Month: January 2025

Q: I saw an electric unicycle on a city street violating various traffic laws. I looked up what I saw online, and some of these unicycles have top speeds of over 50 mph. Do you have thoughts on what kind of vehicle this qualifies as?

A: I looked at the website for Inmotion, an electric unicycle company, (I’m calling you out, Inmotion) and they had videos of riders on city streets violating various traffic laws and taking unnecessary risks; running red lights, riding in the oncoming lane, speeding, weaving through traffic, riding on the sidewalk, switching from the sidewalk to the street mid-block, I could go on.

Continue reading “Electric Unicycles – One Wheel Short of a Good Idea?”

Q: What are the rules for high beams on parallel roads or divided roads? Does the 50-foot wide median on the freeway negate the need to dim your high beams for an approaching car? What if the median is full of vegetation or has a wall that divides the freeway? What about a vehicle on a frontage road when there are cars on the freeway?

A: I’m going to make an assumption here; you’re asking this because you’d like to use your high beams as much as possible within the boundaries of the law. That makes sense. You can outdrive your low beam headlights at surprisingly low speeds. Even high beams aren’t as effective at illuminating our path as we might hope. How ineffective? We’ll get to that in next week’s article. That’s right, this is a two-parter.

Continue reading “High Beams and Parallel Roads”

Q: We live in a neighborhood with sidewalks. Skateboarders are using our streets and speeding down the hills. We have almost hit them by simply driving and being overcome by speeding skateboarders passing us. Is it illegal for them to be using the roads?

A: Just for fun, I’d like to add a second question to this: Does the speed limit apply to pedestrians? Unless you’re capable of running at speeds in the range of Usain Bolt (max of 27 mph) this seems like a pointless question. But the legal definition of a pedestrian includes more than walkers and runners. The Revised Code of Washington defines a pedestrian as, in addition to folks on their feet, a person using a wheelchair, power wheelchair, or “a means of conveyance propelled by human power other than a bicycle.”

Continue reading “Skateboarding with Traffic”

Q: It’s obvious that many drivers routinely exceed the speed limit in many areas, not just on freeways. So the next logical question is: How are speed limits determined? One would hope that there is some science, not just politics or customary historical norms, that inform the speed limit decision for a stretch of road.

A: Your hope is not unfounded. The law does set default speed limits for various kinds of roads, which I guess you could say is setting limits based on historical norms, and they’re set in state statute by elected officials, so you could call that politics, but there’s more to it than that.

Continue reading “How Speed Limits are Set”