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Old 04-14-07, 04:58 PM
  #6  
Sir Lunch-a-lot
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Calgary, AB
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Bikes: Montague Folding/E-Bike, Kuwahara

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While I am all for wearing helmets (I prefer to ride with one myself), I think it's ridiculous to mandate helmets in one city. Heck, I think its dumb to make vehicle bylaws (ie, certain color motercycles aren't allowed in town as an extreme example, or bike bells being mandatory in some cities and not others - I have a bike bell on my bike just in case I find myself riding someplace where it is mandatory) for any vehicle that are not consistant with the rest of the province. If I were riding to Saskatoon on my bike without a helment and helmets were not mandated where I came from, I would be extremely pissed off coming into Saskatoon and getting fined for not complying to their bylaws. If it was a Saskatchewan wide law to mandate helmets, that would be a different story.

I'm pretty sure Helmets are a province wide mandate in Alberta for cyclists under 18. When it was first implemented, all kids were wearing helmets. After a few months, it was as though such a law hadn't even been passed. Even then, I doubt many, if any, people have been ticketed for not riding with a helmet. It is not worth the officers time or effort to enforce. It would probably be the same thing in Saskatoon: A law, but rarely enforced.

And for little kids, how are they going to get hold of their parents? Run their prints on AFIS or something? It would be far too much of a hassel. To really enforce that for kids, you'd also probably have to mandate bicycle licencing as well. You could only really enforce this for kids in a small town where you know who their parents are, and even then, it's typically not enforced.

One of the guys in one of those editorials said that they should build bike lanes. The trouble is, if you build bike lanes, then there is the possibility that bicycles could be banned from normal roads (I was riding in a school van the other day in Saskatoon, and we came upon a road -probably a freeway- where cycling was banned). If one isn't careful, bikes could be banned from roads, required to ride at 10kph on bike/people paths, and be unable to reach certain parts of the city. Or so that is my fear... which is getting a bit off topic.
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