Minnesota: Does The ‘Move Over’ Law Make Roads Safer?
Next month Minnesota law enforcement will mark the 15th anniversary of the death of Trooper Ted Foss by cracking down on violators of the state’s “move over” law.
The law, passed in 2002 after Foss was killed by a careless semi-truck driver, requires motorists to give one lane of cushion space when passing stopped emergency vehicles with flashing lights.
The Minnesota State Patrol says the law is saving lives, and issued fines to 816 violators last year.
“The intention of the law is to give us a safety zone,” Lt. Tiffani Nielson, the patrol’s spokesperson, said. “We want drivers to move over. We want that space, that buffer.”
But critics say that despite its good intentions, the law hasn’t been proven to make the roads safer and that Minnesota’s statute should allow motorists the choice to slow down instead of moving over.
“It causes more chaos than anything,” said traffic attorney Mitchell Robinson, who has litigated a number of move over cases. “People are trying to move over to the right lane, but there are other cars there. People are moving at 60 miles per hour. It’s really very subjective to say if it’s safe for somebody to move over.”
(Full disclosure: I was issued a move over citation in March.)
Dangerous roads
The first move over law in the United States passed in 1996, in South Carolina, after a paramedic broke an arm and a leg. By 2012, all 50 states had adopted similar laws.
But after nearly 20 years, the shoulders of American highways do not appear to be much safer for emergency workers. Between the early 1990s — before the first laws passed — and today, the data don’t show a statistically significant decrease in either the number of police officers or the number of roadside workers who have died after being struck by a vehicle on the side of the road, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Law Enforcement Memorial
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