sojourn

https://www.boston.com/news/local/art...e_your_wheels/

HOLLISTON - If you're young and ride a bicycle through town without a helmet, you may end up walking back home. Police here are looking for scofflaws and will snatch the pedals from your feet if you've been warned numerous times but still forgo headgear.

Holliston police, frustrated in trying to drive home the point that riding without a helmet is dangerous and illegal, are hoping the tactic will finally get the attention of young riders.

"We're not looking to take bikes away from the kids who forget their helmets," School Resource Officer David Gatchell said yesterday. "This isn't something where we're looking to collect a hundred bikes. We don't want to seize bikes, but for the kids who repeatedly ignore the warnings, it will happen."

Good idea?!? yes no? Discuss

TeleJohn

As long as they take cars away from repeat offenders too - DUI's, speeding, etc...

hurricane harry

Got any old beaters laying around you want to get rid of?

resipsa

I personally think that it's a pretty darn good idea. Keep in mind, though, I know what the law is here.

Essentially, Massachusetts requires riders under age 16 to wear helmets. For riders over 18 and parents of riders under 18, there's a $20 penalty for pretty much any violation of the bicycle laws. Riders under 18 can also have their bikes impounded for the same.

The Holliston Police are just enforcing the law as they are allowed to do. Note that they can't and aren't doing this to adult cyclists. I'm not one for mandatory helmet laws for adults, but for kids, I say it's a great idea. Kids are more ballsy than prudent, have poor balance in thier quickly growing bodies, and have brains still in development. Helmets should be required for them (especially given Massachusetts's drivers).

surveyor

You haven't interacted with a very large cross-section of adults in the U.S., have you?

For every one of those "poorly balanced" and "still developing" kids, there is an adult who is immature, egotistical and just as undeveloped in the cranial region. If I didn't know any better, I would swear that half the adults I meet are under the age of 16.

Parenting should be done by parents, not the .gov...and the police have much more important tasks that they should be focusing on.

resipsa

I have indeed interacted with said cross-section, and I agree with you on the bit about immature adults. That's pretty irrelevant to the issue at hand, though, as this is about enforcement of helmet laws as they relate to children.

I also agree with you that parenting should be done by parents and not the government, but this isn't strictly a matter of parenting. It's a matter of safety for a particularly vulnerable segment of society. Moreover, that same segment of society is supposed to be coddled, and I'd say that a public policy that does so is probably a good one. It boils down to the same logic as public schooling, child labor laws, or even so-called "statutory" ****: we as a society have deemed it valuable for our children to have the best potentially possible future. Helmet laws for them, especially as they tend to both go pretty slowly and fall often (thus alleviating - though not entirely - concerns about the design and manufacture of helmets), are pretty squarely in that vein.

As for whether the Holliston Police Department has anything better to do: given the size and economic status of the place, I'd be willing to bet that it doesn't. A quick look at their logs should prove the point.

Szczuldo

yep I'm down if they do that.

Of course I think that police everywhere should enforce helmet and seatbelt use. Usually the police have nothing better to do, and we all know U.S. laws protect drug dealers enough that police have one hell of a time arresting them....

Treespeed

Great, now we get to see more youtube videos of cops roughing up teenagers, now instead of just skateboarders, they get to go after young cyclists. The cops really have the time and resources to impound bikes and then drive the kids home? Or would they really be moronic enough to leave a kid without his bike to walk home? Better hope for the city that the kids they send home have a guardian angel watching over them, if the kid so much as trips on his way home the city is going to wish they stuck to traffic enforcement.

Marrock

It may be illegal but the notion that it's dangerous is still under debate.

geo8rge

My take: The police noticed that out of town 'undesirables'(*) were not wearing helmets and the dutiful middle class was. So they made a behavoir of the undesirables illegal. I am guessing that the wussified middle class, like me, will give up their wheels without a fight, but at some point they will have to give the wrong undesirable a beat down or worse, then what? What if some undesirable just keeps riding? What do you do, crash your car into him, lean out the window and swing for his head? All laws require violence to enforce.

I hope they atleast put up signs.

Does the law define helmet? Is a doo rag a helmet. Thick wooly hat? Rasta hair under a wooly hat? Hard hat?

* undesirable is a code word for you know who.

resipsa

I'm pretty sure you won't see that in Holliston, a very quaint, pretty rich, small town. As for whether they have the time and resources, well, I'll just say that the last arrest made there was on September 4th. This is not a crime-ridden metropolis.

resipsa

You may well be right. It's a pretty whitebread town. They didn't, however, make anything illegal; that was the General Court (our term for legislature). I would also sincerely doubt that the Holliston police would give anyone a beat down, but that's just speculation. That same General Court, by the way, also defines a helmet as one that meets certain standards, e.g. CPSC and Snell.

surveyor

I don't recall anything either in the law or in my protected rights as enumerated by the Constitution, saying that the government has the power or the duty to coddle children...especially "coddle" them by taking away their private property and means of transportation.


I certainly wouldn't use public schooling or even statutory **** laws to shore up a case being made for government interference in citizens' lives.

Having "nothing better to do" is not justification for taking away personal property from someone who is not infringing upon anyone else's rights, simply because someone somewhere deemed it "safer".



In the end, it boils down to this: do we want a society that encourages safe behavior through making an informed decision (in this case informed by parents and safety lectures, which children receive in spades these days), or through the authorities making that decision for you and interfering with your personal business to force you to comply?

I would much rather see an informed (and free) society than a conformed (and restricted) one. But I appear to be in the minority these days.

wahoonc

When was the last time they impounded a DUI vehicle? Or don't they have those in Hollister

Somewhere, and probably soon someone is going to file a civil liberties lawsuit against drivers for impeding the use of bicycles and pedestrians. It has already been established that moving about under one's own power is a right. Driving is a privilege, but that aspect is quite often forgotten.

I suspect the "undesirables" could be driving the crackdown, but don't tell the ACLU they will yell racial profiling. I suspect that any kid that has their bike impounded will bring down the wrath of their parents on the local police and they won't be happy if it is the wrong/right parents.

Aaron

resipsa

It's not about your rights under the Constitution, nor is it about children's rights under the same (somewhat lesser than for adults). You'll note that there's nothing in the Constitution prohibiting states from passing and enforcing helmet laws, and indeed the 10th Amendment says that powers not held by the federal government belong to the states and the people. If such helmet legislation isn't a part of those powers, I don't know what is. The power to coddle is referred to properly as the inherent police power of the state. Essentially, states can do pretty much whatever they want so long as it doesn't conflict with federal law and so long as there's a reasonable basis for doing so. Preventing injury, even only in certain cases is a reasonable basis for the law.

Why not use "statutory" **** (or my previous example of child labor laws)? Those are examples of goverment interference with personal freedom for the benefit of a segment of society. Hell, every law prohibiting one thing or another does the same thing (think drug laws). I don't see the problem with this.

You're right, having nothing to do isn't justification for taking away personal property. Violation of the bicycle laws, however, statutorily presents that option to police if the rider is under 18 (the theory presumably being that they can't pay the money). They do get the bikes back, you know. There's a 15 day limit to how long the police can keep them. It's like suspending a license for motor vehicle violations. Besides, it doesn't have to do with infringing on others' rights, just like being a drug dealer doesn't. That doesn't make it any less illegal.

I'm right there with you on your personal freedoms bit at the end, and I'm proud to be with you in what you call a minority. People under 18 (an artifical limit, I'll admit) aren't fully-fledged citizens though, and I haven't the slightest problem prohibiting them from certain things, riding helmetless included.

sojourn

I'm torn.
On the one hand, I don't want the government dictating.....ANYTHING to me, or you.........on the other; it seems that parents would have their children wear helmets just from a common sense standpoint.
I understand the whole debate about "To wear or not to wear" a helmet as adults, but factoring in the "children" element of the debate, I would have to lean towards supporting a requirement for children (keyword "children") to wear helmets. It bothers me though that a law has to be passed to get the attention of parents. The law, I would think, would have come to pass because of some rather tragic accidents and because parents didn't react to these tragedies on their own, the local government felt compelled to intervene. That scenario is disturbing when parents did not respond and basically had to be parented by the local powers that be........it’s a tough one……

CommuterRun

Impound the bike? I say they should hold the kid until they get a positive I.D., then send the parent(s)/legal guardian a ticket.

Multiple repeat offenses? Hold the kid until the parents come pick them up, and another ticket.

resipsa

You're actually pretty much describing exactly what the police are allowed to do. I don't know whether they can hold them until parents pick them up, but providing identification / address is part of the statute, as is fining parents for the infractions of their children.

Impounding for up to 15 days is one option and fining the parents is the other for violators under age 18, at least as far as I read the statute (Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 85, sect. 11B). It looks like the choice is left to the police officer's discretion.

-=(8)=-

Great way to get kids on bikes
How about making it illegal to kill, maim, assault , etc
bicycle riders ???

cudak888 

What if you're walking a bicycle through town without a helmet?



-Kurt

Sledbikes

i smell stereotyping theyre only gonna hit neighborhoods where kids cant afford helmets let alone a bike

wernmax

Did they drop the "barfy" smilie? What?....oh, Massachusetts ....never mind.

Carusoswi

My problem with this issue is there simply is no great preponderance of "youngsters" under the age of 18 being injured or killed as a result of not wearing helmets. The evidence simply does not exist. How many bike fatalities are there involving this age group each year, how many head injuries.

How many of us here who rode when we were in that group rode without a helmet and, not only survived, but had not even a close call?

My guess is that most of us rode without helmets before they became the fad.

Some of the posters engaging in this helmet debate equate it to not wearing seatbelts while driving or riding in a car.

There really is no comparison.
Bikes don't go as fast as cars, are rarely involved in high speed crashes where even capable helmets would make a difference, current helmet design offers little protection in those accidents severe enough to cause serious injury, and this law has no basis in reality.

Caruso

spoker

When the parents fail to do the parenting, the government ( us ) does it for them.