Move Over. Two words on a highway sign, and a statute that has been growing since 2003. When a vehicle with its lights going is stopped at the side of the road, the driver coming up on it owes a lane, or twenty miles an hour, before he owes anything else.
The rule. The statute applies to a short list of stopped vehicles: an authorized emergency vehicle using its visual signals; a permitted tow truck using its equipment; a Texas Department of Transportation vehicle or a highway maintenance or construction vehicle working under a state contract, not separated from the roadway by cones, barrels or barrier and using its signals; a utility service vehicle using its signals; a stationary garbage or recycling truck working beside the highway; and a toll project entity’s vehicle, or a contractor’s working for it, using its signals (Transportation Code Section 545.157). On approaching one of them, unless a police officer directs otherwise, the driver shall vacate the lane closest to the vehicle if the highway has two or more lanes in his direction, or slow to twenty miles an hour under the posted limit, or to five miles an hour where the limit is under twenty-five. Either one satisfies the statute. The Department of Public Safety’s advice is to move over when you can do it safely and legally, and to slow down when you cannot (DPS).
What it costs. The Legislature raised the price in 2023. Before that session the fine was up to two hundred dollars, or up to two thousand when a crash hurt someone (House Bill 898, bill analysis). Now a violation is a misdemeanor with a fine that starts at five hundred dollars and runs to twelve hundred fifty, a second offense within five years carries a fine of one thousand to two thousand, an offense that results in bodily injury to another is a Class A misdemeanor, a second one of those is a state jail felony, and a court may suspend the license of a repeat offender for up to six months (Section 545.157(c), (d-1)). The reason is in the Department of Public Safety’s own count: since November 2017, 142 crashes involving stationary DPS patrol vehicles, 46 troopers injured and two killed (DPS, May 12, 2025). A trooper on the coast put the feeling in a sentence: it is not a good feeling when they go by the window at seventy-five (KRIS 6 News).
Why the shoulder is the fastest place on the road. Everything on this site about closing speed is about the difference between two speeds. A stopped vehicle has no speed to subtract. The closing speed on a parked patrol car is the whole of your own, and the person standing beside it, writing a ticket or hooking a chain or changing a tire, is a pedestrian at highway speed with a few feet of asphalt for a sidewalk; Closing Speed has the arithmetic and The Wrap and the Ground has what a car does to a person on foot. At night it is worse, because, as Past the Light explains, low beams light about two hundred feet and a car at seventy needs nearly twice that to stop. A lane of space turns the whole problem into a near miss. Twenty miles an hour less can be the difference between a fatal impact and a survivable one.
In a civil case. The statute is a traffic offense, and a traffic offense becomes the measure of care in a lawsuit through the doctrine Negligence Per Se describes: when the injured person is one of the people the statute was written to protect and the harm is the kind it was written to prevent, breaking the statute is the negligence, and the jury is not asked whether a careful driver would have done the same. The trooper, the tow operator, the TxDOT crew, the lineman and the sanitation worker are the people on the list. The motorist stranded beside his own disabled car, before anyone with lights arrives, is not; the section names the vehicles that trigger the duty, and a private car with its flashers on is not one of them. Once a patrol car or a tow truck has pulled in behind him with its lights on, the duty is triggered, and he can argue that he is among the people it protects. Before that, his case is the ordinary one, and it is a strong one: the duty to drive at a speed that is reasonable and prudent for the conditions, with regard for the hazards then existing (Section 545.351), the duty to keep a lookout, and the division of fault that Comparative Fault explains, which is what Stranded walked through in September. And when the stopped vehicle is a commercial truck, it carries a duty of its own to be seen, the flashers and the three warning devices, usually reflective triangles, within ten minutes that The Shoulder set out from the federal rules (49 CFR 392.22), so the question of who could have made the hazard visible runs both ways.
The move. The lights. Whether the stopped vehicle’s emergency lights were on is the first fact in the case, and a patrol car records it, in the dash camera, the body camera and the unit’s own log, and many tow trucks and work trucks carry cameras of their own. The 911 and dispatch time stamps, which fix how long the vehicle had been stopped and lit. The striking vehicle’s event data recorder, which kept its speed and the moment the brake went down, if it went down at all, which is Delta-V. The lane the striking vehicle was in, from the physical evidence and the cameras. The traffic around it, because the defense of the driver who did not move over is almost always that he could not, and the cameras usually say whether that was true.
Move over. The law asks for a lane or twenty miles an hour, and for the person standing on the shoulder, that is the whole distance between a close call and a funeral.
The rule: Tex. Transp. Code § 545.157 (the listed vehicles; vacate the lane or slow to 20 under the limit, or to 5 where the limit is under 25; the penalties as amended effective Sept. 1, 2023; license suspension; added 2003 and amended 2011, 2013, 2019, 2021 and 2023); Bill analysis of H.B. 898 (engrossed version, May 4, 2023), 88th Legislature (2023) (the prior fine of up to 200 dollars, or up to 2,000 after an injury crash; the new fine range; the Class A misdemeanor and state jail felony; license suspension; community service); Tex. Transp. Code § 545.351; 49 CFR 392.22. The count: Texas Department of Public Safety, May 12, 2025 (since Nov. 1, 2017, 142 crashes involving stationary DPS patrol vehicles, 46 trooper injuries and two trooper deaths; move over only if you can do so safely and legally, and if you cannot, slow down); KRIS 6 News, May 14, 2025 (the troopers’ account; the law first passed in 2003). General information, not legal advice.
