California Vehicle Code
Foreword
The Department of Motor Vehicles of the State of California is directed to publish and sell the Vehicle Code of California by the following statutory provision:
“1656 (a) The department shall publish the complete text of the California Vehicle Code together with other laws relating to the use of highways or the operation of motor vehicles once every two years. The department, upon written request of any state or local governmental officer or agency, any federal agency, any public secondary school in this state, or any other person, shall distribute the California Vehicle Code ata charge sufficient to pay the entire cost of publishing and distributing the code. With regard to public secondary schools, the quantities shall be sufficient to provide one copy for each driver training and education instructor and one copy for each public secondary school library. In determining the amount of the charge, a fraction of a dollar shall be disregarded,unless it exceeds fifty cents ($0.50), in which case it shall be treated as one full dollar ($1). The receipts from the sale of such publications shall be deposited in the Motor Vehicle Account, with the intent to reimburse the department for the entire cost to print and distribute the Vehicle Code.
(b) The department shall publish a synopsis or summary of the laws regulating the operation of vehicles and the use of the highways and may deliver a copy thereof without charge with each original vehicle registration and with each original driver’s license. The department shall publish such number of copies of the synopsis or summary in the Spanish language as the director determines are needed to meet the demand for such copies. The department shall furnish both English and Spanish copies to its field offices and to law enforcement agencies for general distribution and,when it does so, shall furnish the copies without charge.”
The State Edition of the Vehicle Code contains the text recodified by Chapter 3, Statutes of 1959, as amended by chapters enacted subsequently in the Statutes of 1959 through 2007.
Prior to 1967 the Legislature met every other year (in odd-numbered years) to consider matters of general legislation. Special sessions were also conducted in even-numbered years to consider budgetary items and matters placed before the Legislature by special request of the Governor. The Vehicle Code was published every other year, following the full sessions of the Legislature.
Commencing in 1967, the Legislature met every year.
In 1973, the two-year Legislative Session began. This was the result of Proposition 4, Assembly Constitutional Amendment (ACA) 95 of 1972.
The two-year session formally commences at noon on the first Monday in December of even-numbered years and adjourns sine die on midnight of November 30 of the succeeding even-numbered year. There is a mid-session recess from September 15 to January 6.
Generally statutes will take effect on January 1 of each year provided they were enacted 90 days prior to that date and were not urgency measures or bills enacted in Special Session. Urgency statutes take effect upon their enactment and bills enacted at Special Sessions take effect 91 days after adjournment of the Special Session.
An Appendix contains “other laws relating to the use of highways or the operation of motor vehicles,” as specified in Section 1656.
A List of Violations of the Vehicle Code, revised and brought up to date every year, is also included in the State Edition. This list is provided as an informational guide only and is not intended to supplant sections of the vehicle code enacted into law. The list has not been codified and does not carry the force or effect of statute.
Boldface italics are used to indicate new provisions not contained in former editions. Parentheses in the text –( )– indicate that material has been deleted by amendment. Material deleted from the Vehicle Code is printed in seven-point type in the footnotes and is removed from subsequent editions. Deleted material is not shown for the related codes in the appendix.
History lines are included in the code denoting the last ten years of legislative history of the sections. If the last legislative action on a section occured more than ten years ago, that single action line is retained. In most cases, history is confined to noting the number and section of the statutory chapter affecting the code section, the year of the statutory action, and the effective and/or operative date(s). Vehicle Code sections with no history line remain unchanged since the 1959 recodification.
For legislative history of the Vehicle Code as enacted in Chapter 27, Statutes of 1935, and of its sections prior to the 1959 recodification, reference may be made to the 1957 or earlier printings of the Vehicle Code in the State Edition, or to an annotated edition. Most editions of the code published in 1959 and 1961 contain Tables of Derivation and Disposition of the sections renumbered in the 1959 recodification. For purposes of the State Edition, these tables were deemed to be of diminishing reference value effective with the 1963 edition, and have not been included in subsequent issues.