Road Construction Accidents and California “Move Over” Law

It’s easy to be confused. For at least 20 years there has been increased concern about construction worker safety and emergency vehicle accidents where the personnel was being struck on the side of the road, which sparked awareness campaigns. Caltrans has a memorial page, where they note that 187 workers have been killed on the job since 1921.

But while nobody was looking, several roadway safety issues have become laws.

The first move over law was enacted in South Carolina in 1996 after a paramedic was injured in the line of his work. He was deemed to be at fault for his own injuries because there wasn’t a clear legal status of roadside emergency workers. That case started a movement, and now all states have some form of a move-over law.

Collisions with vehicles out of the lanes of traffic are so common, it’s one reason California CHP officers no longer approach vehicles from the driver side. A police industry study concluded that officers are in more danger approaching on the traffic/driver’s side of a vehicle, although the threat in their study was focused on vehicle occupants who might shoot at the officer. But since cameras have been installed in even more police cars, there is a stream of footage of vehicles being plowed into and close-calls where officers are swiped while standing on the driver’s side of a stopped car.

Most work zone injuries and deaths are the results of a rear-end collision, and nationally a work zone crash occurs every 5.4 minutes. This is why general guidelines, and AAA, recommend that if unable to pull far off the road, people should get away from, and behind the vehicle. The worst place to be is directly in front of or behind a car just off the side of the road, and inside could be just as dangerous. Distracted motorists are known to sometimes not see that a car is immobile. They instead recognize an additional and open, right-hand lane, and drive straight into the parked car.

In California, vehicles typically crash into 45% of highway work zones.

While the move-over law was intended–and appears aimed at, protecting emergency personnel, statistically the effort benefits the general public far more, as 85% of those killed in a work zone are the drivers and passengers.

The penalties for a move-over citation in California adds one “point” on a driving record and levies a fine with court costs totaling about $150. This particular violation can be more subjective than many though, as California’s law is not specific as to what “slow down” means. Other states have guidelines, such as Texas, which specifies that “slowing down” is precisely “20 mph under the posted limit, and 5 mph in a 25 zone.”

But in California, local conditions at the time of the incident could be rife with grounds for dismissal. The key phrases in the law are to “move over one lane, if safe to do so,” and if unable to, then “slow down.”

No precise speeds are given in the law, so the cutover into violation territory is entirely at an officer’s subjective discretion, and for a host of reasons may not have seen the conditions the same as the cited driver. In these cases, legal representation would help discover if a driver was truly violating a law, or possibly being targeted.