Minnesota: Citations, Injuries Down For 'Move Over' Law

Another law that's shown encouraging numbers is the Ted Foss Move Over Law. This law was created in 2001 after a Minnesota State Trooper was killed while responding to a traffic stop.

When you see an emergency vehicle pulled over. You have to move over, too.

Sgt. Troy Christianson says, "The shoulder's kind of our office where we work, so just be able to make it safe for us."

But since 2008, more than 5,000 citations have been issued by the Minnesota State Patrol to drivers who have failed to move over.

Christianson says, "This is a problem. When you're working to road to know how dangerous it is one the roadways and they don't realize they need to reduce their speed. Just to make sure we can keep the roadways safe."

But the encouraging data shows 2015 is on pace to drastically reduce those numbers.

So far there's been 350 citations. Compare that to last year, when there were 816.

Christianson says, "People need to realize when there's a crash or someone in the ditch that they're required to move over to the lane farthest away from it. So on a divided highway they're required to move to the left lane. But if it's just a two–lane, then they're just required to reduce speed."

The State Patrol says most of these incidents could've been avoided by using safe winter driving techniques, moving over to the other open lane or by slowing down when you see any type of flashing lights."

Christianson says, "We're not able to pick where the crashes are so we just have to deal with the situation so we'll use cones, flares or anything we can to give people more of a warning."

To keep the number of citations continuing to go down.

Since 2008, 72 troopers have been injured when their squad car was struck.