Posts Tagged ‘turning lane’

It’s Called A Turning Lane For A Reason!

Thursday, August 14th, 2008

My biggest pet peeve when driving around Sioux Falls — and anywhere else for that matter — is when people looking for a quick way to turn left out of a parking lot or side street onto a busy street jump first into the turning lane and use it to merge into the flow of traffic. Gah! I hate it!

It’s called a TURNING LANE you ignorant lump of human debris, not a merging lane, so use it for TURNING, not merging!

Thanks. I needed to get that off my chest.

But then, while looking for info on this topic, I find that in some states it is legal to merge into traffic using the center lane. Go figure. At this point, I’m not even sure if South Dakota is one of those state; the codified laws are less than clear on that point (or most any other point for that matter.) So I guess I’ll do a little digging and report back. Even if it is legal here, it still bugs the heck outta me when people do it; you just can’t tell if they’re going to go barreling into the flow of traffic or if they’re going to wait, so every time someone does it I have to brace for impact.