When Is It Legal to Pass on the Right in Idaho?

If we had a dollar for every time this happened, we could probably treat ourselves to a Hot Rock filet at Barbacoa. It just happened again! 

We live in Southeast Boise. One of the many reasons we love that location is because it's so close to I-84. There’s a handful of ways to get to the Broadway on-ramp from our place, but after testing them all it seems like the quickest way to do it is using Linden to get from Boise Ave to Broadway. (And that route takes us past the Murder House which we love staring at.) 

Let us rephrase that. It’s the quickest way to get there IF no one’s trying to turn left onto Leadville from Linden! Linden’s a two-lane road (one lane traveling in each direction.) If someone decides they’re going to turn left onto Leadville, traffic starts to back up and you’ll feel like you’ve been sitting there for 84 years!

And that’s why “it” happened again. An impatient driver decided they just couldn’t wait it out, so they squished themselves into the bike lane to pass the turning car and all of the cars behind it…on the right. They were uncomfortably close to our passenger side mirror. Here's a really terrible illustration of the incident. 

Um…they’re not allowed to do that, right? 

Right! Passing on the right in Idaho is illegal UNLESS it falls into one of these buckets described in the Idaho Department of Transportation's Driver Manual:

• When the vehicle you’re overtaking on a two-lane, two-way road is signaling to turn left
• On a one-way or multi-lane street with two or more lanes going in your direction

So, what happens if you're busted for passing on the right when you're not supposed to? You could be accessed 2 points on your license under Idaho Code 49-633.

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Are you guilty of doing this? We get it. It’s been a long time since you took Drivers Ed, so this is just a little refresher course! We like to give them every once in a while. For example, we recently reminded Boise drivers that YES, you can turn left on red in some instances. Do you know when? You can see if you’re right or get a refresher by clicking HERE.