This doesn’t pertain to me (I live in Hawaii) but thought it important to others.
Every state except Hawaii, Maryland and the D.C. has this law. In California, the Move-over law became operative on January 1, 2010. http://www.moveoveramerica.com/
A friend’s son got a ticket for this recently. A police car (turned out it was two police cars) was on the side of the road giving a ticket to someone else. He slowed down to pass but did not move into the other lane. The second police car immediately pulled him over and gave him a ticket. He had never heard of the law. It is a fairly new law that states “if any emergency vehicle is on the side of the road, if you are able, you are to move into the far lane. If there is no lane, slow 20mph below the posted speed limit.”
The cost of the ticket was $754, with three points on your license and a mandatory court appearance. Please let everyone you know that drives about this new law. It is true (see details at the following web address).
http://www.moveoveramerica.com/>
Thank you for passing the information on.
Sounds like a great law to me, and a tax on stupidity. Slower traffic keep right is another one I wish cops would right more tickets.
Absolutely!
I think that many states and municipalities could greatly reduce their financial problems if they ticketed the “failure to keep right” drivers and those yakking on hand-held cell phones.
Laws exist prohibiting both of these dangerous practices, but it seems that very few tickets are issued for those offenses.
Yes. Nothing more annoying than the moron in the fast lane doing 5 under.
I can see that they want to protect the officers from the idiot drivers, but that huge of a fine seems more like a revenue generator than anything else.
That ‘if you are able to move over’ clause seems like it could cause more problems as you’d have people slamming on their brakes if they couldn’t get over right away.
Good idea but the fine is way to high. $754 is a months wages for some people and you know some of those ticketed would have gotten their ticket unfairly.
MD has a move over law. The alternative to moving over, which is very difficult most times of the day, is to slow down substantially.
Hopefully his case will be dismissed.
He will tell the judge that he slowed even though he did not know the new law required moving one lane away.
I am surprised his was not a warning.
I recieved a verbal warning for this in WI in 2002. I can see the reason for the law very easily. In my situation 3 cop cars (and the cops themselves) were trying to corral a violent offender. The cops did have a unit set up just to take care of the people who don’t pull over. I do notice a problem with both people who won’t let you in and people who continue on in the same lane after you have moved over. I can’t understand the people who saw the cops, saw me move over but did not think they should also move over (I am not talking about the WI. incident here).
I was ticketed for this very thing once while driving through Indiana (I live in central IL). I was in Montgomery county, about 40 miles west of Indianapolis. Interstate 74 was completely empty at the time except for me and one police car. I was in the right lane, the police cruiser was in the left lane, riding right beside me, matching my speed, be it 65 or 45 mph. Whatever speed I drove, he drove. Another cruiser appeared in the breakdown lane, stopped with its lights on, for no apparent reason. I wanted the cruiser beside me to pass and allow me into the left lane, so I slowed down to 40, then eventually 35. He just continued to match my speed. I passed the cruiser in the breakdown lane as far to the left as I dared with that squad car right beside me. Then he braked, got behind me, and pulled me over. I was ticketed for “failure to yield right of way to an emergency vehicle.” The fine was somewhere in the neighborhood of $275. I think the cop saw my Illinois plates and figured there was no way I was going to drive four hours to contest a traffic ticket, so he trapped me in the right lane and ticketed me for it. That is what I would call a revenue generator.
I always get move over. The fine should be against the law
A law like this was passed in OK some years ago that requires one to move into the far lane and if that is not possible due to traffic, etc. then you are supposed to slow down.
In this case I think the fine, points loss, and court appearance is way excessive.
Fines this large over such an infraction smacks of nothing more than revenue generation to me.
Slower traffic keep right is another one
That JUST became law in NH last year…But sadly MOST people still drive in the LEFT lane and everyone else passes them on the right…then move back over to the left.
In that situation, I would have slowed enough to fall in behind the police vehicle, even if it meant coming to a stop.
Now, I would write to the appropriate DA.
Be accurate and do not exaggerate even slightly.
I would discuss going to court about it? Could I win?
If not, forget it.
Then write a letter to the editor of their local newspaper.
Write to the Police Chief and officer’s supervisor and city councilperson.
I fight such abuse.
The fine seems excessive unless you live in an area where at least four times this year morons piled into the back of cruisers parked with their lights flashing and killed the officers or construction workers.
It’s sad that we need laws to enforce common sense. If the fines need to be large enough to get people’s attention, then so be it. Follow the rules and you have nothing to b!tch about. Assuming you needed someone to pass a law so you understood what is reasonable and prudent under those circumstances in the first place.
Here the law states to move over if at all possible or slow down significantly if its not safe to do so.
I see people who don’t even move over for an ambulance with the lights and siren blaring. Better hope it’s not you in there next time and some fool is blocking you from getting to the hospital as quickly as possible…
Whenever I see a vehicle on the side of the road, be it a private citizen or police/emergency vehicle, I always slow down and move over if there is any way possible.
I understand the point about the fine but I think this one is a bit excessive.
Some years ago a friend of mine spent 2 months in the hospital and damned near died because a black Lincoln with 3 drunken adults was going down the wrong side of a barely traveled, divided 4 lane at night - with the headlights off. Their Lincoln hit the motorcycle of my friend head on.
These 3 had left the country club after getting tanked and at the scene the driver refused to surrender his drivers license to the cops, refused to submit to any breath or blood test for intoxication, told the cops they could not arrest him, and he was not arrested or fined, nor did he have any points taken from his drivers license.
The driver, who was a U.S. District Attorney, was defended daily in the newspaper and the populace was accused of a “lynch mob mentality”. The 2 guys in the car with the U.S. attorney (whom one could consider a top cop) also happened to own the newspaper.
The U.S. attorney was not even slapped on the wrist by the state or his employer, the Federal government. My opinion would be to clean up things from the top down and many of those uniformed cops routinely violate traffic law every single day while both on and off duty.
Such as the 2 off duty cops (each from different towns) who were in town here where they had no jurisdiction. One pulled the other over for a burned out tail light, the other disputed being pulled over, and both pulled guns on each other…
Law enforcement at its finest. 
Pretty strange that it would take two police cars to give out a speeding ticket…seems almost convenient that there was an extra police officer there to pull over the OP’s son.
More than likely, the “speeder” was a cop too. The whole thing was a set-up designed to extract $750 from hapless motorists…Now, if they could pull it off in a “work zone”, doubling the fine, $1500…OUCH!!
In Colorado, on highways with a posted speed limit above 65 mph, you must travel in the right-hand lane unless passing or changing lanes to protect emergency vehicles…On slow days, the Staters milk this gold mine pretty hard…No cruising in the left lane…The cops feel they OWN that lane…
The WI “move over” law was put on the fast track because a cop was hit while standing on the shoulder while giving a ticket. I accept that an issue getting fast tracked because a cop was hurt is just the way life is and if it was a civilian that was hurt while changing a tire (this happens a lot) there would be no push for a “move over” law. Just the way life is.