Preliminary Evaluation of State "Move-Over" Laws in Controlling Emergency Responder Motor Vehicle Crash Fatality

Introduction: Traffic injuries are the leading cause of line-of-duty fatality among law enforcement officers. To date, 49 states have enacted so-called “Move-Over” laws requiring motorists to change lanes and/or slow down when approaching emergency vehicles responding to roadside incidents. There has been little or no research on their effectiveness.

Methods: Using Fatality Analysis Reporting System data for 1994 to 2009, we compared states where “Move-Over” laws were adopted prior to 2003, to those where there were no laws or they were enacted on or after 2005. We calculated the rates of emergency-vehicle related traffic fatalities per 10,000 total traffic, and conducted linear regression, t tests and area under the curve analysis.

Results: While, there was no statistically significant change in the rates for either group of states during the study period., the average rate of emergency-related traffic fatalities in early adopter states was 15.4 per 10,000 total traffic fatalities vs. 18.0 10,000 total traffic fatalities in late/non-adopter states. The two-sample t test for this difference was statistically significant (95% CI 0.8, 4.4, p=0.006). The t test comparing the log of areas under curves for the two groups was border-line statistically significant (p=0.07).

Conclusions: Legislation intended to prevent struck-by pedestrian injuries and fatalities among emergency responders was associated with lower rates of overall emergency-response traffic fatalities including driver and occupant fatalities, and may hold promise for addressing recent increases in traffic-related line-of-duty fatalities among law enforcement officers.