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.
Here’s the third of three distracted driving PSAs in partnership with the Bellingham Bells. You might think this one borders on ridiculous, but admit it, you’ve seen people do some crazy things while driving. The consequences of distraction during a game pale compared to what can happen on the road. Thanks to Jack, Troy and Sam for all being willing to be a little goofy to make an important point.
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.
Here’s the second of the three distracted driving PSAs with the Bellingham Bells. In this one, third base player Troy Viola has some fun taking a selfie during a ball game. He wouldn’t really let a selfie distract him from winning a game, and he doesn’t let it distract him while driving either.
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”
I got the opportunity to work with some Bellingham Bells players on some distracted driving PSAs. We had fun making them (at least I had fun; I think they did too) and the end result makes a great point – you wouldn’t let yourself get distracted in a game, so why would you let it happen when you’re driving and the consequences could be much worse? Here’s the first one, with Sam Swenson.
This week I got to work with a couple of local motorcycle deputies from the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office to put together a PSA on motorcycle safety. They have some great advice for all the riders out there.
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?”