Advocacy & Safety - Advocacy via Corp PAC?

I am considering joining my corporate PAC with the express purpose of gaining access to our lobbyist in order to promote bike safety issues like creating laws making it illegal to talk on the cell phone and drive unless you have handsfree. Do any of y'all belong to your corporate PAC for this purpose and if so, what have been your experiences/results?

I'm not aware of any such work with corporate PACs, but I'm interested to hear your progress. My advice, however, would be to re-focus your wishlist. Driving with a hands-free headset has been proven to be no safer than without a handsfree set (it's about attention / focus, not about your hands). There are many other important safety issues that you could focus on: 3' passing law, severe penalties for hitting a bicyclist / pedestrian, education programs, etc.

Good luck!

PS - the Texas Bicycle Coalition (http://www.biketexas.org) is a great group with whom you should speak about this.

You want your corporate lobbyist to work on bike issues, is that it? Is your corporation bike-related? If not, joining the PAC won't do it. They aren't going to work on the personal issues of the PAC's supporters. That's not their job.

If your corporation is bike-related, well, you shouldn't need to contribute to the PAC to work with them anyway.

Your best bet is to join and support an organization that already lobbies on bike issues, such as the League of American Bicyclists.

Thanks RTC_Kartik for the link. I will check them out before I join the Corporate PAC.

Booneshake: More or less. By joining the corporate PAC, I gain access to our lawmakers that come to visit us in a meet-n-greet type forum before the official meeting begins. By a happy coincidence, I was able to express my outrage at some of the laws so badly slanted against non-custodial parents (mostly fathers) to our State Atty General. As you would expect, he only enforces the laws, not writes them, but he was able to point me in the right direction to work on getting that changed and he also said that this is a big issue at present.

I would also like to make vehicular cycling safer in Texas so I'm willing to make any contacts to help further that agenda. :) Not having been one (VC) for very long myself, I am looking for a couple of things: what other people are already doing and if I have any unique contacts that might help. It looks like y'all have answered both questions. Thank you. :thumb: