Move over or speed up? Georgia lawmakers can’t get rid of slow drivers

HB 809 proposed raising the minimum driving speed to 50 mph in any area with a maximum speed limit of 65 mph or higher.

Supporters of the bill believed reducing the speed differential, the difference between a vehicle’s speed and the average speed of traffic, would reduce the possibility of sideswipe or rear-end collisions that are more likely to occur when faster drivers engage in risky maneuvers like abrupt lane changes to pass slower drivers.

In a letter to the Legislature, Georgia Public Safety Commissioner William W. Hitchens III said he had no issue with increasing minimum highway speeds.

“Our agency has seen several crashes that have occurred because of slow moving vehicles on roads through the state,” he said. “While DPS doesn’t experience a lot of crashes based on the minimum speed, crashes that we do investigate seem to have more significant damage and injuries because of the speed difference.”

Hitchens may have been in support of the bill, but he also stated, twice, that slow moving vehicles aren’t the cause of most accidents on Georgia roads.

Meanwhile, opponents of higher minimum speed limits expressed concerns that the proposal would unfairly burden senior drivers or new drivers who may not be comfortable or capable of driving at higher speeds.

Back in 2014, Georgia attempted to address slow drivers with the “slow poke law,” which required drivers in the far-left lane on multilane highways to move to the right when a faster vehicle was approaching, no matter the speed limit.

This was supposed to improve road safety by preventing frustrated drivers from engaging in aggressive maneuvers and road rage when they encountered a slowpoke.

But here we are, a decade later, with state lawmakers proposing yet another law to solve the same problem.

Instead of moving HB 809 forward, members of the House Motor Vehicles Committee wisely requested additional data. There is limited research on the effectiveness of minimum speed limits, and some of the research that does exist offers conflicting conclusions.

Though speed limits evolved as early as 1901, minimum speed limits only began popping up after 1923 with the rise of the Uniform Vehicle Code, which held that no one should drive at such a slow speed as to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic. By 1962, 31 states had adopted minimum speed laws. In Georgia, the minimum speed on highways was set at 40 mph, where it remains today.

In 1974, the federal government required all states to adopt a maximum speed of 55 mph on interstates. This wasn’t a safety measure; it was a response to oil shortages and was designed to reduce fuel consumption. Twenty years later, when states regained the power to set their own speed limits, maximum speeds across the country jumped as high as 85 mph (70 mph in Georgia), but the minimum speeds mostly stayed the same or were eliminated.

The gap between the highest and lowest speeds of cars on the highway reignited the debate on speed differentials, but the foundation of those arguments was based on a study that originated in 1964.

The Solomon Curve, a U-shaped risk curve, used traffic patterns in the 1950s on rural, two-lane roads to show that vehicles driving much faster or slower than the average traffic speed have a higher crash risk.

While the principle of a uniform traffic flow has merit, some traffic engineers consider the study to be dated. Modern studies have suggested Solomon Curve overstated the dangers of slow speeds.

A more recent study from 2021 attempted to determine how effective posted minimum speed limits were in improving speed uniformity and safety. The results were contradictory; speed differentials appeared to both increase and decrease highway safety.

HB 809 appears to be dead, but should it reappear in future legislative sessions, I hope the proposal comes with substantial research that evaluates comparative data from states with and without minimum speed limits.

Before Georgia lawmakers decide whether the minimum speed limit should be raised, lowered, maintained or even eliminated, they should be clear on whether those actions would improve road safety or merely satisfy a need for speed.