Inattentive Driving

Or perhaps I should call it Ignorant Driving? Do you think people who drive slow in the left and middle lanes when there's plenty of room for them to move right are ignorant of the laws or are they just not paying attention?

I wrote an email to the Washington State Patrol earlier this week:

How often is the "Keep Right Except to Pass" law enforced? It seems like a lot of congestion and dangerous situations on the highways are caused by slow cars in middle and left lanes. I've never heard of anyone receiving a ticket or even a warning for this violation.

I recived a quick reply:

Thank you for your inquiry to the Washington State Patrol.

The Washington State Patrol (WSP) takes dangerous driving very seriously, and is dedicated to enforcing all traffic safely laws in order to increase public safety on our highways.

The WSP has numerous programs we use to assist us in educating and enforcing the laws on our highways such as our online reporting tool for citizens to report aggressive driving and unsecured loads. These programs allow citizens to notify us about violations in specific locations to determine where hot spots are so we can then focus our enforcement in those areas. Last year alone, the WSP contacted over 4,700 left lane violators, over 9,000 right-of-way violators, over 10,500 HOV violators, and 56,000 aggressive drivers. We will continue to enforce theses laws, and more importantly educate drivers on the laws so that they can make the right decisions.

We are always looking for input and new ideas to increase awareness for safe driving issues. Please feel free to volunteer your ideas to increase the safety of the citizens utilizing the roads of Washington.

If we may be of further assistance, please do not hesitate to write or call.

Sincerely,

WSP Webmaster

So that's 4,700 people who didn't keep right and 56,000 agressive drivers. When you drive the freeways around Seattle, though, you'll see that inattentive/ignorant drivers are about 100 times as common as agressive drivers (an honest scale-of-magnitude estimation).

So if the state patrol "contacted" 56,000 agressive drivers, they should have contacted 5,600,000 ignorant/inattentive drivers -- not the 4,700 they actually did "contact."

That's a bit of a difference, don't you think?