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Massholes on notice: Dooring bicyclists now illegal
By adamg on Sat, 01/17/2009 - 11:40pm
Dave Atkins runs down the highlights of the new bicycle-safety law just signed by Gov. Patrick. Among them: Opening your car door right in front of a cyclist now carries a $100 fine; motorists must yield to cyclists when making a left turn.
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Damn, check out the rest of the changes
Direct link:
Well, that just put a big old stick into the spokes of any bike-sharing programs! Part of the low-cost, ease-of-use, grab-n-go, etc. nature of the programs is that they just have locked racks of bikes around for people to rent out. They're either going to have to have the high overhead of providing a free helmet at the time of registration or somehow include helmets at the racks...or...something. Thanks a pantsload, you damn legislators.
Also, goodbye, Critical Mass.
Section 5 also just blew up our status as a non "stop-and-identify" state. If you are walking down the street, you have no requirement to identify yourself truthfully to an officer who does a Terry stop on you. If you happen to be on a bike instead, now you do or face arrest. Will love to know how long *this* dichotomy lasts.
Section 13 also changes our helmet requirements from ANSI/SNELL to US CPSC. Not totally sure what that might mean since I don't follow the standards close enough and never knew of US CPSC's standard.
Most of these lane/passing issues should also apply to mopeds. It will be interesting to see how that resolves itself as well.
I dont see why you think its
I dont see why you think its a problem that people on bikes have to present some sort of identification. After all they are moving at much higher speeds then pedestrians, and are using the streets just like as if they were a car (and cars have to have all sorts of paperwork on them, along with insurance etc) if you ask me the bike people get off easy. Also the whole riding two abreast thing makes perfect sense, I realize that it may affect "critical mass" but thats unfortunate, the rest of us live here too. I do agree that the bike helmet thing is a bit flawed as it would be hard for some of these programs to operate. I would much rather just see a mandatory bike helmet law like they do with motorcycles, after all a fall from a bike driving at street speeds is gonna be bad even if your bike is not motorized.
Overall bike riders got way more then they are giving up. I would stop whining because they could very easily go in and junk the whole thing and start fresh. As it is I think the law made too many concessions to the bike lobby.
Your Papers!
(I'm pro-cyclist rights, so I'll stay off that.)
The ID thing is not about biking, rather police and governmental excesses. Cyclists are not licensed to ride any more than runners, scooter pushers, roller skaters or other non-motorized travelers. State and federal courts and numerous laws forbid police from using totalitarian-state methods of demanding citizen's papers. Not even Bush/Cheney/Gonzales got around to going all Nazi on us with that.
Police can and do ask folk to identify themselves. An oral accounting is legally adequate. That's true for folk just hanging around, those who might have done something illegal (say jaywalking) or those police have seen committing crimes.
Yes, some people may give false information and it is up to the cop to judge and act accordingly. Similarly, people may present false ID, leaving the cop in the same situation.
Let's not demand identify papers, comrade.
ID
there really is nothing the cop can do if the person refused to ID themselves or says their name is Donald Duck.
A cop can always check an ID with the registry if they have to.
What I don't like about it
Honestly, I'm not totally against stop-and-identify laws. What I don't particularly like is how it's slipped amid a bunch of improvements for bike rights on the road. I don't like how it creates a dichotomy between a jogger and a bike rider. Stop-and-identify laws were argued to help capture fugitives, people with arrest warrants, etc. This isn't the purpose of MA's new bike stop-and-identify. This is just to make their little Cambridge/Central Square-style biker violation stings stick to the individual. I'm not totally against that precept, but the way it's being done and the legal tiering that get set up because of it...it all just feels...wrong.
By the way, one of the other things they removed was the entire law about requiring registration for all bikes. I think that's the one of the first times I've ever seen a legal change that was extremely pragmatic...at the same time that they're requiring helmets be provided by every rental company. Still, there's far more good in this bill than bad so I guess that's a good thing.
Joggers and biker riders are
Joggers and biker riders are as different as motorists and bike rider, they should be treated differently.
Also I think the best place for it is in improvements for bike riders. If we are revamping laws we should be revamping laws. Theres a reason why things like this get put in. Its a compromise so Senator X will vote for it, knowing full well that if it went in on its own the bike lobby would kill it. I dont have a problem with multipurpose legislation if its relevant. If they had slipped that part of the bill into the economic stimulous bill, well now that would be crazy.
Done, past done
The law already requires cyclists to act as vehicles, obeying laws and regulation applicable to motor vehicles. The obvious exceptions are that some paths forbid cars and some roads forbid cyclists. Bike riders allegedly have the same rights as motorists too -- full access to a lane if safety requires and so forth.
Your quibbles aren't with laws. They exist and there's nothing more to do to restrict cyclists. You can direct your queries and wishes to the law agencies and officers of municipalities and the state if you want these dreadful menaces crushed.
Cops routinely pick their traffic battles. They let countless drivers drift through stop signs and lights without stopping and let them turn without signaling or yielding to pedestrians, cyclists or cars. Except in a few spots like Central Square in Cambridge, cops likewise don't stop cyclists for slowing for red lights or turning at a NO TURN ON RED sign.
The idea that all drivers and cyclists are reckless scofflaws who need to be fined heavily or jailed is both inaccurate and impractical. More or different laws for cyclists are not necessary. Talk to your mayor and police chief. They'd likely give you their own opinions on which vehicle operators are the most dangerous and which are most likely to disobey safety rules.
critical mass is now illegal?
so now they can't ride 15 abreast... what's next, will their running red lights and blocking traffic be made illegal?
Yield on left turn
Haven't cyclists always been under the rules of cars? If so, that's not really a new law, is it? What's next...legislation requiring motorists to stop at red lights?
Formalization
Basically, this is more of a formalization of the issue so that there's no question. Opposing traffic has to yield to you if they are making a left hand turn, but I imagine many bikers (and I've gotten ugly looks on my moped as well) have been almost run over as the proceed on the far right through a green and someone coming from the other direction didn't even glance far enough to see if there was a biker coming. I can also imagine there have been cops who have let drivers go after hitting a biker because "well, he was all the way over there on the right shoulder...how was I supposed to know?" (hell, there are Staties out there who don't even realize mopeds can be all the way to the right too). So this is a formalization that states to drivers: "If you're turning left, even the biker in the FAR right side of the right lane gets priority over you."
An absolute necessity given current law? No, but a formalization of the situation of left-turner on bike rider and goes hand-in-hand with protecting bikers from dive-bombing right turners who couldn't wait the extra 20 seconds behind the biker to make their turn safely.
Really, Will....
The law already requires cars and bicycles alike to stop at red lights. Anybody who runs a red light is violating the law. Don't you realize that? Or, are you just being snarky?
Enforce the existing laws while you're at it
For example, as a pedestrian, I'd dearly love to see those fuckwits hurling past or at me at 20 miles an hour on the damn sidewalk to get the tickets they deserve.
If you're too much of a pussy to ride your bike on the street where you belong, don't ride your bike.
Stewart
some cities and towns allow bikes on sidewalks if they are not located in certain spots that the cities and towns dont even designate anyway.
Some do. Boston doesn't.
It ain't legal to bike on the sidewalk in the city of Boston. Nowhere. Given that I live and walk in the city of Boston, that's the one that most concerns me.
Not quite right
Bicycles are forbidden on the sidewalk here only in undefined "business districts." There again, common sense by cyclists as well as cops is supposed to determine that.
However, cyclists on any sidewalks are mandated to go slowly and always yield to pedestrians. Some don't and you're right that they should at the least pay the $20.
once again, not quite
This is a direct quote from MassBike's website:
"(3) bicycles may be ridden on sidewalks outside business districts when necessary in the interest of safety, unless otherwise directed by local ordinance."
What they don't mention is that Boston in fact has local ordinances prohibiting bicycles on sidewalks. Unfortunately, they're never enforced.
Says who?
Please specify that. MassBike and the Boston city sites say Boston adheres to the state laws. That would be biking on sidewalks okay outside business districts, whatever that means.
The city has lots of specificity about transportation, both laws and regulations, with many ordinances detailed. I see nothing to support your claim.
That written, I think it's dumb and dangerous to ride on the sidewalk and I don't do it. The city does have some biking guidelines, including wearing helmets and not riding on sidewalks, but those are not laws, regulations or ordinances, except for the helmets if you are 12 or under.
Learn the laws before
Learn the laws before calling people names. There's absolutely nothing wrong with riding on the sidewalk. Maybe as a pedestrian you should walk on the right instead of directly in the middle, now allowing anyone to pass?
See, I can make assumptions too.
Wow, your point would be much more effective
...if it wasn't entirely incorrect. Thank you for proving why it's correct to call people who ride bicycles on sidewalks in Boston fuckwits.
Sidewalks should be low
Sidewalks should be low speed zones, Im fine with bikes being on them when theres space but if theres not space they need to get off and not complain about people walking in the middle of the sidewalk. side*walk*
As a Pedestrian
When crossing in crosswalk with signal in Cambridge, besides the risks from the up-to-4-cars-per-red-light and the high-speed-right-turn-with-one-hand-while-yammering-on-cell-phone conventions, there's also risk from the bicyclists who simply blast through red lights at any time they think they can make it through cross traffic.
We really could use some more fine-tuning of the laws and attitudes, so that bicyclists get fair and relatively safe use of the roads, and so that flouting of traffic laws by bicyclists stops being commonplace.
I don't meant to pick just on bicyclists. We actually have what I think is a self-perpetuating cultural problem, in which many drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians disregard laws and don't take their responsibility seriously enough. The Boston area is not as good as some other cities in this regard, and I see no reason it can't be.
"9. Helmet Availability :
"9. Helmet Availability : Bicycle rental businesses are now required to make helmets available to renters. The renters can still choose not to wear a helmet (except for children 16 and under who must wear helmets in Massachusetts), as long as a helmet is available if they want one."
DAMNIT.
20120 bike share launch now in jeopardy?
Unless some law is passed to classify bike share as different from bike rental.
Fun fact: Amsterdam, where less than .01 of cyclists use helmets has a much lower fatality rate than Boston, where around 30% do.
J
Whats the fatality rate for bikers in Boston. You dont hear of many I dont think.
What about the young woman on a bicycle
What about the young woman on a bicycle who was run over and killed 2-3 years ago by a bus while cycling on Mass. Ave.?
Dooring Incident
She was in the bike lane when somebody opened a door and she fell into the path of a bus.
While that was a single ugly incident, the percentage of injuries sustained by cyclists is very heavily skewed toward dooring. Then again, not opening a door into bike or car traffic requires use of mirrors and/or turning around and looking first, so maybe that's too much to ask.
Cambridge has long had a law saying that if you open a door into traffic, you are responsible. My husband used this law in the early 80s to dispute a claim when he won a "door prize" while driving a car and the other driver tried to claim that he was at fault.
the law says "Make available"
This can be accomplished by many means that IMO would pass the test.
It doesn't say the helmet has to be provided at the point of delivery of the bicycle exactly at the moment of delivery. Further, renters can opt out and I'd anticipate an "i opt out" checkbox on the membership form, and a couple of dollars more in annual fees to cover people who want to have helmets provided...
It's possible
It just makes it less convenient and introduces new overhead and considerations for these companies. Any company that's already knee-deep in getting installed in Boston just got a new obstacle thrown in their way that they were not accounting/planning for. Any company that may have been considering Boston as a location may reconsider since nobody else has a "bike renters must provide helmet" law that I've ever heard of (however nearly all of these companies have stated before that they have a rule that requires a helmet be used on their bikes, which should have covered this problem by putting the onus on the rider and not the company). It just smacks of "Nanny State"-ism to foist this responsibility on the company instead of the individual user.
When I use the BU gym to play roller hockey, they make me sign a liability waiver that includes that I must bring and use a helmet. There's no law that says BU has to provide me a helmet if it's going to let me play roller hockey at their rink.
I disagree somewhat, zbert.
If bicycling organizations are required to provide helmets on bicycling trips, then why shouldn't gyms, sporting arenas, etc., be required to provide helmets for players who've forgotten them?
I didn't say that, independentminded
I didn't say that bike rental companies should be required to provide helmets, and can't speak for gyms and other sports organizations. I do know that some sports, particularly youth sports, will not let a kid play the game if said kid is not properly wrapped up in mandatory protective gear. Generally, at least in the towns I know, there are grants/other aid for kids who can't afford their own gear.
I said there were probably ways to comply with the law that were compatible with on-the-street bike rentals. I think that's a more constructive approach than simply declaring that the law means the end of any possibility of Paris-style bike services appearing in the Boston area.
---
I don't really have a position on the helmet issue. Lots of apparently-credible organization and people say helmets are very helpful. In researching the issue this weekend, I see that other apparently-credible organizations and people say they are not helpful and that mandatory helmet laws interfere with rental services. I don't usually wear a helmet, and catch hell from my friends for it. But I can see where it'd make sense because there are plenty of ways to get bounced off a bike in the city - and head-over-handlebars is a pretty likely trajectory.
One correction to someone's post in this thread: MA is not the first US jurisdiction to enact a helmet law like the one under discussion. Google has the deets.
Whether one is bicycling in the city OR out in the country,
S/he can take a nasty fall anywhere. Many people believe that helmets should only be worn by children twelve and under, but anybody of any age can sustain a head injury that either kills them outright, or leaves them permantly incapacitated, physically and/or mentally, for the rest of their lives. Therefore, I reiterate the position that I took on this forum on a different thread some months ago: Wearing a helmet is the only way to go! While a helmet won't guarantee against any kind of injury, it will at least minimize it. Helmets can and do save lives, folks!
No credible organization would say that
Please find a credible organization that would say helmets are not helpful. What a crock. I know a number of people that have had crashes that are very glad they had helmets. I was a very close (10 ft.) witness to a friend of mine crashing in the middle of nowhere in NH. He sustained a mild concussion as it was, and would have been seriously injured without a helmet.
Personally, I don't care if you wear a helmet or not - I believe in adults making their own decisions when it comes to their own well-being. But, please don't give us this bullshit about helmets not being helpful.
On a more humorous tangent...
Back in the mid-70's, I bought a book I used as a basic bicycle repair reference - Richard's Bicycle Book. It may even still be published in an updated revision. In one section, he talks about equipment one may need to ride a bicycle, along with some comments. He mentions gloves, shoes, tools, etc. When it comes to helmets, he says something like this:
Helmets - sure, along with full leathers, boots, etc.
Just shows you how times change. I didn't start wearing a helmet 'til the late 80's sometime.
Again, please don't blame the messenger
I can't find the precise source of the arguments I read yesterday, but there is a citation to the Australian study, and other info, starting here:
"http://www.kenkifer.com/bikepages/advocacy/mhls.htm
And other info here:
http://www.vehicularcyclist.com/
Stossel
The first bit on "vehicularcyclist.com" is on a piece by John Stossel, who does not have a 100% track record:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=19&media_outlet...
One cherry-picked cite does not make a conclusion
so, forget about stossel and keep reading, maybe try picking apart what you'd consider to be their strongest claims, not the weakest (the full argument is not situated atop anything concerning Stossel. he's B roll, "as seen on TV")
this writeup was interesting and heavily footnoted
http://www.cyclehelmets.org/1052.html
i am intrigued that so much effort has been put forth to discredit the usefulness of helmets. I cannot come up with any evil or profit-driven intentions behind such efforts, so I believe the writers must think their evidence is pretty good
Also, other data pointed to from the site (and others, easily found) are also interesting and seem to support some of the authors' quarrels with claims about helmets
How Not to Advocate Fringe Positions
I'm open to believing that cycling helmets aren't a big win, but those sites used up the 15 minutes of time I was willing to allot to them by shoving Stossel and speculating Australians at me.
Stossel admits to being driven by libertarian ideology that pretty much all government intervention (including, I presume, laws pertaining to bicycle helmets) is counterproductive. His income is also based on the appeal of this kind of reporting.
And Australians are of sturdier stock than Americans. Half of everything in Australia is poisonous, if it doesn't simply chomp you in half. In crash tests, I'd give even odds between helmeted Americans and bare-skulled Aussies. :)
Well said
no other readers here may believe it, but i agree with you on all counts, and with eeka who formerly worked in a locked brain trauma unit.
for the record, i am in favour of people on bicycles wearing helmets. Recall that my original point was that there are probably sufficient work-arounds for Paris-style bike rental services to comply with the law while not incurring show-stopping costs in money or effort.
But I am also fascinated to find that there is a movement ( > 1 person) putting in significant time and energy to discredit the apparently-obvious position that "wearing helmets is good. at the worst, it can't possibly make things worse". I cannot figure out the motivation, and have to wonder if there might be something to the complaints. But I also allow a 5-10% chance that the UFO cultists might be on to something too. Maybe i'd be well served to be a little more closed-minded.
All things considered, perhaps I'd be better off having been born in Australia. At least i'd have been born with a natural immunity to snake venom and Vegemite.
Opinion, not fact
And the first reference is simply an opinion piece, not a study. He refers to some studies, but only to support his claim that helmets do not necessarily save lives and that mandatory helmet laws are useless. His argument is that there is such a small chance of injury, that helmets are just a nuisance. Sure, if you want to talk percentages, even my experience supports that claim. With over 50K miles on the road and tons of off-road miles, I have never had a crash where a helmet saved my noggin. But, I'm still going to wear one.
That's all great, but that's not what you said. You said that helmets "are not helpful" which I read as "helmets are useless in a crash". Maybe we have a semantics issue.
What I say to the people who
What I say to the people who say theres a slim chance so why bother is (to steal it from an anti drug commercial) its that one time that counts the most. You spend 20 years of your life riding a bike/skating etc and one person cuts you off , you hit a curb , fall over backwards, you hit your head and from a distance it doesnt look all that bad but it hits the cement with a loud thud... Was it worth it?
Just to throw my two cents in
I used to work on a locked traumatic brain injury unit. The reason for the locked unit is that these folks had brain injuries that resulted in them being unable to live even in a group home, because they had at least one area of severely impaired functioning -- things like extremely violent and/or sexualized behavior, no sense of where they were or what day it was, etc. These were folks who were previously independent typical adults with jobs and families and everything, but after their injury would seem to a layperson to be people who had grown up with severe mental retardation and/or severe autism. These folks' partners usually left them, their kids often weren't allowed to visit them because of their violent/hypersexual behavior. Family members would tell me that brain injuries are worse than a family member being killed.
A number of our folks had been injured riding bicycles or rollerblading or skateboarding. Every single one of these charts noted a lack of a helmet. I didn't ever see one mention of someone wearing a helmet. Also, most of the accidents weren't the one-in-a-million freak accidents where someone got flung across the road by a semi truck or something. Most were experienced riders riding in the correct location at a normal rate of speed, went to steer around a rock or something totally usual, and ended up tipping over and hitting their head on the ground or on a post. Many of them didn't lose consciousness, most didn't have much in the way of a head wound, and some didn't even seek medical care until a few days later when their brain started swelling and they started getting confused/violent/etc.
Tell me why someone wouldn't wear a helmet that might prevent a brain injury, and which certainly would not increase the chances of a brain injury?
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Here to Tell About it
When my youngest was 4 months old and my older son was 2, I took a spill on a wet rail road track and hit the side of my head so hard that my helmet got a 4" split up the back. I had bad headaches for a week - but no permanent damage.
I still have that helmet - only it is on tour right now, being shown to my sons' friends who are beginning to feel immortal. That's because they know that few people ride more than I do, so the kids can't say that it won't happen to them because they are good riders.
I have another wrecked helmet, this one from my last spill a couple of years ago. It didn't so much save my head as the visor and the projection of the helmet saved my face.
Helmets are a lot more comfortable than they used to be, a lot cheaper, and a lot more protective. I find them to be cooler on a hot day because they direct air over my head. That wasn't true in the 70s, when helmets were heavy, hot, and clumsy.
Does anybody really think pro riders would be required to wear helmets if they didn't add something important? Moreover, when Canada required helmets for kids (with about 50% compliance), there was a sharp drop in head injuries. There was little or no change in the rates of other injuries, meaning that kids were riding as much as they had before, and breaking arms and legs as much as before, they just stopped ending up dead or even in the hospital from head injuries IF they had a helmet on.
If adults want to take that risk, then fine. The simple truth is that helmets work.
I still wonder what happened to that woman who was not paying attention to her surroundings, riding down Mass Ave through red lights, and caught a door that morning near Porter Square. I called 911, prevented the panicked motorist from moving the woman (but she's blocking traffic!!!), and timed the least attentive cyclist ever as being out cold for 45 seconds. She quite easily have earned herself some permanent - and preventable - brain damage.
Some may dispute that claim... ;-)
I had bad headaches for a week - but no permanent damage.
Oh, really? ;-)
Not a problem in Vancouver
We picked up the bikes, they asked our helmet sizes, grabbed them from the size sorted baskets, handed us our helmets, off we went.
I checked the box that said "provided own helmet", as I find it difficult to find helmets that fit properly and tend to bring mine with when I don't have my own folding bike.
Other cities, same story. I rented a mountain bike in Boulder and it came with a helmet.
In fact, I get annoyed when there is an additional charge for a helmet rental, like there was in Chicago. Except in San Francisco, when I accidentally left my helmet out when I packed up my folding bike and a huge stack of reports and found renting cheaper than buying/transporting a helmet.
The rest of the cities where I have rented bikes all blur ... but the bottom line is that this isn't exactly a difficult thing for bike rental shops to accomplish.
Just to be clear
I just wanna make sure that it's clear that my particular problem is with the setup of the Zipcar-esque automated bike rack systems for immediate bike rental with regards to these new helmet law changes. A store that has bike rentals will just keep a few around for when you walk in to pick up the bike and charge a little more to cover the initial overhead. But for the swipe-your-card-and-go style systems, this will be more complicated and/or costly for them to now start these systems up.
Of course, nobody ever considers these sorts of sharing programs when they write about "rentals", which is why I still pay $10 every year to help pay for the Convention Center just because I have use Zipcars in Boston...even though that's supposed to be a tourist fee. (Initially, they wanted to make Zipcar charge me $10 EVERY time I rent an hour from Zipcar...[mind boggles]).
I'll see if I can find a picture
The simple solution is that you get a little key when you snap the bike out and can open up a device that releases a helmet in your choice of sizes.
I'm trying to think of where I have seen this - but it is a possible thing. I don't think it is as complicated and costly as you make it out to be - in fact, I think it is a no-brainer - or is that brainer.
Helmets should be available. If zipcars have to have working seatbelts, on street bike rentals should figure it out.
Bike share is available in
Bike share is available in over 30 cities worldwide, provides by over 10 different manufacturers. Not one has helmets.
Squicky the Helmet Machine
Would sanitizing helmets of sweat, hair oil, lice, hair, etc. be a part of this system?
Would there be disposable helmet liners in lieu of cleaning helmets between each use?
The Vancouver set-up sounds like a good one, SwirlyGrrl.
So does the one in Denver.
In fact, I get annoyed when
I think thats silly too. When I rent a car they generally come with brakes, air bags, seat belts, and other safety devices free of charge lol, why should a bike be any different.
Well...
Good for Deval Patrick for signing the Bicycle Safety Bill into law. It sounds like something whose time has come, and was long, long overdue.