National statistics have for years documented that traffic accidents are one of the primary killers of law enforcement officers who die in the line of duty. Among the most poignant and pointless losses are fatalities occurring while the officer is doing his or her job on the side of the road, as in two recent and tragic deaths on Oahu.

Officer Garret Davis, the latest victim, died Saturday night after he pulled over to help a motorist whose vehicle had stalled on the H-1 freeway in Aiea; a truck hit the squad car in which Davis sat. That happened only months after the Sept. 13 crash that killed Officer Eric Fontes during a night traffic stop along Farrington Highway, near Ko Olina.

Hawaii’s law enforcement community and some lawmakers are beginning to line up, as they should, behind proposals to enact what’s known as a "move over" law. This is a statute aimed at protecting people responding to emergencies on the side of the road by compelling passing drivers either to clear the adjacent lane or slow down significantly. Five such bills have been introduced in the Hawaii Legislature so far this session.

The movement to create a safer zone around roadside work zones dates to the mid-1990s, when South Carolina became the first state to pass a law, following an incident in which a paramedic responding to an accident was himself injured.

However, most of the states came on board after 2000, when the U.S. Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration called for improved protections for emergency workers. Connecticut, New York and Maryland were the late adopters, in 2009, 2010 and 2011, respectively, leaving only Hawaii and the District of Columbia without a statute.

Experts in national advocacy organizations (which have an online record of the laws at moveoveramerica.com) acknowledge that it’s too soon to have any solid data proving the efficacy of the laws. It is noteworthy, though, that the count of law enforcement officers killed in traffic cases declined last year, dipping below firearms-related fatalities for the first time in 14 years.

Honolulu Police Department Maj. Kurt Kendro, commander of the HPD Traffic Division, acknowledged that it would be difficult for officers, who already have their hands full on the roadside, to chase down offenders and cite them should the law pass. What has worked in other jurisdictions has been specific crackdowns to drive home safe-driving principles, similar to DUI checkpoints or Click It or Ticket campaigns.

Certainly, passing laws isn’t the only way to make highways safer. Common sense matters. Drivers with mechanical distress, for example, are often able to move to the safest zone, generally the slower far-right lane, more often than they do. And police also owe the public the effort to conduct their traffic stops as safely as possible.

But there is good reason to craft a law aimed at creating more insulation around roadside operations: It would give public education campaigns more bite than bland "drive safely" admonitions. It’s hard to imagine that improving seat-belt habits would have been possible without such a law.

There’s a lot of discussion ahead to determine the final contours of the bill — such as whether transportation crews should be covered by the law, as they are in some states, and what penalties to assess. But it’s time to start that conversation and get some protection on the books, even if, as seems likely, the law will serve mostly as a spur for public education efforts. The goal is to change attitudes in the interest of safer highways, Kendro rightly observed, and that merits Hawaii’s focus at last.