Drivetime Mahatma

For some, fog line not at all clear

Dear DriveTime: I've had two separate conversations this week with drivers 69 and 58, both of whom did not recognize the term fog line in the context of traffic laws. I would think someone after 40-plus years of driving would have encountered this common term. It is, in fact, included in the Arkansas Driver License Study Guide. Is fog line a foreign term? -- Old Tom

Dear Tom: Your correspondent didn't know this term until about midway through a decade of writing this column. Someone asked a question about the fog line, to which we responded: Huh?

We say that a lot. Also, duh. When God was passing out brains, some of us were in line at the mess hall waiting for a heaping plate of SOS.

The study guide uses two terms, fog line and lane line. The latter is easily defined. It's a white line separating lanes of traffic moving in the same direction. Dashed white lines mean a driver may cross the line to change lanes. A solid white line means a driver should stay in that lane.

Back to the fog line. It's a solid white line along the side of the road that acts as a point of reference so that a driver will know the location of the outer edge of the roadway. Over that line lurk monsters. Or ditches.

Being diligent, we also dug into the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, the bible of traffic engineers. If the words fog line appear in the Federal Highway Administration's MUTCD, the search engine didn't find it. But there is a whole section on edge-line pavement markings.

If used, the manual mandates, edge-line pavement markings shall delineate the right or left edges of a roadway. They should not be continued through intersections or major driveways unless they are dotted. Edge-line pavement markings shall consist of a normal solid white line.

Is fog line a foreign term? Maybe we should ask the State Department. Or not.

Dear Mahatma: Yesterday, I was behind a car with a Tennessee license tag that was a specialty plate for the University of Arkansas. Does Arkansas issue specialty plates for out-of-state colleges? -- Lean to The Left, Lean to the Right

Dear Lean: Joel DiPippa of the Department of Finance and Administration answered.

He said there aren't specialty license plates for out-of-state schools. He said specialty license plates are governed by a specific set of laws found in Arkansas Code Annotated 27-24-101 et seq. We think et seq means "yada, yada."

Among other things, this law provides that for a college or university to be eligible to have a specialty license plate, it must be located in Arkansas. The list of currently available college specialty license plates is available on the department's website.

There are 26 such plates. The best is for the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, featuring a ferocious Golden Lion.

Vanity plate seen on a Volkswagen: MYQTBUG.

Fjfellone@gmail.com

Metro on 08/12/2017

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