Q: My question is regarding the Washington rule of the road about pulling over when there is a lineup of five or more vehicles behind you. Most of the time I am going the speed limit and I still get a pile-up of cars. Although pulling over would get them off my back for about three minutes, the pile-up of cars is constant so pulling over will not alleviate the problem, it feels dangerous to get back on the road, and I would have to pull over constantly. Am I still required to pull over when I am going the speed limit and everyone else is speeding?
A: After last week’s article about slow-moving vehicles pulling over, many of you responded with questions like this one. And I get it; if you’re going the speed limit and slowing down the cars behind you, it just doesn’t feel right, at a gut level, to have to pull over to make it easier for the cars behind you to speed. It’s like rewarding bad behavior. But how you feel doesn’t always correlate to what’s written in the Revised Code of Washington. That’s where things get tricky.
The law doesn’t define a slow-moving vehicle based on the posted speed limit. Instead, the law defines a slow-moving vehicle as, “one which is proceeding at a rate of speed less than the normal flow of traffic at the particular time and place.” Taken at its plain meaning, it sure sounds like if you’re going the speed limit but other cars are going faster, you’re a slow-moving vehicle. As an exercise in absurdity, let’s push that interpretation a bit. What if you’re going 70 mph in a 50 mph zone and you end up with five cars behind you? Are you still a slow-moving vehicle? At what point is no one any longer a slow-moving vehicle and everyone a speed hazard? I don’t know the hearts and minds of the legislators who crafted this law, but I can’t imagine that was their intent.
I thought I’d ask the people responsible for enforcing the law, so to cover my bases I checked with a police officer, a deputy sheriff and a state trooper. Based on their responses I’d say this is a bit of a gray area. Yes, you could interpret that law by its plain meaning, but there are other laws to consider, like speed limits. The normal flow of traffic shouldn’t exceed the posted speed limit, and all three people I checked with said that if you’re going the speed limit, there’s no need to pull over to let other cars pass. To loosely quote the deputy I spoke with, “I wouldn’t write that ticket, and I don’t know of anyone else that would either.”
As a disclaimer, none of the people who contributed to this article are lawyers, and the final interpretation would be up to a judge. But in order for a judge to rule on it, someone would have to get an infraction for the violation and take it to court. From the sounds of things, no one is writing these tickets.
The takeaway here is, if you’re going the speed limit and you have cars backing up behind you, make your decision about pulling over based on the overall safety of the situation, not on the possibility of getting a ticket. If you think you’ll feel safer and enjoy the drive more by pulling over for a minute, do it. If merging back into traffic seems like it would be a bigger hazard, keep your zen focus on driving and carry on.