The Florida Move Over Law requires that a driver move over or slow down to 20 miles per hour under the speed limit when approaching an authorized emergency vehicle that is using any visual signals and is parked on the side of the road, or a wrecker displaying amber or flashing lights that is performing a recovery or loading on the roadside, or sanitation vehcile peforming its function.
Currently, the law does not require that officers be engaged in a traffic stop or any other job function, only wreckers have to be loading. What the Florida Highway Patrol did in South Florida was place an SUV inside of a state park with lights on. When drivers failed to either move over or decrease their speed as the law requires, the drivers were pulled into a staging area and cited. This pattern was repeated here in North Florida, according to people cited for a move over violation that hired the firm to defend their their traffic tickets.
The Highway Patrol refers to this as driver awareness or education. Obviously, if law enforcement are not engaged in a traffic stop and merely parking a vehicle on the side of the road with lights on, then they are trying to cite people for a violation of the Move Over Law. This is what the government calls law enforcement or education and some citizens call entrapment. What most people do not realize is that a trooper does not have to be engaged in any job function for the Move Over Law to apply.
Many times a citation of the Move Over Law can be defended and even if it cannot, a lawyer familiar with the procedure and rules of evidence can achieve a good result. Obviously, the best bet is to move over or slow down, as the law requires upon approaching an emergency vehicle such as an ambulance, tow truck or law enforcement. However, if it is too late for that and a citation for failure to move over has been issued then click, call or fill out the form to hire a traffic defense attorney.
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