I agree we need to work toward minimizing the safety risk (both real and perceived) to bicyclists in this state. But I'm not sure a vulnerable user law would be the cause (versus an effect) of that improvement. You can go to channel3000 today and read the story about the teen driver who was intentionally speeding on a hilly road in order to take air, but ended up crashing and killing one of the passengers. If you check the comment section, it is obvious there is a strong resistance to prosecuting the driver criminally. The refrain is "the driver will have to live with this for the rest of their life, isn't that enough of a punishment?" Of course if that was enough of a punishment to change behavior the driver would not have been speeding on that hilly rural road in the first place.
I think the conclusion you have to come to about this is that at a fundamental level most people do not want to do what it takes to be aware of all the risks and avoidance techniques required to drive as safely as we would like them to. We already have a negligence law, but because of the public's desire to not be burdened with thinking comprehensively about safety, a jury is unlikely to vote to convict someone of essentially sharing their attitudes about how much effort is worth putting into safety. Why is adding a new law going to change people's attitudes about this? And if those attitudes don't change, why would a jury be willing to convict a driver with BFW's proposed bill? The attitudes have to change first before a law is going to make a difference in behavior! And by the way, the vulnerable user bill that failed in Texas also covered motorcyclists, farm equipment drivers, etc.: http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/81R/billtext/html/SB00488I.htm From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Robbie Webber Sent: Friday, December 07, 2012 8:19 AM To: Bikies Subject: [Bikies] Need for vulnerable user law [snip] until we make criminal driving a more serious offense - and begin to prosecute it as such - we will continue to be at more risk than necessary
_______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [email protected] http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
