Mountain Biking Bill fails on Party Lines

In which I explore a train of thought that makes me sound profoundly anti-Mountain Bike

Colorado Senate Bill 36 was written to acknowledge the inherent risks of mountain biking, and to limit lawsuits against property owners, equipment renters, etc. over injuries sustained during the activity.

The bill died tonight, having never made it out of committee.

Click thru to denverpost.com

What I find interesting about this bill is that it was a wholly Republican endeavor from start to finish. [1] It was sponsored by a Republican, and the vote on it was strictly down party lines: Republicans for, Democrats against.

This speaks to a suspicion that I have long had. Mountain biking is largely a Republican activity, because Republicans insist on seeing bikes as toys.

One blogger recently wrote about how in her community bikes were considered suitable for kids to play with, but were completely inappropriate for an adult to ride.

There's some kind of mental trigger that produces this mindset, and I don't know what it is. But I think that whatever it is, it's the same thing that causes motorists to get angry at cyclists for being in the road. The other side of the "They think they're entitled to the road" coin has to be "I believe they have no entitlement," which means that to the coin flipper, the cyclist is a kid playing at grown-up games and should be riding bikes on the sidewalk. Or playing hop-scotch in the alley. Or kicking a tin can in a dirt field. The idea that a bike might be used for grown-up reasons—going to work, grocery shopping—is not reasonable, nor even plausible, to this person.

(This coin-flipper is the same person who honked at me twice this week for not riding in the bike lane when it was full of snow and slush and ice and muck.)

To this person, the idea of spending Department Of Transportation money in multi-modal transportation is ridiculous. Because bikes are toys, and who walks anywhere?

"Bikes are toys" is the mantra that allows anti-bike people to embrace mountain biking. In this activity, bikes are safely confined to recreational use far away from cities and roads and traffic.

As proof, I submit the most—the only?—outspokenly anti-bike politician in Colorado, or anywhere else, Dan Maes.


From the transcript at grist.org:

The bike program in and of itself is fine. I'm a biker, I rode the seat off my mountain bike last year myself.

So. Cycling in the city is a UN conspiracy to rob us of our freedoms. But cycling outside the city, in the mountains and in the woods, is peachy-keen and supports family values.

I am not against mountain biking. I find the idea of it appealing. I am simply interested in the apparent mental break that exists in people who are for it, but who are against cycling in the city and who are against infrastructure that supports it.

Because in one case, cyclists are simply kids playing with toys. And in the other, cyclists are humans, people who are just living their lives, doing their jobs, trying to live simply, and to simply live.

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[1] One caveat from bicyclecolorado.org

This bill was conceived by past Senator Chris Romer after encountering many liability obstacles in trying to host a mountain bike event.

Romer is a Democrat currently running for Mayor of Denver and who appears to be very fond of the cycling demographic.

Mandatory registration sweeping the nation!

The year 2011 is barely two weeks old, and is already proving to be quite challenging for cyclists and for personal liberties.

1. January 4, 2011: the LA Times runs a story about $400 in fines levied against one teenage boy for operating a bicycle without a license.
2. January 12, 2011: New Jersey Assembleywoman Tucker proposes legislation requiring a $10/year registration for all bicycles and a $100 citation for each offense.
3. January 13, 2011: Tucker back-pedals and withdraws her proposal.
4. January 14, 2011: the New York Post runs a story about a legislator from Queens proposing similar registration laws.

And today, the city attorney of Santa Monica is proposing to the city council an ordinance that will require bicycle registration for all residents of Santa Monica at a cost of $4.00 per bike, and which sets the fine for operating a bicycle without a license at $10.00.

Click through to the summary report and full-text of ordinance.

In response, local (to Santa Monica) inter-blogger and pedal-masher Gary has written a letter raising several logistical concerns about redundancies and enforcement that bureaucrats and politicrats will likely find more ponder-worthy than my ideological "bikes are like libraries" flight of fancy.

Click through to Garyridesbikes

Some of my favorite bike personalities—bloggers, photographers, advocates—are in and around LA, so I'm anxious to see the coverage of the meeting and reactions to the outcome.

And as for things on the home front, I'm a little nervous about the spread of this apparent anti-bike brush fire. I would feel confident that bike-friendly Denver, home of the country's first bike share program, would be immune from the craziness if it weren't for two things.

1. Dan "It's A Plot" Maes is headquartered a stone's throw away in Evergreen and his influence, if felt from New York to LA, is surely felt here in his back yard, and
2. Even Portland, where cyclists hope they go when they die, is suffering from restrictive bicycle legislation! This proposed law would prohibit, with the threat of a $90 fine, children under the age of 6 being carried on bicycles.
   
   
   
   Click through to oregonlive.com story

Basically, I can't take it for granted any longer that this couldn't happen here. I denounce this kind of legislation, and I need to make sure my legislators know this.

Bike registration continued: the real source of the problem

Eric Ulrich, lawmaker from Queens, is "floating the proposal" that all cyclists pay for mandatory bicycle registration.

click through to NYPost.com story

Ulrich is the Republican/New York complement to Cleo Tucker's Democratic/New Jersey anti-bike agenda, proving that Bike Hating is a bi-partisan issue behind which we all can get.

It goes without saying that we are witnessing the beginnings of a movement. A movement no doubt masterminded by the most paranoid, anti-bicycle conspiracy theorist of our time.

Dan Maes. Is Crazy.

Yes, you can almost hear the sound of Dan "Corny" Maes' weird grin all the way up in Evergreen, Colorado. Deep down in the Maes Cave, in the center of a nondescript Evergreen cornfield, Maes is accumulating politicians by the handful and is encouraging them to introduce anti-bike legislation in order to cull the Red Threat.

In the NYPost.com article, both of the city of Denver's stated reasons to register a bike are addressed with varying degrees of bizarritude.

1. The recovery of a stolen bicycle. Ulrich himself couldn't offer us a way that this law could actually benefit actual cyclists. It was left up to a gentleman named One Biker (aka Audio "Engineer Chvad" Bernhard) to find one.

   One biker saw an upside, saying lost or stolen bikes could be identified. "Right now, [recovered] bicycles just get auctioned" by police, said audio engineer Chvad Bernhard, 37.

2. The identification of an injured cyclist. Okay, so in a weird backhanded kind of way, Ulrich conveys concern for cyclists here. His proposal will help identify cyclists, which cannot at present be done because

   many cyclists don't have identification on them if they get into an accident because "they're in Spandex or whatnot."

   It is absolutely, entirely true that all cyclists are at all times either in Spandex or in whatnot. Whatnot, in my case = corduroy slacks and a long sleeved cotton t-shirt. But neither my corduroy slacks nor my long sleeved cotton t-shirt prevent me from carrying identification.

   Furthermore, look at the picture included in the article.

   
   Does it look like this cyclist is prevented by his whatnot from carrying anything whatsoever?

But none of this is even the interesting part.

The interesting part is this. Both Ulrich and Tucker say their legislation was inspired by frightened, elderly constituents.

In New Jersey:

[Assemblywoman Cleopatra Tucker (D-Essex)] proposed it after several senior citizens in Belleville and Bloomfield called her to complain about kids on bikes. "They had been knocked down, knocked over and they had no way to register a complaint. They couldn’t identify the person," said Tucker.

In New York:

Ulrich says that many of his constituents are seniors and that "people on bicycles scare the hell out of them. Sometimes they can be an intimidating presence on the city streets."

So what we obviously have here is perception problem. The perception that Evil Mastermind Dan Maes wants us all to believe is that old people are being intimidated and tipped over by cyclists.

In reality, the truth is that old people are slow moving and easily startled, and are better off doing laps around the mall.

Frankly, old people scare the hell out of me. Sometimes, when they wander into the middle of city streets, they can be an intimidating presence.

What I'd like to see is a piece of legislation requiring that old people be registered and stickered at the DMV so I have some way of identifying and reporting them when they wander into traffic.

a-Maes-ing

Dan Maes. Is Crazy.
Look. Here's the deal.

I didn't write about Candidate Dan's bike gaffe when it happened. Because writers far more talented than I did jump all over that shit.

But I would like to make a few comments on the situation.

How seriously do you take this warning?

As a side-feature of the original Denver Post article, a poll asked "How seriously do you take this warning?" with choices ranging from "Very seriously" to "Not seriously at all".

"Not seriously at all" beat "Very seriously" 54% to 32%. Which is very close to the 50 to 38 by which Hickenlooper is polling ahead of Maes, so I suppose the numbers make sense.

But, no. Seriously? 32% of you think this is something that should be taken very seriously? I have to assume that there were many people selecting this option for comedic value.

Right?

United Communist Nations

A lot of the ridicule from the blogs came in the form of commie jokes and soviet bike posters.






Which is obviously funny.

But inaccurate. Because in the Maesiverse, bikes are not communist. They are United Nationsist. Candidate Dan's statement is that Denver B-Cycle is a "very specific [strategy] that [is] dictated to us by this United Nations program that mayors have signed on to" and that "it could threaten our personal freedoms".

This is an incredibly stupid thing to say for the following reasons.

1. The program Candidate Dan is referring is ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability, of which Denver is a member. It was founded in 1990 at the UN building in New York. ICLEI has benefited from the networking and communications strengths of the UN, but as far as I can tell, this is the only connection between ICLEI and the UN.


2. The subsequent linking of B-Cycle to ICLEI is a tiny bit of a stretch. I mean, they both share the goal of sustainable growth, so I guess I can understand the suspicion. But B-Cycle disavowed themselves of all allegations.
   
   


3. The assertion that a UN program could threaten our personal freedoms is beyond ridiculous. The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted over 60 years ago and contains 30 articles compared to the US Bill of Rights's 10 amendments. This organization is champion of human rights.


4. It is by his own admission an unfounded and random statement! He didn't actually pull it out of his ass; he pulled it out of a portfolio that some woman thrust into his hands and that he had not actually read.

In closing

While this bike situation is the most comical moment of Candidate Dan's campaign, his sincere belief in statements just as wacky, but extraordinarily more frightening, makes him a truly terrifying potential governor.

But that's politics, and this is a bike blog.

Suffice it to say, I'm thankful there's not actually a chance of this wack-a-doo winning office. I welcome anyone and everyone to join me in beginning to laugh him off the stage.

Here's to election season!