CliffordK

If road safety is the concern, why not impose a 20 mph speed limit on the roads, which would take into account multiple road users and road conditions from cars to bicycles to farm vehicles to pedestrians to wildlife.

Perhaps the goal is to only piss off the smallest segment of his voters.

asmac

Yes, I didn't see that it specifies the pole should be vertical. Maybe he meant it to stick out to the side to enforce an enhanced three foot rule.

njkayaker

I didn't say that.

What I said was that it was a way of effectively banning cyclists from those roads.

There are all sorts of problems with having a silly 15 foot flag pole even before getting to ride on those roads.

You couldn't really put a 15 foot flag pole on a car.

njkayaker

Dude needs to make up his mind. Either it's ridiculous (and something really doesn't want people do to) or it's not.

And, apparently, ATV's need a 7' flag.

wphamilton

"The problems people are mentioning in "fun" are all intentional." - the one I mentioned wasn't intended by the lawmaker, and it would be poetic justice if he got his law and it had the opposite effect than he intended.

njkayaker

With a 15 foot flag, There's really no conveniently way for a cyclist to first get to where they can ride in the middle of the lane.

A bicycle with a 15 foot flag is, bascially, a useless, impractical object to the cyclist.

No one really would put a 15 foot flag on a bicycle, which means no one would ride on the A roads with the 15-foot flag requirement. Thus, it's effectively a ban.

wphamilton

obviously the guy wants to ban bikes. I could and would build a collapsible pole though, and since it was required on some roads I'd use it everywhere, staying well away from the now-unsafe lane-sides.

njkayaker

Some people here didn't seem to quite get it was a ban.

A collapsible pole would still be pretty tedious to use.

Anyway, I'm more making a point about people (like below) seeming to suggest that difficulties with the flag where unforeseen. That is, accidental oversights.

Seems to me like the difficulties were intentional.

mr_bill

"The ATV is commonly called a four-wheeler in... parts of... the United States."

Perhaps in your part of the United States you don't know what a four-wheeler is. Most people in Missouri do know what a four-wheeler is.

-mr. bill

Digital_Cowboy

Hopefully before this bill is passed that local/county/state advocacy groups as well as LAB will chime in with their concerns over it.

Why NOT put the responsibility where it belongs? On the shoulders of the people who are driving an automobile? They are the ones who are making those roads dangerous NOT cyclists.

I liken this bill to that "life paint" supposedly developed by Volvo. While, yes ultimately we are responsible for our own safety, and should do what we feel is reasonable to protect said safety. It is and should be the operator of the more dangerous vehicle NOT to crash into the smaller/slower/more vulnerable road users.

This also reminds me of an encounter I had with a FHP (Florida Highway Patrol officer) a number of years ago. He stopped me, in part he said because "a black car that was behind me had almost hit me."

Hmm, as with many here I travel with a rear-view mirror affixed to my helmet and when I am driving in traffic I use it, and I do NOT recall any car "almost" hitting me.

He also tried to tell me that the state of Florida no longer recognized the bicycle as a vehicle, and that on roads without a bike lane that I was required to use the sidewalk. I guess that would mean that on roads with neither a bike lane, or a sidewalk that according to him we're not allowed to use those roads.

Of course he was totally wrong in his opinion. And I think that he was taking the "father knows best" approach, in that if in his opinion if something was "dangerous or unsafe" that it most also be "illegal."

It'd be nice if the LEO's out on patrol actually knew the laws that they're suppose to enforce.

Digital_Cowboy

+100

I believe it's a 15' flag pole not a 15' flag. I'd have to think that having a 15' piece of fabric flapping in the wind behind one regardless of their vehicle is going to cause a LOT of drag. Drag which I would think would make it virtually impossible to make any headway.

mr_bill

Perhaps he envisions having 15 foot bicycle flag poles in buckets at the entrances to the lettered routes?

After all, it "worked" so well for pedestrian safety.

-mr. bill

njkayaker

Traffic laws are written to vehicle definitions specified in the traffic law (you should know that).

"4-Wheelers" is not a legal term for a vehicle (or it's defined in the traffic law).

Since it's obvious that cars are not required to have flags, it should be obvious that "4-Wheelers" isn't meant to include "any vehicles with 4 wheels".

njkayaker

I inadvertently ommitted the word pole.

Yes, it's a 15 foot pole (it should have been clear that I was talking about the pole).

The 15 pole really doesn't make it less impractical.

Since the whole purpose of the law is to be impractical, a 15 foot flag would have made for a "better" law.

(People are still identifying difficulties created by the law as showing that the law is "defective" when the point of the law is to create difficulties.)

===================

In the first post of the thread, the article linked to refers to it as a "15 foot ... flag".

This article, too, refers to it as a "15-foot flag":

That doesn't make it right but people generally were able to understand what they were talking about.

CliffordK

How often do you think the whole bucket of flags would disappear in the back of a pickup in rural Missouri?

When cut to length, would the flags make good garden stakes? Electric fence poles?

Digital_Cowboy

Whether it's a 15' flag pole, or a 15' flag or a 15' flag on a 15' flag pole. The point is that this whole purposed law is ludicrous, asinine, and discriminatory. As unless it is also applied to the Amish, and farmers attempting to bring their produce to market it is as others including yourself have mentioned is just a quasi-legal method of banning cyclists from particular roads. Roads that irony because of the scenery are the roads that many cyclists would want to travel on.
.
There is one concept from Europe that I along with others here would like to see incorporated into the US legal system. That is the idea of strict liability.

In that if a motorist hits a cyclist or pedestrian that they are presumed to be at fault. Unless there is evidence that the cyclist or pedestrian was at fault. And it is my understanding from what others here have said, that even IF there is evidence that the cyclist or pedestrian was at fault that it might not always clear the motorist.

But given the automotive industry "smear" campaign from years ago that successfully painted anyone who resisted the advancement of the automobile as being "stick in the mud/magpie" who was "stuck in the last century." Hence the laws against so called "jay-walking." It probably would not go over very well.

njkayaker

Which is why people talking about the pole bumping into things is kind of pointless. It doesn't seem likely that it would pass anyway (which means getting worked-up by it seems kind of pointless too).

genec

We call em ATVs

mr_bill

We are separated by a common language.

-mr. bill

zonatandem

Isn't this Missouri legislator on Trumps short list for vice president?

mconlonx

No, it did not get people talking about bicycle safety, it got people talking about discriminatory, frivolous legislation, and partisan, idiot legislators.

I'm guessing exactly zero of his constituents asked specifically that bikes sport a flag on a 15' pole.

ATVs are not legal road vehicles, bicycles are. There's a difference between the two, chief...

dynodonn 

There's the problem, not every candidate gets elected, especially candidates favorable to cyclists.

Digital_Cowboy

DD,

And sadly, that's because not enough people do their research to know who it is that they're voting for.

Fargo Wolf

Well.... I guess if I had a trailer, I could get those height poles that some Pilot Vehicle drivers use for checking the height of overpasses and such while escorting dimensional loads. Seriously though, I don't think this bill is going to go anywhere, especially if the State D.O.T. weighs in. Most overpasses are what.... 14' 6", or thereabouts. Same with Utility lines. At best, you'd take out someone's phone and/or internet, or cable TV. At worst, you get to experience what it fells like to have 110V coursing through you. Especially if said pole on said bike is wet.

rydabent

+1 Great solution. Bikes would not impede traffic, and there would be almost no traffic deaths.