Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2001

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations, to which was referred S.B. No. 1608 entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to establish a new state law prohibiting a driver from entering an intersection unless there is sufficient space to pass completely through the intersection without stopping.

The Honolulu Police Department testified orally in support of this measure.

With the growing traffic congestion in Hawaii, especially in Honolulu, your Committee finds that drivers often enter intersections and are forced by stopped traffic ahead to wait in the middle of the intersection until their lane clears.

If a driver is stopped in the middle of an intersection when the cross light turns green, the traffic congestion is exacerbated because cross traffic is then unable to move as well. Your Committee supports this measure, which not only establishes a law prohibiting such conduct, but also authorizes several manners of enforcement that will ease many of the problems officers currently have enforcing the law.

Your Committee made several technical, nonsubstantive amendments to this measure for clarity.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Transportation, Military Affairs and Government Operations that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 1608, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Second Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 1608, S.D. 1, and be referred to the Committee on Judiciary.