Author: ArizonaBikeLaw

One-man brown cloud

20,000 miles per year!? A heavy-duty pickup truck as personal transportation!? Diesel!? Loads of particulates, loads of air pollution. He is a one man brown cloud!

Eric Anderson, Title: Transportation director, Maricopa Association of Governments…His daily commute: South on Loop 101 to the Loop 202 and Interstate 10 into Phoenix. What he drives: A 1999 Ford F-250 diesel pickup so he can haul a horse trailer. It gets about 18 to 20 miles a gallon and has about 80,000 miles on it. Gas costs: Around $70 a week. He drives about 400 miles.

— FOR FREEWAY CHIEF, HIS WAY IS THE HIGHWAY, October 27, 2007, Glen Creno, The Arizona Republic

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BUI — Bicycling Under the Influence

PLEASE HELP ME UNDERSTAND — email me or leave a comment as to your interest in the subject… I am not a lawyer, I am not soliciting business, just wondering why all the interest in this subject???

It goes without saying that mixing bicycling and drinking is extremely dangerous — there I said it after all — but what about the law? Bicyclists in Arizona are subject to DUI law, Continue reading “BUI — Bicycling Under the Influence”

Cleapor Fatality — Mesa police stonewall

The stonewall has broken, and a flood of details that implicate the cyclist as being at fault in the collision have been released in an AZ Republic article published October 13, 2007. Why it took until now, weeks after Mesa police declared there would be no citations issued is baffling. Mesa police spokesman Detective Chris Arvayo could have (and in my opinion, should have) either released these explanations sooner, or simply stated the investigation was ongoing. He either said, or left the impression that the case was closed without saying why. Continue reading “Cleapor Fatality — Mesa police stonewall”

Moped and Motorized Bicycles in Arizona

[Updated in 2019 to mention new laws regarding ebikes and escooters]

[for a 2009 update involving troubles in Tempe, see Is your motorized bicycle a play vehicle?]

Every now and then an unusual story involving bicycles, in this case motorized bicycles, and a point of law comes along. Surely, this is one of those cases. It revolves around a relatively new law enacted last year, that defines a whole new category: motorized bicycles. See HB2796, 2nd Regular legislature (2006). Continue reading “Moped and Motorized Bicycles in Arizona”

Pecos Death Trap?

UPDATE SEP 22,2010: AFN reports that that there was an injury wreck at 32nd and Pecos resulting from a “bad left”. The 17 y.o. EB driver turned left into the path of the WB driver, who was injured “seriously but not life threatening”. Bad lefts were the cause of both a 2003 fatality and a 2007 very serious injuries; both of those were at 40th and Pecos. Continue reading “Pecos Death Trap?”

Carbon’s New Battleground

WSJ article Carbon’s New Battleground, Sept 12, 2007 describing the choice as basically between cap-and-trade scheme vs. a carbon tax. The carbon tax is virtually universally favored by economists as being superior. So we will end up with a cap-and-trade system that is susceptible to political nonsense. Continue reading “Carbon’s New Battleground”

Insurance Considerations

Bicycling & the LawI’m reading Bob Mionske’s excellent book Bicycling & the Law (available from velogear), here is what I distilled out of the section on car insurance and liability systems as it relates to Arizona.

Arizona operates on the traditional “tort liability” system. By comparison, the three other systems used in decreasing order of popularity are: no fault, hybrid, and choice. Continue reading “Insurance Considerations”

Driver arrested in quintuple(!) fatality — excessive speed and red-light-running alledged

A driver was arrested on suspicion of five counts of manslaughter (see homicide categories) and 3 aggravated assaults. What makes this unusual is the absence of suspicion of DUI. We shall see what the prosecutor does with it. This is a tantalizing comment: “data recorded when the truck’s airbags deployed substantiated detectives’ findings that Myers was driving at ‘an excessive speed,’ “. Data recorder? We (the public) often hear that these sorts of crashes are tragedies but not crimes — because the prosecutor claims that they can’t prove anything. Continue reading “Driver arrested in quintuple(!) fatality — excessive speed and red-light-running alledged”

The Disneyland Model

John Semmens is an AZDOT project manager who also writes free-market oriented policy papers — he is perhaps best known locally for his vociferous opposition to Phoenix’s light rail. John is now affiliated with the Independent Institute — a free-market-leaning think-tank that I had heretofore not heard of. He had an op-ed published last Saturday in the Wall Street Journal that contained some novel, perhaps radical, ideas about how private auto insurance should be used as a lever against dangerous drivers; he dubs this the “Disneyland model”, and makes some good points. Though, he does not even mention the role of law (criminal) enforcement (as in criminal charges: homicide, assault)… perhaps he was space-limited. Also, his general idea — privatizing licensure — seems sound but how would this help the problems caused by those who  simply go without? In any event it is a welcome look at publicizing one facet of the problems created by private automobile usage.

What is the deal with the 39,000 deaths figure? Fatalities have been running around 43,000.

The full text is here:  On the Road. September 1, 2007 op-ed, John Semmens, Wall Street Journal

Continue reading “The Disneyland Model”