Tennessee already have such lanes, USA Today reports.

But truckers say these restrictions actually increase conflicts and congestion because truckers are forced to block the lanes into which motorists entering or exiting the highway must merge. Ted Gennick, a commercial cross-country trucker who drives 140,000 miles a year, told USA Today that a line of trucks in the right lane creates “a moving wall of trucks” that is dangerous and frustrating to everyone.

Certainly, anyone who has been stuck behind a pair of big rigs traveling side by side up a steep hill can understand -- even see the merits of -- requiring trucks to stay to the right to avoid impeding the flow of traffic. Those same motorists also have likely experienced the frustration of trying to merge onto a crowded freeway into a lane blocked by a line of trucks.

Segregating road users by type of vehicle is not going to solve either one of these dilemmas. The problem is best addressed by educating drivers -- in all types of vehicles -- about the proper method of driving up hills, merging onto freeways and sharing the road.

Steep grades already have passing lanes for faster vehicles, and traffic laws help mitigate conflicts among motorists by giving them the same principles and guidelines to follow in other areas.

Our nation's freeways don't need more rules. They simply need drivers to follow the existing rules more often.