Gov. Deal Signs New Bike Law
Decatur Metro | May 11, 2011From the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition’s website…
Governor Nathan Deal [finalized] efforts to improve bicycling conditions and road safety in Georgia by signing HB 101, “The Better Bicycling Bill,” into law.
HB 101 modernizes a host of outdated bicycling laws in the state code and also implements a number of significant improvements for bicyclist and motorist safety. 101 makes lawful the sale and use of clipless pedals and recumbent-style bicycles, both popular and widely used in Georgia, which are technically illegal under the old code. Other changes include recognition of bicyclists’ right-of-way in dedicated bike lanes, establishing minimum design guidelines for bicycle lanes, and clarifying circumstances under which a cyclist may take the full travel lane due to unsafe conditions or obstructions.
Most significantly, however, a Senate amendment to the bill defines three feet as the minimum safe passing distance for motor vehicles overtaking cyclists. With the adoption of this law, Georgia joins a growing number of states with safe passing distance laws. Motor vehicles passing a cyclist too closely, known as “buzzing,” are a serious factor in causing bicycle crashes.
h/t: Fresh Loaf
Latest from Decaturish
YES!
They missed making helmets mandatory for all riders (including adults).
Interesting. I wonder if they’ll start ticketing in Decatur for that.
That was never in the bill. No one wants that except the AAA because it reduces ridership.
Taxpayers should want it, because it saves lives and hospital bills for uninsured riders. Plus, my wife’s life was saved by her helmet, as she was hit by a motorist while biking. Instead of her head breaking the windshield of the car, her helmet did. So hopefully ALL sane riders should want it…
There is a difference between wanting to wear one and wanting the government to require everyone to where one. I taxpayer issue is a whole other ball of wax. I don’t want less personal choice because government has screwed up elsewhere.
So are you against a law requiring seatbelts in cars?
Yes.
Ah, OK. Just checking for consistency.
Taxpayers should want it, because it saves lives and hospital bills for uninsured riders.
____________
Evidence for that? For one thing, if you get into a cycling accident serious enough to land you in the hospital, it is fairly unlikely that only your head will need medical attention. Moreover, people are vastly overestimating the protection bike helmets afford. Yes, they are designed to prevent the worst head injuries, but they often will not prevent concussions (and more than football helmets do) and other fairly serious injuries.
A young friend of mine will need a liver transplant soon. Please continue to ride without a helmet. Ups the odds…
I wear a helmet by choice. In case I trip and fall getting on or off the bike. Otherwise it offers no protection in a collision.
I think other adults should be allowed to make that choice.
A mandatory driving helmet law would save more lives.
“Otherwise it offers no protection.”
Huh??? If a car runs into you at an intersection, you go onto the windshield, and hit your head on it, it offers no protection??? You’d do just as well with your unprotected head smashing into it?
See the New England Journal of Medicine 1989 study of the effectiveness of helmets in reducing head injuries, a 1995 Australian study, etc. etc. etc. Do you have any basis at all for asserting that helmets offer protection only when you “trip and fall getting on or off the bike”?
Hahahaha!!! Hilarious :))
You have to love TED…
Video against helmets…
http://video.tedxcopenhagen.dk/video/911034/mikael-colville-andersen
Video for helmets…
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang/eng//id/1012
I had a bad crash on a bike recently. As my head hit the ground, I remember thinking, as it happened, how hard I had just smacked the pavement with my head, but it didn’t hurt at all. The same can’t be said for the rest of my body. The helmet cracked but did its job.
Glad you’re safe – wouldn’t want my name-pal off the roads. (And maybe I should add an initial so you don’t have to go around being #2
My father would not be alive today if it weren’t for his helmet. Please wear a helmet.
Limiting adults to a maximum of 3,000 calories a day is a great idea that will save lives, prevent diabetes and lower our health insurance and taxes, therefore caloric limits should be made mandatory by law and enforced by the police.
I hope all riders choose to wear a helmet, however, I don’t see a need for the government to impose that restriction.
The public saferty case that adults must wear helmets could more easily be made for mandating helmet wear in the bathroom where low speed head injuries are far more common and lethal. How far do you want the government to intrude?
Isn’t the difference that, in the bathroom, you are in the privacy of your home where the government has no jurisdiction over many matters but, out on the street, you are on public property so the government has jurisdiction? It’s similar to immunization laws. If you want your child to go to public school, you have to follow the rules and show documentation that your child is properly immunized or has a valid medical or other exemption. If you homeschool your child, you can keep them unimmunized if you want.
A benefit of a helmet law or similar public health measures go beyond the individual benefit or medical cost savings because some of them actually change the behaviors of others. So, if most everyone is wearing a helmet because of a law, then when someone decides to cycle, he/she will probably go out and buy a helmet and wear it. Human beings are susceptible to social pressure as advertisers well know. Children are especially likely to model their behavior on the cultural norms. For example, when carseats were few and optional, children resisted being put in them. But once it was mandatory to put your young children in carseats, children rode in carseats from birth and never knew any other way to ride in a car. Many of us of have had the experience of a toddler reminding us that their carseat belt wasn’t hitched yet. I realize that this point is probably not sufficient for those who feel that public health measures compromise individual choice. But I want to point out that the benefit of such measures go beyond the individual or the cost of cleaning up and repairing their brains when splatted on the pavement.
Not wearing a helmet does not harm other road users.
Studies on the subject indicate that mandated helmet wear reduces ridership. (to your point it advertsises that cycling is unduly hazardous)
Ridership has a much more significant impact on cyclist safety (in aggregate) than helmet wear.
Drivers are more aggressive to helmet wearers due to it’s dehumanizing effect.
Helmets are only designed to be effective for impacts up to 12 mph.
Children are already required to wear helmets by law.
Again, I think wearing a cycling helmet is a good idea as a personal choice, but the benefit of making it mandatory public policy is not evident or compelling.
Isn’t the difference that, in the bathroom, you are in the privacy of your home where the government has no jurisdiction over many matters but, out on the street, you are on public property so the government has jurisdiction?
_________________
No, that is not the difference. The state government has jurisdiction over the privacy of your own home. There is a long list of stuff you can’t do in your own home. Stated somewhat differently, you need not be on public property to trigger the government’s “jurisdiction” over you. Here we are talking about the wisdom of the helmet law. The government’s power to implement and enforce it is not in question.
There are plenty of activities that should be legal in the privacy of my own home that the state feels it has a right to regulate.
In order to justify regulation of a particular behavior, the state should have to show that the behavior is very likely to cause specific injury to other people’s life or property. I don’t think it’s reasonable to restrict people’s right to make decisions for themselves based on some fuzzy, indirect possible harm.
On the other hand, just as my health insurer provides different rates for smokers and non-smokers, there’s no reason that they can’t also assess a risk premium if I engage in behaviors that their actuaries determine puts me in a class of customers for which they are more likely to have higher costs. That’s a contractual agreement between two willing parties – I can decide whether going helmet-less is worth the premium.
I’m sorry, Ridgelandistan, but that’s a completely ridiculous comment. Are you trying to start an argument?
Which part?
I am trying to further this disscusion by extending the opposing logic to it’s ridiculous conclusion.
If the logic used to argue mandatory helmet wear is in order to protect road users from head trauma, (and assuming for a moment that bicycle helmets somehow do this effectively) than we should first regulate road users that are dying of head trauma in catastrophic numbers. It turns out that these are not cyclists but automobile occupants. Drivers and passengers who die in automobile accidents most often die from objects contacting their head during an accident. So, if one is serious about mandating helmet use for road users as a public safety issue, start with motor vehicle occupants.
If only it were a ridiculous conclusion. In an age where our health seems to be everyone else’s business, thereby opening our personal conduct to state regulation with no obvious stopping point, then why shouldn’t drivers be forced to wear helmets?
“Drivers are more aggressive to helmet wearers due to it’s dehumanizing effect.”
That’s insane. Drivers are aggressive towards all cyclists, not just the ones wearing a helmet.
Indeed. Just this morning I was passed by at least 3 cars that gave me about a foot of clearance. In their view, better to risk my life than to be delayed for .5 seconds.
One of several studies on this effect
http://www.bhsi.org/walkerstudy.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/somerset/5334208.stm
The actual document is behind a paywall
Speaking as someone who now (usually) wears a helmet after sustaining a serious head injury in a cycling accident, I’m with Ridgelandistan.
First of all, most cyclists are generally moving so slowly that they don’t need helmets any more than joggers need them. I still don’t wear a helmet when cycling at 7 MPH with my kids on quiet residential streets. The risk of a serious head injury in those circumstances is very, very slim. The idea that the state should require helmets for that type of recreational riding strikes me as ridiculous.
When I am commuting, on the other hand, I wear one, since I am moving much faster and riding alongside much more traffic. But still, this should be a matter of choice by adults. The notion that not wearing a helmet costs taxpayer money is not supported by any evidence that I am aware of. I know that my accident cost taxpayers nothing, since I paid all the bills. And then there is the larger point that the government shouldn’t be offering up “benefits” like medical care in exchange for the power to regulate damn near every aspect of our personal lives. You know, people getting lost in the Rocky Mountains costs a fortune when they get lost and a manhunt ensues to find them. Guess we should ban that immediately. Among about 1,000 other potentially dangerous things.
Add to that the studies showing that helmet laws reduce ridership. My son doesn’t want to wear a helmet, and if I make him wear one, he will ride his bike less. How is that good for him? Better to sit home playing video games than to be out riding a bike (again at about 10 MPH max given his age) without a helmet? By the way I’ll wager that most of us NEVER wore a helmet when we were kids. I never even knew anyone who owened a bike helmet. Yet the hospitals were not overflowing with cracked skulls.
Good points.
To your point about hospitals overflowing, I think this is related to the number of riders now vs. then. I recall that mine was one of a (single) handful of bikes on Emory’s campus in 1970. Travel by bike is much more common now.
We can set a good example for squirts who don’t like them by wearing our helmets.
I have benefited from the protection provided by a helmet on a woods trail, not the street, but I do not question its value any time I’m on the bike.
Oh, and AMB, I wish your friend a complete and speedy recovery, but not with my liver, thank you!
Tom, I don’t want your liver either. God knows what you’ve been doing to it.
It is a little odd to watch somebody doing stupid dangerous stuff (reckless motorcycle riders are the worst) and hoping they have a donor card in their wallet.
+1 DEM
I think we’re missing the larger issue here: that helmets don’t look cool, and hot chicks prefer not to bone uncool dudes.
Got that right. You didn’t see Cru Jones wearing a helmet!
As they kept saying at scout camp, “Chicks don’t dig maggots.”
Wow. Democrats gave bicyclists lip service for years and never delivered a thing for us. Republicans said nothing to us and delivered. Good on them.
Uh, Counterpoint, I wear a helmet and chicks dig me. Maybe the reason they don’t dig you has less to do with the helmet than what’s underneath it.
Personally, I”m super attracted to guys who wear helmets in the bathroom.
The only reason the Republicans delivered on this was all the money coming in from ‘Big Bicycle’. They are clearly in the pocket of those two-wheeled corporate titans.
EXACTLY! I’ve suspected this all along. And Big Spandex. All led by Big Dork. All the Cyclist CEO’s, just sittin back, in their nasty sweaty cod pieces, eating their Lara Bars and Vitamin Water while the rest of us suffer. Not caring about us runners or, god forbid, the lowest of low: the “speed walkers.”
why are you all debating the pro’s and con’s of wearing a helmut???This has nothing to do with this new HB101. NOTHING. There’s nothing in here that addresses wearing a helmut.
Now, here’s the thing, signing a law about giving cyclists 3 feet between a car and a bike, and giving cyclists the right of way in a bike lane all has to do with EDUCATING THE MOTORISTS
The cycling folks might want to think about rebranding the whole “educating the motorists” thing. Speaking down to a population seems a sure way to quickly lose their attention and piss them off before they even get out of the driveway. How about “inform the population”?
Indeed. Cyclists already have the perception of being smug and elitist.
It’s absolutely critical for the education and the accountability to flow both ways. When cyclists who are poorly informed or reckless flaunt the traffic rules, it puts all of us in jeopardy. Having autos and slow-moving cyclists share high-speed roads (especially during rush hour) is an inherently risky undertaking, so we all need to take our safety responsibilities seriously.
Cyclists, I will do my part to keep you and fellow auto drivers safe. So please don’t suddenly pop up in my side mirror, riding three inches from the side of my car; create unpredictable imaginary middle lanes during rush hour; or engage in other dangerous behavior when we’re on the road together. Doing that puts me at risk of colliding with another car or, worse yet, colliding with you. Let’s look out for each other, please.
as i was saying, educating the motorists is the thing because cyclists already know it’s dangerous when you get too close to us in our bike lane. The governor now needs to begin an awareness to motorists that these laws have been updated and tell the cars to stay 3 feet away. This information goes no where without that public service campaign.
Thinking about taping a 3-foot-long broomstick to my rack so any cars that get too close will…wait, not a good idea.
Why do cyclists take DeKalb Avenue, when Edgewood, which has bike lanes, is only one street away? What’s that about?
Also, why do some cyclist continue riding in the road on DeKalb/Howard once the PATH bike lane is available?
Because DeKalb is nestled (that’s for you Karass) along the rail line, which follows the continental divide, which is generally the flattest route through a hilly/mountainous area. So really, a cyclist who takes DeKalb is doing it for the same reason the tracks run that route – it expends the least amount of energy to get where you’re going!
asking why a cyclist rides on one road when another goes the same way is like asking a driver why they chose to drive on one rode when there are others going the same way. It’s that kind of thinking that leads to the ignorance of people who think that only cars belong on ANY road.
Here’s a little in site for you Boondoggle and others who don’t ride:
The reason why we avoid the path and take the road is because the path ends at most intersections and continues on the other side of the street, which means (and pedestrians have this problem as well) at each intersection we are in danger of the cars that come out quickly, stick their front end in the middle of that intersection and almost hit us. If we stay on the road we avoid having to stop for every ignorant driver who stops too far out into the intersection. You wouldn’t understand any of this unless you rode on the street,.