cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34367979
More barriers to cycling means more cars which means more dead cyclists. Help us defeat this terrible anti-safety bill.
cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/34367979
More barriers to cycling means more cars which means more dead cyclists. Help us defeat this terrible anti-safety bill.
I’m trying to figure out what the problem actually is here. Is it that kids have access to a motor vehicle that can go fast enough to hurt them? Is that the primary issue under discussion? Might be good to treat them how some northern states treat snowmobiles and require a safety certificate that kids can get by doing a drivers ed-type class. Cops don’t have to putz around harassing kids for enforcement, just require it be presented to purchase, to get school parking, submitted after a crash, etc. But that should be a state solution, not a municipal one. Schools should be educating kids about safe use, and cities/towns should consider providing safer infrastructure for micromobility. I think the best you can and should be doing is making it as safe as possible, not prohibiting. Real adaptation will require some investment at the state level just like any other class of vehicle. But municipal representatives can encourage acceleration of that process.
The problem is road-raging drivers looking for a scapegoat.
Okay - require kids to have a safety certificate. How do you enforce that? E-bikes aren’t big, motorized vehicles that have to be registered like snowmobiles. They look like any other bike for the most part.
Cops can’t just pull over everyone who looks like they might be a kid because they might be on an e-bike and that e-bike might be a class-3 that might be self-powering while pedaled over 28mph or have a motor over 700 watts and the possible teenage might not have taken a safety certificate.
I don’t think that your cops should be focused on proactively enforcing this kind of stuff at all, as you seem to agree it’s a fools errand that sort of begs for problematic interactions. The energy should be going toward making safety culture and education ubiquitous. If you look at crash and injury stats for your jurisdiction by vehicle type it should be readily obvious where any or all of your proactive enforcement efforts should be directed. State laws about electric bike / electric motorcycles are messy because they’re pushing through a car culture, on car infrastructure, against car lobbies and so I can understand why the kneejerk response is to frustratingly try and integrate all of these fiddly classifications into enforcement directives, but I think that’s a misdirection. If it looks like a bike, focus on education. Don’t be having your squad cars pull over bicycles, motor or otherwise, that’s just absurd. Maybe in the future some of these classification will just be considered motorcycles, and that will be much cleaner. But the mess in the meantime is mostly artificial.