Arizona Bike Law Blog

Road taxes

From time to time, we will see a recurring theme to the effect of “bicyclists don’t pay gas tax so they don’t deserve to use the road”. There are certain elements of truth to this — bicyclists don’t purchase gas, it’s true. And there’s also an implication that motorist are “paying their way”, but that’s just not true. Gas taxes (and other direct taxes on autombiles) nowhere near cover the costs of building, maintaining, and operating roads.

Funding for local roads (the roads that both cyclists and motorists use) are paid for heavily through state and local tax general funds — not user fess like gasoline taxes. Cyclists are paying their way, just like everybody else.

Most/much of the direct user fees that motorists pay do go to fund freeways (limited access highways). These roads are used exclusively (with minor exceptions) by motorists — and yet even then the fees are not high enough, and have to be supplemented from other sources, like general sales taxes.

Specifics vary depending on location but the general theme is similar throughout the US.

What follows are specifics as we do things here in Arizona, and specifically Maricopa County and the Phoenix Metro area.

The HURF

Arizona levies two taxes directly upon motorists and the proceeds are termed the “HURF” (Highway User’s something Fund). The two souces are; motor fuel taxes, and VLT (Vehicle License Tax, a fee paid yearly based on the value of a motor vehicle).

Because the rate on gasoline is levied per gallon, 18.5 cents per gallon, and hasn’t changed since 199?, the amounts available to the HURF have been dwindling.

usgovernmentspending.com has some good charts of, e.g. ARizona state spending broken down in categories like education, police, transportation, etc.

Freeway Sales Tax

Maricopa county levies a 0.25% (check that) 20-year SALES tax to build freeways. First approved in 1985, it was set to expire in 2005 but extended for another 20 years by “Proposition 400″. The split was more favorable to public transit, but still heavily favors freeway spending. The most vociferous opposition came from those who specifically thought that not enough of the money would be used for freeways, and in particular hated that any monies would be spent on light-rail. See e.g. Prop. 400 foe wants to stop light rail., Arizona Republic, Sept 23, 2004.

I note that bicyclists do not ride bikes on freeways (in fact, bicycles are banned from freeways in the metro area).

So, the freeway sales tax is just another externality of automobility — drivers not paying their way.

Drunken driver Sentenced in Cop’s Death

Salvador Vivas-Diaz was sentenced to the maximum of 16 years in prison after being found guilty of manslaghter after drving drunk and hitting Phoenix PD Officer Shane Figueroa head-on. The officer was responding to a call at the time.

Traffic collisions, not, say, guns, are the leading cause of line-of-duty deaths of police officers. See: More Police Killed by Traffic than Guns.

“Alcohol-Related” vs. “Alcohol-Impaired”

In last week’s Numbers Guy WSJ column, Carl Bialik examines a dust-up between MADD and the (beverage industry-backed) Century Council. They published a bar-chart of alcohol-related fatalities broken down by BAC levels.

Note that the term alcohol-related means simply that any of the drivers involved had a BAC of 0.01 or greater.

What intests me, however, is how the chart looks if we include all fatalities and how the same chart would look. Read the rest of this entry »

Driver confesses to hit-and-run killing

Marcelo Rojas, the driver of a 2006 BMW was stopped for speeding June 9 ~ 10pm — this is unrelated to the crash. At that time he told police “he hit a guy on a bicycle”. According to police the victim, Billy Ray  Thompson, was riding westbound on Broadway “perfectly legally” which i took to mean, but the story doesn’t elaborate, that he was properly lighted/reflectored. No dui is suspected.

News reports: AZ Rep, ABC15 #1, ABC15 #2

Lead pollution

Lead is a powerful neurotoxin. Formerly (up until 199x?) US motorists put millions of pounds per year into the air via their fuel. Now we find that motorists remain the largest lead-polluters in the form of discarded wheel-weights, to the tune of 3.5 million pounds a year. Read the rest of this entry »

Where’s your license plate?

Wouldn't this be rockin' on your bike?

Unfortunately, the Arizona Revised Statutes (ARS) specifically grants the power to local authorities to further regulate bicycles in §28-627 ,  including allowing them to require “…the registration and licensing of bicycles”.

So does your city require registration? What about the city you’re riding through? Who knows? You would have to comb through every city’s ordinances, and even then you might find that things aren’t as they seem Read the rest of this entry »

Fatality in Tucson — driver was reportedly “weaving”

[UPDATE June 9, 2009] Well, I have to eat my words, earlier I cynically said the results of the investigation “…should be entertaining. Entertaining to see them [Pima county prosecutors] dance around why they are not bringing a homicide charge”. tusconbikelawyer reports that the driver was indicted for manslaughter (daily star article). That will likely be in addition to hit-and-run charges, which is in itself a serious crime. If found guilty of both, judges tend to make the sentences concurrent. So, kudos to the Pima county justice system, the prosecutor and TPD. I also note this is very speedy, the collision was May 29, that’s under two weeks.

These descriptions would seem to indicate recklessness. A lengthy investigation will undoubtedly ensue, the result of which should be entertaining. Entertaining to see them dance around why they are not bringing a homicide (scroll down to ‘recklessly’) charges.

This has caused an understandable stir in the Tucson bicyling community.

Since the driver left the scene; I’m afraid that will give the prosecutor cover for not filing more serious charges. It’s an “easy out” for them. Read the rest of this entry »

When Traffic lights Don’t Turn

“When Traffic lights Don’t Turn.”  I get calls and inquiries about this subject on occasion:  “What should I do?”  We address this in our Arizona Bicycling Streets Smarts booklet by John Allen (refer to http://www.azbikeped.org/chapter9a.htm — “If your bicycle doesn’t trip the detector, you have to wait for a car to do it, or else you have to go through the red light. Going through the red isn’t against the law, because the light is inoperative. If you ever have a crash or get a traffic ticket because a traffic light won’t turn green, it’s the fault of whoever installed the detector”).  It is my understanding that this is allowed under ARS 28-645. C.:  “The driver of a vehicle approaching an intersection that has an official traffic control signal that is inoperative shall bring the vehicle to a complete stop before entering the intersection and may proceed with caution only when it is safe to do so”.  Allen goes into more detail on traffic signal actuators here — “bicycle-insensitive traffic signal actuators are defective and illegal.”  LAB has some general information on the subject here.

Michael N. Sanders
ADOT Bicycle/Pedestrian Coordinator
Bicycle and Pedestrian Program

And here is what Bob Mionske says on the topic:

Once you have located the cut lines in the road and positioned your bicycle above the cut lines, what if the light has still not triggered? . . . It turns out that in every state, this is one instance where you can legally run a red light. . . . to be sure that the signal is defective (and to be able to demonstrate in court that you had sufficient reason to be sure), you should sit through the equivalent of one complete light-cycle -- about three minutes -- without the light being triggered.  If you still don’t get the green light, the light is defective, and you can then proceed through the intersection, yielding the right-of-way to any approaching vehicles (Bicycling & the Law: Your Rights as a Cyclist, p. 42).

Is your motorized bike a play vehicle?

First, see Moped and Motorized Bicycles in Arizona for general background on Motorized Bicycles. Sort of unfortunately, every individual city or jurisdiction can have their own codes further regulating things.

The trouble Arizona moto-bicyclists generally run into revolves around police misunderstanding (or simply not even knowing) the distinction between a moped (which requires insurance, driver license, registration) and a motorized bicycle (which requires none of that. E.g. here is such a report from Phoenix, and of course that figured prominently in the Scottsdale case.

However, a disturbing wrinkle regarding the use of motorized bicycles in Tempe has arisen. Tempe’s codes are all online; bicycles are Chapter 7, and traffic is 19. It appears that it is the official position of the City of Tempe that motorized bicycles (but only when the motor is operating!?) have severe operating restrictions. The story is one of my correspondents reports being stopped twice by Tempe police (”and almost cuffed” once!) sometime around early 2009(?) for, get this, riding in the street. The temerity! Read the rest of this entry »

Crashes are the Leading Cause of Death…

I found this image lurking on the NHTSA website. MVCs (Motor Vehicle Collisions) are always the leading cause, though the exact ages vary from year to year, e.g. from Motor Vehicle Traffic Crashes as a Leading Cause of Death in the United States, 2000 “motor vehicle traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for every age 2 through 33″. Note that this ranking is all inclusive; thus it includes things like suicide, homicide, and so forth.

Just like everything else in life, there are some nuances that are worth understanding. The simplest distinction is between internal (think disease) and external (think any sort of accidental death; car crash, drowning, falling…). These distinctions are detailed in the technical report, e.g. Motor Vehicle Traffic Crashes as a Leading Cause of Death in the U. S., 1997 (emphasis added):

“As a major external cause, traffic crashes are the prime cause of accidental death in the United States, and this has been true for many years. Thus, for persons of all ages, traffic crashes alone in 1997 caused almost one-half of all accidental deaths that occurred….  “

For example, from Exhibit 5 here are the top 5 causes of “accidental death” for both sexes combined. MVCs DOMINATE the rankings.

1. Motor Vehicle Traffic Crashes 42,340
2. Falls  15,477
3. Poisoning  10,163
4. Other and Unspecified Causes (including suffocation which was #4) 5,207

…