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A 2,700-mile round trip to California recently was a chance to get reacquainted with the rogues of the open road:

• Speeders. I’m talking about those doing 100-plus. These are also the careening multi-lane changers. They must think they’re in Formula 1.
• Left-lane campers. In one spot on I-5 in the Central Valley, 20-30 cars were stacked in the passing lane. Just two were in the right lane. When everybody claims to be passing, nobody’s passing.
• Tailgaters, the scourge that will always be with us. If we all expanded our following distances, we wouldn’t have traffic jams. Try telling these guys that.

But these offenses are committed by just a few drivers. We’re here to talk about a bad trait that’s almost universal:

Nobody’s moving over.

Meaning, few seem to observe the Move Over laws. These laws, which exist in every state, require drivers to move over a lane to provide a safe space away from police, tow providers, firefighters or emergency medical crews working on the roadside. Some states even require you to move over for literally any vehicle on the shoulder.

It makes a lot of sense, considering the 70 mph delta between you and a stationary object — one that human beings might pop out of.

Anecdotally, there’s not much moving over happening. This is a pet peeve, and I’ve watched the roads for it a long time now. Is it ignorance? Apathy?

AAA blames widespread ignorance, as does NHTSA, which estimates that “one-third of Americans are not aware of these laws.” This despite AAA and state agencies running PSA campaigns. But if ignorance explains a third of drivers, that means most of us know about the law but casually ignore it.

Occasionally, good intentions are thwarted by jerks: A month ago, I signaled a lane change and someone sped up to actively block it. The trooper on the shoulder ahead had his flashing lights going, so the purpose of the lane change was pretty damn clear.

Once on this California trip, nobody moved over for a patrol car with one of those sequential amber light bars that literally signals you to move left.

Don’t have space to move over? Then the law says to slow down. Maybe some are doing that, but it’s not obvious. 

(This just in Sunday night as I wrap up this piece: Two troopers working a three-car accident at night, one in the ditch. Watched a dozen cars pass, not one moved over. A few slowed down, slightly. Undoubtedly to rubberneck.

Grim statistics

Hundreds of law enforcement officers have died in vehicle crashes over the past few decades, according to various sets of federal data for different timeframes. It’s not clear how many of those occurred roadside when struck inside or outside of their cruisers. But a report for 2019 had this specific detail: 16 officers were killed that year by vehicles while on foot. So that gives you an idea. Sixteen officers with 16 families.

The AAA, which was key to getting Move Over laws passed, has been on a jihad about this for years, not just because of the danger it poses to cops but to roadside assistance workers such as the AAA’s tow truck drivers. In a 2021 report, AAA said 14 tow drivers had been killed so far that year as of the time of writing — and it was only August. In a report this year, AAA concluded that road workers’ deaths could be triple what’s known because they’re often just labeled in police reports as “pedestrians.”

A related problem is highway work zones, where lanes are often blocked off and traffic constricted, so moving over is impractical and limiting speed is the only option. We’re all familiar with those zones, with heavy signage and fine multipliers — yet we often see those speed limits ignored. The need for these speed limits becomes clear when you hear the federal statistics. They are alarming:

• From 1982 through 2020, 29,493 people (about 776 per year) died in work zone crashes. This is workers, drivers, passengers, bystanders.
• 2002 was the worst: 1,186 died in work zones that year. Since then, deaths declined steadily to an annual average of 635 in 2008-2014. But after that they increased to an average of 794 in 2015-2020.
• Given what we know about increased speeding in the post-pandemic years, it will not be surprising to hear that this number has gone up.

Summer’s coming, it’s work zone season. You’re going to encounter a lot of potential danger in the months ahead.  

‘We’re seeing more speeding and erratic behavior’

In my state alone, the Washington State Department of Transportation reports that 10 people died in work zone crashes last year. Multiply that by 50 states, and the death tolls above do seem plausible. Beyond the fatalities, WSDOT reports there were 1,676 work zone crashes in 2019. This was followed by a decline during the pandemic, but last year the number of work zone crashes bumped back up to 1,228. Mind you, this is in just one state.

“Far too many of our workers have had close calls, serious injuries and even deaths in our work zones. It’s hard to find a crew that hasn’t had an injury or numerous close calls,” said WSDOT’s Christina Werner. “Most road workers can recount incidents where they had to take action to avoid tragedy due to drivers entering work zones.

“We’re seeing more speeding and erratic behavior in work zones – which puts everyone at risk.”

The Washington State Patrol tells me that over the past five years, its troopers pulled over 12,547 drivers for Move Over violations. Which didn’t sound like all that many, probably a drop in the bucket of violators who weren’t pulled over. Turns out it’s a hard violation to enforce.

“Often these violations are experienced by our troopers or other law enforcement officers while they are currently on a traffic stop or at a collision scene,” said WSP Sgt. Chelsea Hodgson. “Unless there is another unit actively in the area that is able to observe and then contact the driver, many of these simply go witnessed and unenforced due to having to manage the incident at hand. Often if there is a second unit on scene, and the offense is egregious enough, they can and will contact the driver who failed to move over or slow down.”

Head on a swivel

It shouldn’t take getting a ticket. The need to move over is obvious, it’s common sense.

So why isn’t everyone doing it? A common fault when driving is simply not looking far enough down the road — most of us could probably do a better job at that. So perhaps people just aren’t spotting these situations in time to move over. That’s the charitable explanation, “just don’t care” is the less kind.

AAA’s advice is, “Remain alert, avoid distractions and focus on the task of driving.” Then provide the courtesy of a wide berth.

Have a safe summer, everyone.

U.S. prosecutors are examining whether Tesla committed securities or wire fraud by misleading investors and consumers about its electric vehicles’ self-driving capabilities, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems assist with steering, braking and lane changes — but are not fully autonomous. While Tesla has warned drivers to stay ready to take over driving, the Justice Department is examining other statements by Tesla and Chief Executive Elon Musk suggesting its cars can drive themselves.

U.S. regulators have separately investigated hundreds of crashes, including fatal ones, that have occurred in Teslas with Autopilot engaged, resulting in a mass recall by the automaker.

Reuters exclusively reported the U.S. criminal investigation into Tesla in October 2022, and is now the first to report the specific criminal liability federal prosecutors are examining.

Investigators are exploring whether Tesla committed wire fraud, which involves deception in interstate communications, by misleading consumers about its driver-assistance systems, the sources said. They are also examining whether Tesla committed securities fraud by deceiving investors, two of the sources said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating Tesla’s representations about driver-assistance systems to investors, one of the people said. The SEC declined to comment.

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment. Last October, it disclosed in a filing that the Justice Department had asked the company for information about Autopilot and Full Self-Driving.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

The probe, which is not evidence of wrongdoing, could result in criminal charges, civil sanctions, or no action. Prosecutors are far from deciding how to proceed, one of the sources said, in part because they are sifting through voluminous documents Tesla provided in response to subpoenas.

Reuters could not determine the specific statements prosecutors are reviewing as potentially illegal. Musk has aggressively touted the prowess of Tesla’s driver-assistance technology for nearly a decade.

Tesla videos demonstrating the technology that remain archived on its website say: “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”

A Tesla engineer testified in 2022 in a lawsuit over a fatal crash involving Autopilot that one of the videos, posted in October 2016, intended to show the technology’s potential and did not accurately portray its capabilities at the time. Musk nevertheless posted the video on social media, writing: “Tesla drives itself (no human input at all) thru urban streets to highway streets, then finds a parking spot.”

In a conference call with reporters in 2016, Musk described Autopilot as “probably better” than a human driver. During an October 2022 call, Musk addressed a forthcoming FSD upgrade he said would allow customers to travel “to your work, your friend’s house, to the grocery store without you touching the wheel.”

Musk is increasingly focused on self-driving technology as Tesla’s car sales and profit slump. Tesla recently slashed costs through mass layoffs and shelved plans for a long-awaited $25,000 model that had been expected to drive sales growth.

“Going balls to the wall for autonomy is a blindingly obvious move,” the billionaire executive posted on his social-media platform X in mid-April. Tesla shares, down more than 28% so far this year, surged in late April when Musk visited China and made progress toward approvals to sell FSD there.

Musk has repeatedly promised self-driving Teslas for about a decade. “Mere failure to realize a long-term, aspirational goal is not fraud,” Tesla lawyers said in a 2022 court filing.

LEGAL CHALLENGES

Prosecutors scrutinizing Tesla’s autonomous-car claims are proceeding with caution, recognizing the legal hurdles they face, the people familiar with the inquiry said.

They will need to demonstrate that Tesla’s claims crossed a line from legal salesmanship to material and knowingly false statements that unlawfully harmed consumers or investors, three legal experts uninvolved in the probe told Reuters.

U.S. courts previously have ruled that “puffery” or “corporate optimism” regarding product claims do not amount to fraud. In 2008, a federal appeals court ruled that statements of corporate optimism alone do not demonstrate that a company official intentionally misled investors.

Justice Department officials will likely seek internal Tesla communications as evidence that Musk or others knew they were making false statements, said Daniel Richman, a Columbia Law School professor and former federal prosecutor. That is a challenge, Richman said, but the safety risk involved in overselling self-driving systems also “speaks to the seriousness with which prosecutors, a judge and jury would take the statements.”

FATAL CRASHES

Tesla’s claims about Autopilot and FSD have also drawn scrutiny in regulatory investigations and lawsuits.

Safety regulators and courts have raised concerns in recent months that corporate messaging about the technology – including the brand names Autopilot and Full Self-Driving – have imbued customers with a false sense of security.

In April, the Washington State Patrol arrested a man on suspicion of vehicular homicide after his Tesla, with Autopilot engaged, struck and killed a motorcyclist while the driver looked at his phone, police records show. In a probable-cause statement, a trooper cited the driver’s “admitted inattention to driving, while on autopilot mode … putting trust in the machine to drive for him.”

In Washington state, a driver remains “responsible for the safe and legal operation of that vehicle” regardless of its technological capabilities, a state patrol spokesperson told Reuters.

The same month, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched an investigation into whether a Tesla recall of more than 2 million vehicles in December adequately addressed safety issues with Autopilot.

NHTSA declined to comment.

The recall followed a long-running probe opened by regulators after cars with Autopilot engaged repeatedly crashed into vehicles at first-responder emergency scenes. Regulators subsequently examined hundreds of crashes where Autopilot was engaged and identified 14 deaths and 54 injuries.

Tesla disputed NHTSA’s findings but agreed to the recall, which employed over-the-air software updates intended to alert inattentive drivers.

The NHTSA investigation found “a critical safety gap between drivers’ expectations” of Tesla’s technology “and the system’s true capabilities,” according to agency records. “This gap led to foreseeable misuse and avoidable crashes.”

Bentley on Wednesday revealed a new V-8 plug-in hybrid powertrain that takes over the performance mantle from the automaker’s venerable W-12, production of which ceases this summer.

Referred to as the Ultra Performance Hybrid powertrain, the hybrid setup will deliver more than the 740-hp peak power rating that the 6.0-liter twin-turbocharged W-12 engine makes in its final application, the Batur and recently revealed Batur Convertible.

Bentley also said the powertrain includes a battery capable of delivering 50 miles of electric range, though that figure is measured on the WLTP cycle used overseas and will likely be lower when measured using the stricter EPA cycle.

The automaker hasn’t said where the powertrain will first show up, but a likely place is in the updated Continental GT and Continental GT Convertible, prototypes for which are currently out testing.

Bentley Ultra Performance Hybrid powertrain

More details on the powertrain will be announced in the coming weeks, Bentley said.

Bentley will also phase out its standalone V-8 engine soon, as the automaker plans for every model it sells to be electrified. It’s possible the standalone V-8 will be replaced by Bentley’s current V-6 plug-in hybrid powertrain already offered in the Bentayga Hybrid and Flying Spur Hybrid. It consists of a 2.9-liter twin-turbocharged V-6 and an electric motor integrated with the transmission, and is good for a combined 536 hp.

Bentley will eventually move into electric powertrains. The automaker’s first EV is currently due in late 2026. It will be a new model line, rather than a version of an existing model line.