Despite two decades of education and enforcement, drivers still failing
Scott’s Law
[April 05, 2025]
By Beth Hundsdorfer
For a moment, Illinois State Trooper Alex Womack was flying, tumbling in
mid-air, alternately seeing sky then ground.
He doesn’t remember hitting the road.
He regained consciousness and realized he had been hit by a truck and
was lying in the middle of a darkened interstate near East St. Louis,
unable to move with cars traveling 70 mph headed toward him. He
remembers seeing the oncoming headlights.
“I was able to raise my one arm off the ground,” Womack said.
An oncoming driver saw his upraised arm in his headlights and slammed on
the brakes, managing to stop just feet away. That shaken driver pulled
the injured trooper off the roadway to safety.
Womack had just become the 19th of 26 Illinois state troopers involved
in a Scott’s Law crash in 2019 — a year when two troopers were killed
and a dozen, including Womack, were injured. Those crashes spurred
legislative changes and heightened public awareness campaigns.
Scott’s Law, also known as the Move Over Law, requires that all vehicles
move over, if possible, or slow down when passing a stopped or disabled
emergency vehicle with its flashing lights on. It was passed in 2001.
Since 2019, state police have been involved in 140 crashes caused by
drivers violating the Move Over Law.
In 2024, there were more crashes than in the past five years — 27 in all
— including a fatal collision that killed Trooper Clay Carns, an 11-year
veteran and father of two. Carns died Dec. 23, 2024, after he was struck
while clearing debris from the highway after a crash on Interstate 55
near Channahon.
The crash that killed Carns happened 24 years to the day after Chicago
Fire Department Lt. Scott Gillen died after he was struck by a passing
car at an accident scene. The legislation that later became known as
Scott’s Law was named for Gillen.
The 2019 deaths of two troopers in an eight-week period once again put
the Move Over Law in the spotlight.
On Jan. 12, 2019, Trooper Christopher Lambert died after a crash on
Interstate 294 in Cook County. On March 28, 2019, Trooper Brooke Jones
Story died in crash on U.S. 20 in Stephenson County.
One of Brendan Kelly’s first duties as the newly appointed director of
the Illinois State Police was delivering the eulogy at Jones Story’s
funeral.
Since then, one of Kelly’s missions has been to educate the public on
the Move Over Law, including enforcement details to ticket violators and
campaigns to educate drivers. In 2019, ISP issued nearly 6,300 citations
for violating the Move Over Law — which was nearly 5,300 more than the
combined totals of the two previous years.
“We will continue to hammer home this message as long as it takes
because this is a matter of life and death for our officers and for the
safety of the public,” Kelly said.
A person who violates the Move Over Law now faces a minimum fine of $250
up to a maximum of $10,000 for a first offense. If the violation results
in injury to another person, the violator’s driver’s license will be
suspended for up to two years.
In the wake of the 2019 deaths, Gov. JB Pritzker formed a task force
that recommended changes in the law and stiffer penalties for violators,
improvements in protective equipment and lighting for trooper, and
public awareness campaigns.
Three days after the task force released its first report, there was
another crash.
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Trooper Alex Womack stands beside his wrecked squad. Womack
sustained arm, leg and back injuries and required more than a year
off work to recover. Courtesy Illinois State Police)
On Feb. 15, 2021, Trooper Brian Frank, with his marked squad car’s
emergency lights activated, stopped in the left lane of Interstate 55
northbound near Route 30 near Joliet to block traffic for a crash that
had just occurred. While still inside his squad car, a black Cadillac
struck the rear of Trooper Frank’s squad car, leaving him with serious
brain injuries.
Lauren Frank, Trooper Frank’s wife, became an advocate for the Move Over
Law, including advocating for a bill on Aug. 12, 2021, that strengthened
the penalties against violators.
Brian Frank continues to recover from his catastrophic brain injury and
remains in a “minimally conscious state.”
Brian Angel Casillas, the driver who hit Frank, received a 15-month
prison sentence.
The Move Over Law protections were further expanded this year. Beginning
on Jan. 1, drivers must change lanes, reduce speed, or stop when
approaching or passing any emergency vehicle, including police, sheriff,
ambulances and maintenance vehicles, with the flashing lights activated.
Drivers are also required to yield the right-of-way to any authorized
vehicle or pedestrian actually engaged in work on a highway or a
construction zone.
ISP is also employing technology to reduce Scott’s Law crashes. Late
last year, the agency announced a partnership with HAAS Alert — a
company that provides safety alerts to drivers, notifying them of ISP
activity in the road ahead and urging them to slow down and move over.
HAAS provides real-time GPS-based traffic information in Chrysler,
Dodge, Jeep, Mercedes-Benz, RAM and Volkswagen vehicles.
ISP provides information about crashes, traffic stops, motorist assists
or debris on the roadway, which is then pushed out to in-vehicle GPS
systems. As drivers approach the GPS location of the trooper, they will
see a police icon and receive an alert to slow down and move over.
ISP also partnered with Google to provide notifications in Google and
Waze Maps to expand the alerts on their platforms.
So far this year, there have been four crashes in Illinois, injuring
three troopers.
Womack, the trooper who was struck in March 2019, sustained a broken
femur, humerus, compressed discs in his vertebrae. He underwent two
surgeries and months of physical therapy. He didn’t return to full work
duties for more than a year, but he said he was thankful to be alive.
“By the grace of God, I was saved. It just wasn’t my time to go,” Womack
said.
Kyamran B. Makharadze, 26, the truck driver who hit Womack, was charged
with aggravated driving under the influence and aggravated reckless
driving. He pleaded guilty in 2023 and received a year in prison.
Womack returned to work after months of recovery. Today, he said when he
pulls over drivers for violating the Move Over Law, he tells them what
happened to him.
“I hope it’s a lesson,” Womack said. “I work on the side of the road.
That’s my office. And, at the end of the day, I just want to go home.”
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