Everything Traffic Safety
Q: Is it legal to text while riding bike on a
public road? I saw this yesterday.
A: This seems like a great opportunity for Traffic
Law Vs. Best Practice, Episode Two. A few weeks ago we covered several examples
of how the law sets a pretty low standard for road user behavior. Those cases were all for drivers, so this
time let’s focus on bike riders. Should you text while riding bike on a
public road? No, of course not. That would be ridiculous. Is it legal? Pretty
much. I’ll explain.
Q: I am considering putting a small gas motor kit on
a mountain bicycle. Does it then become a moped? Does it require a license? Can
It be driven on sidewalks? Or bike paths? Or freeways? Any other information on
this? I have been looking online and I get conflicting information.
A: That sounds like a fun summer time project,
but if you’re planning to ride it on public roads, I hope you haven’t started
yet. I don’t think you’re going to like the answer, or answers really, given
the number of questions you were able to cram into fifty words. I’ll tackle
each question separately, and by the end you should have a good idea of what
it’ll take to make your project legal.
In case you’ve just emerged from a month-long meditation retreat in a mine shaft or returned from research at the south pole, let me be the first to tell you, the weather everyone moves here for has arrived. And what goes hand-in-hand with good weather in Whatcom County? Motorcycles. My personal motorcycle riding experience is (extremely) limited, but in a few short rides it was abundantly clear that riding a motorcycle transcends the usual transportation goal of getting to your destination and is an experience unto itself. But riding a motorcycle also carries a comparatively high risk and, unfortunately, this has been a difficult beginning to summer for the motorcycling community in our county.
Continue reading “Motorcycle Safety – Riding for Life”
Here’s a question that came up during a recent
discussion about some of Washington’s traffic laws: Is obeying the law enough
to make me a safe driver? If not, what is the standard?
A while back I had a conversation with my
brother-in-law, a skilled carpenter. We were discussing building codes, and he
said that if you build your house to code, you have a substandard house. His
point was that code compliance is the bare minimum you can do in construction.
There are building techniques that exceed code requirements that make your home
stronger, more weather-tight, and capable of lasting many more years.
Q: I have lived in Bellingham for nine years and have received five rock chips on my windshield. Before I moved here I never had a rock chip. Not coincidentally I see many uncovered gravel trucks on Sunset Drive and I-5, many of them with unused covers. What is the law regarding this and does the State Patrol really enforce this law? Also, if I know a rock came from a particular truck, is there anything I can do?
A: The two thousand-year-old Roman philosopher Seneca is attributed to having said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” From the opposite perspective, bad luck is what happens when lack of preparation meets opportunity. In your case, someone else’s lack of preparation in properly securing their load resulted in your bad luck, also known as, “In the wrong place at the wrong time.” The problem with “in the wrong place at the wrong time” is that we’re often not in control of the situation; we’re victim to someone else’s mistake and end up taking five rocks to the windshield in nine years (which is rather unlucky; sorry about that.)
Continue reading “Rocks and Rules (and a bad pun in the title)”
Q: I’ve seen quite a few semi trucks with metal spikes sticking off their lug nuts. That seems incredibly dangerous. I’ve seen it so often that I’m assuming it must be legal. But how could it be?
A: I could probably write an entire column that consists exclusively of bullet listing all the equipment violations commonly seen on the road. I recall a deputy telling me that he once had to essentially quit noticing all the equipment violations of cars that he was sharing the road with, because he would have never made it home from work if he kept making traffic stops.
Continue reading “Trucker Bling or Safety Concern?”
Q: What exactly is jaywalking? Is it just crossing the street where there isn’t a sidewalk?
A: A little over one hundred years ago, the New York Times decried the use of term jaywalker as, “highly opprobrious” and “a truly shocking name.” I had to look up opprobrious, and if your vocabulary doesn’t include that word either, here are some synonyms: derogatory, insulting and scandalous. Who knew calling someone a jaywalker could be so offensive? Back in 1910, calling someone a jay was essentially saying they were a hillbilly that didn’t belong in the city. It was a semi-vulgar classist insult. But how did it become associated with traffic?
Continue reading “The Rudest Insult in Traffic”
Instead of a reader asking me a question, this week I have a question for you: Do you know anyone that’s received a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt? It’s entirely possible that you don’t. Washington ranks in the top five states for seatbelt use, with close to 95 percent of vehicle occupants wearing a seatbelt. The four states ahead of us are mostly neighbors; Oregon, California, Hawaii (sort of a neighbor), and Georgia, the geographic outlier. The state with the lowest rate of seatbelt use? New Hampshire, at about 68 percent. Its state motto is, “Live free or die.” I’m pretty sure General John Stark was not thinking about seatbelts when he wrote that in 1809, but that’s the reason many New Hampshirites (is that what you call them?) give for why they don’t want a seatbelt law.
How do we know the percentage of seatbelt users in each state? Because there are people watching you drive. Creepy? It’s not as bad as it sounds. The Washington Traffic Safety Commission (WTSC) conducts annual seatbelt observations using trained observers to watch for seatbelt use at pre-identified locations around the state. If you want all the details about this spying (it’s not really spying) you can read the full report at the WTSC website.
Continue reading “Who Doesn’t Buckle Up?”
Q: Are you familiar with the Idaho Stop? It’s the law, in Idaho of course, that lets cyclists treat a stop sign like a yield sign. What do you think of that? It seems like there would be more crashes. Is it more dangerous than making cyclists stop?
A: Since 1982 Idaho has allowed cyclists to roll through stop signs after yielding to other traffic, and for over three decades it was just this odd little rule in one smallish state. That law became known as the Idaho Stop because, well, you could only legally do it in Idaho. Why are we talking about an Idaho law in a column on Washington traffic laws? First of all, Idaho is our neighbor, and also, the law is spreading. Delaware legalized the Idaho Stop in 2017, but called it the Delaware Stop. Last month Arkansas adopted the law; no word yet on whether they’re calling it the Arkansas Stop. Some cities and counties in Colorado allow it, and several other states in recent years have considered but not yet enacted the law.
Continue reading “The Idaho Stop – It’s Not Really Stopping”
Q: I have a question regarding the traffic rules of a particular intersection in Bellingham. The intersection of Alabama and Woburn has a right turn lane with a yield sign (for drivers traveling south on Woburn towards Alabama). My question is, if the light is green for Woburn traffic going both directions, does the northbound Woburn traffic making a left-hand turn onto Alabama yield to the southbound traffic making a right-hand turn on Alabama or is it the other way around? A wager of one coffee is riding on the outcome of your answer, so we’re eager to learn the actual rule here.
A: I don’t often tackle a question that applies to a single location, but in this case the intersection at Alabama and Woburn makes a great stand-in for the problem of apparently conflicting traffic control devices. Plus, I always like to weigh in on a wager. In the case of this intersection (and a few others I’ve driven through in the region) we have the bulk of the intersection controlled by traffic lights, and one small right turn lane controlled by a yield sign.
Continue reading “Mixed Signals – Who Should Yield?”