According to the Legislative Budget Board (LBB), HB 3726 is not expected to have a significant fiscal implication to the State. The fiscal note states that the bill would modify rules related to passing certain vehicles on a highway, and LBB assumes any costs associated with implementing or enforcing the bill could be absorbed using existing resources.

For local governments, the LBB likewise anticipates no significant fiscal implications. The fiscal note does not identify any required local spending, new administrative structure, grant program, or revenue loss associated with the bill.

The key fiscal implication is therefore limited: the bill may create some enforcement or administrative workload for agencies such as the Department of Public Safety or the Department of Transportation, but LBB does not project those costs to require additional appropriations. The fiscal note does not describe any costs as recurring or one-time, and it does not characterize the fiscal impact as indeterminate.

Texas Policy Research recommends that lawmakers vote NO  on HB 3726. Although the bill responds to a legitimate roadside-safety concern, it does so by expanding the scope of an existing traffic offense to cover ordinary vehicles stopped on or adjacent to a highway when using hazard lamps or marked by warning devices such as traffic cones, flares, or retroreflective devices. The bill analysis states that the proposal would extend the existing move-over-or-slow-down requirements to these newly covered vehicles and would subject violations to the existing offense structure, including misdemeanor liability, Class A misdemeanor treatment if bodily injury results, and state jail felony treatment for certain subsequent offenses.

The principal concern is overcriminalization. Current law applies to identifiable categories of official, emergency, utility, highway, service, waste, and toll project vehicles. HB 3726 would expand that framework to ordinary stopped vehicles, which may present widely varying circumstances in real time. A disabled vehicle may be partially visible, poorly positioned, intermittently using hazard lamps, or marked with warning devices in a way that is not immediately clear to approaching drivers. Because the bill relies on roadside conditions that may be ambiguous after the fact, it increases the number of situations in which ordinary drivers could face criminal penalties based on a highly fact-dependent judgment.

The bill also raises enforcement-discretion concerns. A driver approaching a stopped vehicle may not always have a safe opportunity to change lanes, especially in heavy traffic, poor weather, construction areas, rural highways, or near entrance and exit ramps. While existing law contains a move-over-or-slow-down structure, the bill does not add additional guardrails tailored to the broader and less predictable category of ordinary stopped vehicles. Without clearer statutory limits, the bill could invite uneven enforcement and after-the-fact disputes over whether a driver had sufficient notice, whether warning devices were adequately visible, or whether a lane change was reasonably possible.

The limited-government concern is not primarily fiscal or administrative. The bill analysis states that the bill does not expressly grant additional rulemaking authority, and the LBB fiscal note anticipates no significant fiscal implications to the state or local governments. The concern is instead the expansion of state coercive authority. Even when no new agency or appropriation is created, expanding a criminally enforceable traffic duty still increases the reach of government power over ordinary conduct.

The bill’s safety objective is understandable, particularly given the bill analysis’s concern that the current law does not cover drivers who pull over after an accident or car trouble. However, criminal law should be narrow, clear, and limited to circumstances where the duty imposed on citizens is reasonably knowable and enforceable with minimal discretion. As drafted, the committee substitute broadens the move-over-or-slow-down offense beyond clearly identifiable official roadside vehicles without sufficient protections for drivers facing unclear or unsafe roadway conditions.

• SB 2126 (Same As)