Wyoming House Bill to Permit Speeding While Passing

It's a pretty common practice to quickly accelerate when passing to safely overtake another vehicle, but it is one that could currently have you seeing red when you get a ticket for speeding while passing. Fortunately the Wyoming House is looking to make an allowance for this common sense driving behavior and has given preliminary approval to a bill that would allow drivers to exceed the posted speed limit by up to 10 miles per hour when passing another vehicle.

The new bill was sponsored by Rep. Del McOmie, a Republican from Lander who mentioned that he believes it is a safety hazard for a number of other vehicles get backed up behind a single slow-moving vehicle.

The bill proposes letting motorists exceed the speed limit to pass another vehicle that’s traveling at less than the maximum legal speed on a two-lane highway with a posted speed limit of at least 50 miles per hour. The passing vehicle would then be required to merge back into the right-hand lane and resume driving at the posted speed limit in a reasonable amount of time. The new law would not apply when traveling in construction zones and has recieved preliminary approval from the house at this time.