| Advertising |
|
Click for weather forecast
Progressive Area Lawyers
Thomas Soldan
Nicole Naum
Karin Riley Porter
Vanessa Hicks
Steve Duckett
Jennifer Mayer
David Benowitz
John Yannone
Terry Gaffney
Seth Price
|
|
|
Sun Jan 06, 2013 at 15:36:05 PM EST
|
 You may have seen the story the other day about Sen. Chap Petersen's bicycle "dooring" bill. It turns out that in Virginia, "there's no requirement to be careful when opening a door, which means that if someone doors a cyclist, police can cite the cyclist for hitting the door instead." Crazy huh? Even crazier is that this important bicycle safety legislation is lumped into his "stupidest bills" file by the egregious, right-wing/ALEC tool, House Speaker Bill Howell. If preventing bicyclists from getting injured or killed by automobiles is considered "stupid" by Howell, I'd hate to see what he considers a "smart" bill. Ugh.
Speaking of bicyclists getting injured, it turns out that the origin of Sen. Petersen's bill is actually a bicyclist who personally got "doored," and who now works as Petersen's political director. Here's his email, which he encouraged me to share on the blog, explaining to Petersen what happened to him (bolding added by me for emphasis).
Hey Chap,
Unfortunately, on Sunday, I was 'doored' by a car while I was bicycling. i.e. the driver of the vehicle swung their door open so far, and so quickly, that I was entirely unable to stop my bike before hitting the door.
To add insult to injury, I was assigned blame in the traffic incident for 'hitting the door'. Thus, not granting me any medical compensation and adding the possibility that I will be charged for any damage to the driver's vehicle.
After some convalescence, I spoke with the local Police Superintendent, who informed me that it is nearly impossible to charge drivers in this situation, because 'dooring' cyclists is not illegal in Virginia.
MD and DC have a law that says that "No person shall open any door of a vehicle unless it is safe to do so and can be done without interfering with moving traffic."
My only option is to sue the driver in small claims court for the damage to myself and the bicycle.
Luckily, I made a semi-acrobatic landing, and only have bruises, shoulder and arm injuries, and a broken finger. I will likely make a full recovery. I'm going to the doctor tomorrow.
Lets change the law! As Parker mentioned in his email, both Maryland and DC have laws on the books to protect bikers from "dooring." Other states with such laws include: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Puerto Rico, Florida, Ohio.
In the case of Maryland, the law's been on the books since 1974 - almost four decades ago. Yet Virginia has nothing, even though bicycling, both for commuting and recreation, is booming (as is Capital Bikeshare). What on earth are we waiting for? Perhaps for legislators like Bill Howell to stop considering the protection of cyclists to be "stupid." I'd argue that anyone who thinks that is themselves not the sharpest tool in the shed... |
| lowkell :: Sen. Chap Petersen's Political Director Getting "Doored" Leads to Virginia Bicycle Legislation |
|
|
Blue Virginia
Promote Your Page Too
| About |
|
The purpose of Blue Virginia is to cover Virginia politics from a progressive and Democratic perspective. This is a group blog and a community blog. We invite everyone to comment here, but please be aware that profanity, personal attacks, bigotry, insults, rudeness, frequent unsupported or off-point statements, and "trolling" (NOTE: that includes outright lies, whether about climate science, or what other people said, or whatever) are not permitted and, if continued, will lead to banning. For more on trolling, see the Daily Kos FAQs. Also note that diaries may be deleted if they do not contain at least 2 solid paragraphs of original text; if not, please use the comments section of a relevant diary. For more on writing diaries, click here. Thanks, and enjoy!
P.S. You can contact us at lowell@raisingkaine.com and you can subscribe to Lowell's Twitter feed here. If you'd like to subscribe to Miles Grant's Twitter feed, click here. For Teacherken, click here. For Kindler, click here.
P.P.S. To see the Blue Virginia archive, please click here. To see the Raising Kaine archive, please click here. To see the Blue Commonwealth archive, please click here.
RSS Feed
Subscribe to Blue Virginia - Front Page
|
|
