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C-dub wrote:I've seen this happen several times, but I do not fear passing an officer if I'm not doing anything wrong.

I'm with you there. I'll pass if I can. But frequently I'm a dozen cars back behind people who are afraid to pass and I can't get around them because they take up every lane.

Oldgringo wrote:The City Manager says,"well, er...uh they don't like to issue tickets". Well, er...uh they don't mind citing an OTR trucker who misses the bypass sign and drives through this hamlet. They don't want to issue citations in town because everybody is someone's 2nd or 3rd cousin or something.

OTR truckers are some of the world's greatest conspiracy theorists. That being said, they may still be right some of the time.
Many of them will tell you that many of these places much prefer to give tickets to someone from out of town (like an OTR trucker as opposed to a local trucker) because that is bringing money into their local economy. If they give a ticket to someone who lives there, that's just moving money around within their local economy.
So, citing the trucker who is obviously unfamiliar with the area since he missed the bypass is worth a lot more than citing some local business owner's kid for driving too fast in a residential neighborhood.

srothstein wrote:To me, a much more important question is if it is possible to impede traffic if there is another lane for them to go around you. I have always been taught that to write an impeding ticket, I would need to show that some cars were being held up by the traffic. This is almost impossible on a multi-lane highway. I could write the impeding ticket then only if they were going slower than the posted minimum speed, as noted in subsection (b) of the section you quoted (545.363 of the Transportation Code for any who are looking for it).

But cars driving side-by-side, well below the limit, impeding traffic that is stacking up behind them . . . should be a hangin' offense!

And I'll tell you where you can catch them.
Going West out of Lubbock on Hwy 114, as the road goes by what used to be Reese AFB (now Reese Center which is, uh, a business park, I guess) the speed limit changes from 55 to 70 (65 at night).
EVERY DAY people will drive for several miles beyond that, in both lanes, doing 50-55mph with 4 to 12 vehicles stacked up behind them which can't pass because the slow pokes are driving side by side. Same spot, all the time. I don't get it. Once upon a time, that was where you were going past the end of the runways of the old AFB and I atributed it to rubberneckers watching the planes take off and land. But it hasn't been an AFB in many years and there's still a pile up at the same spot ever day.


Or the really cool one, and I've seen this all over the country when I used to drive a truck, is when the LEO is cruising around about 5 mph below the speed limit and everyone is afraid to pass him. I've seen traffic backed up for miles in this parade. I know that guy is up there in his car laughing about it.

Wasn't there a case somewhere a few years ago where some LEOs claimed an NRA sticker was probable cause to search for guns and the courts ruled that it was not?