Is it Illegal to Linger in the Left Lane?

There are few things more frustrating than humming along the highway and running into a sudden slowdown caused by someone driving far too slowly in the left lane. It’s clear that these slowpokes are frustrating those around them, but are they driving illegally?

Although driving is a tightly regulated activity, there are still grey areas. In spite  — or perhaps because —  of the large number of rules, drivers sometimes run into situations where the correct course of action isn’t clear. In this series of articles, we will seek to answer whether a variety of driving behaviours are explicitly illegal or just rude, and today we’re tackling left-lane hogs.

In short, the answer to this question is yes. But just how likely a driver is to get a ticket may depend on where they are. In Quebec and British Columbia, there are clear rules that prohibit left lane lingering, but other parts of the country are a little more lax.

Readers from B.C. may be well aware that they are only allowed to drive in the leftmost lane of a multi-lane highway if they are making a passing manoeuvre because the law targeting this behaviour specifically was introduced relatively recently. It was just 10 years ago (June 12, 2015) that the province clarified the rule, and started an awareness campaign asking drivers to cede the left lane to faster drivers. Although there were already mechanisms in place to punish drivers who were travelling too slowly, legislators felt they were insufficient at the time. Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure Todd Stone said that a rule against left lane hogging needed to be made explicit because “one of the top driver frustrations across the province was being prevented from passing because someone won’t leave the left lane.”

As a result, drivers who hog the left lane in the province now run the risk of receiving a ticket for two contraventions: failing to keep right ($109 fine) and improper use of the leftmost lane ($167 fine and up to three Driver Penalty Points), a representative from the B.C. Ministry of Transportation and Transit told AutoTrader.

Meanwhile, the Code de la sécurité routière (Highway Safety Code) in Quebec states that drivers on highways with two or more lanes must use one of the right lanes unless they are passing other vehicles (or there are other mitigating factors, such as a lane blockage). Failure to keep to the right could result in a fine of between $60 and $120, plus additional fees.

Similarly, Ontario requires its drivers to stay to the right except to pass. In fact, in 2019, the province increased the fine ranges for dangerously slow driving and for failing to stay in the right lane. However, Stephanie Columbus, the training manager at X-Copper, a law firm that specializes in automotive cases, told us that penalties for this kind of driving infraction are rare. 

“I have never seen someone charged in a situation where they were ‘hogging’ the left lane,” Columbus told AutoTrader.

Meanwhile, a representative for Alberta’s Ministry of Transportation and Economic Corridors told us that, although lingering in the left lane isn’t expressly forbidden, there are still penalties for people who drive too slowly. For example, someone driving below the speed limit could be fined up to $162 (including the victims of crime surcharge) under section 2(1)(b) of the Use of Highway and Rules of the Road Regulation.

Driving in the left lane is perhaps the most nuanced of the rules we have covered so far as part of this series. Unlike, say, reversing on the highway, there are frequent circumstances in which driving slower than the speed limit while in the left lane is the only available course of action — as anyone who commutes into big cities knows all too well. However, that doesn’t mean impeding traffic by driving excessively slowly in the passing lane isn’t serious. Few activities that we engage in daily rely as heavily on shared understandings and predictable behaviour as driving. 

Just because driving too quickly is dangerous doesn’t mean that less speed is always the safer option. Speed differentials are also dangerous, and just like driving too fast, driving too slowly — especially in sections of the highway designed for higher-speed traffic — increases the difference in velocity between drivers on the road, potentially leading to a collision. Moreover, strong evidence suggests that the more lane changes that occur on a given section of highway, the more the risk of a collision increases. By going slowly, a left-lane hog requires others on the road to change lanes unexpectedly to do the right thing and keep up with the pace of traffic. At best, that can worsen gridlock, and at worst, it increases the odds of a crash. 

If you don’t feel comfortable keeping up with drivers in the fast lane, just keep to the right because it’s safer and better for the well-being of everyone else on the road.