Passes & Canyons Blog

A bill fighting distracted driving appears to be moving forward in the Senate.

The gist of testimony Thursday on SB-12 was that nobody contests that the use of cellphones while driving is a problem, the only dispute is in how to deal with it.

SB-12 is a distracted driving bill introduced by Sen. Lois Court that would make it illegal to use a cellphone hands-on while driving. “Our cars are not mobile phone booths,” she said. Testifying in favor were a variety of motorcyclist groups and individuals, as well as a wide range of other organizations.

The primary objection of those speaking in opposition to the bill was in regard to the severity of the penalties and questioning the choice to punish violators rather than provide inducements for compliance. The carrot vs. the stick.

Opponents argued that the consequences would fall most heavily on those who can least afford the fines. It was also argued that a knee-jerk response to criminalize behavior is a) not effective, and b) amounts to “symbolism, not serious results.”

Additionally, one opponent questioned the severity of the penalties, saying they are greater than those for other offenses that are much worse.

A key issue was the idea that people would face these penalties even though they had not caused any harm. Two senators mentioned their own parents, who only have flip phones and do not have the ability to set them on voice activation. However, one senator shot down her own objection by stating that in reality, if her 80-year-old father tried to dial his phone while driving it would be a disaster.

Proponents of the bill, responding to these objections, pointed out that other laws were on the books that could be objected to in the same manner. For instance, the penalty for not having your car insured are greater than the penalties called for in SB-12, and nobody suffers immediate harm when you drive uninsured.

Of course, then if you are in a crash, the person you hit suffers financially from your lack of insurance. In the same manner, while nobody is harmed if you use your cellphone while driving as long as you don’t cause an accident, if you do cause an accident, the person you hit does suffer. And the whole point of the bill is to prevent the crash in the first place.

ABATE of Colorado‘s legislative liaison, Stump, made the point that, considering penalties vs. incentives, not having to pay a $750 fine and lose four points on your license should be considered by most people a pretty good incentive not to break the law.

Ultimately, using the phone while driving is a choice you make. If your doing so results in another person’s injury or death, that was not their choice, it was a circumstance thrust upon them by your choice. If you can’t afford to pay a $750 fine, make the choice not to use your phone while driving.

At the end of the hearing sen. Court asked that the bill be laid over so that it can be tweaked to satisfy some of the concerns addressed. Presumably once she feels she has revised it enough that it will be passed out of committee it will be back for another hearing.

Biker Quote for Today

You own a car. Not the whole damn road!

The State Capitol is the place to be on Thursday if you want to offer input on a bill to fight distracted driving.

Distracted driving will be addressed at a hearing at the Colorado Legislature on Thursday this week, so if you want to let your elected representatives know how you feel about the folks on cellphones trying to kill us this is your chance. We’re talking about Senate Bill 12. It will be in room 352.

Stump, the ABATE of Colorado legislative liaison, brought us up to date last week at the District 17 meeting. He’s encouraging as many riders as possible to show up and make it clear we care about this. Representatives from the bicycling community as well as the walkers community (yes, there is such a thing) will be there in support as well. If you’re coming aim to get there around 9:30 a.m. I’ll be there.

A similar bill was introduced last session but because it was introduced by a Democrat the Senate Republicans killed it. This sort of thing goes on all the time, in both directions. Maybe you want to tell your representatives to vote on the basis of whether a bill is good for Colorado, not their party. Anyway, Democrats now control both houses of the legislature so there is some hope this will pass this year.

It is considered to be a better bill this year as well. In addition to a fine, using your cellphone would now also cost you points on your license. The bill does allow for you to use your phone hands-free, permitting you to tap it to activate the voice-activation function if necessary. You can’t cruise along at highway speed hitting the numbers dialing.

Now, lest anyone think this will immediately stop everyone from texting while driving, be aware that to be stopped for this violation you would have to be actually observed by a police officer doing the no-no. Still, I see people dialing and texting; surely police officers see the same thing from time to time. At least some people will have it made clear to them that this is not acceptable.

Stump spoke with all the members on the Senate transportation committee to see how they expect to vote. Only one said they would definitely vote for it, most said they will make up their minds based on what the bill says and what the testimony is, and one said he would definitely vote against it.

I asked if he gave a reason why and Stump said he told him that addressing cellphones only just hits on part of the problem. OK, so you’re not willing to at least start chipping away at the problem? Do you have an all-encompassing proposal?

Personally, I suspect any time people make those kind of weak excuses the real reason is that they themselves are guilty of this behavior and figure “I’m a safe driver, why should I be subject to penalty for something that’s perfectly safe?” Yeah, you can text and drive safely, right up until the point when you don’t, and have that collision. By then it’s too late for the motorcyclist or bicyclist or pedestrian you just hit.

So if you care about this issue, come on down on Thursday. See you there?

Biker Quote for Today

Half of them are out to get you, the other half don’t see you. — Bernie Peterson

Tires are pretty important, do ya think?

Have you ever watched the tread melt off your tire? I have. Not literally turning to liquid and dripping off, but being worn off in a matter of hours.

What you need to understand is that motorcycle tires are an entirely different critter than car tires. With car tires you have a broad, almost flat tread that the car rides on top off all the time. Motorcycle tires have a round profile because when you turn, you are leaning the bike. The round profile ensures that you always have tread in solid contact with the ground.

With only two tires, and those having very small contact areas, it is extremely important that you have good grip. Car tires have a hard rubber tread that will last 35,000 miles and more. In order to get a good grip, motorcycle tires use a very soft rubber. And guess what? That soft rubber wears away a whole lot quicker than hard rubber, generally not lasting much more than 10,000 miles.

Then there’s the effect of air pressure in the tires. It’s common knowledge that under-inflated tires wear out quicker, on cars as well as bikes. And while under-inflation can ruin a set of car tires in just a few thousand miles, that’s nothing compared to the soft rubber on motorcycle tires.

Which gets me back to my story.

In the early days of the OFMC, John and Bill and I went one year to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. While there I noticed that I was getting a bit thin on tread and mentioned it to the guys, who looked and agreed I would be needing new tires pretty soon after we got back home.

We only rode on to Page, AZ, the next day, which is about 100 miles. While unloading the bike I happened to glance at my rear tire and I was shocked. What little tread it had just a few hours ago was almost completely gone! I called Bill and John over and they gasped in amazement. Somebody had a tire gauge and when I checked my air pressure it was very, very low.

Of course I put air in, and it’s no surprise I was nervous the rest of the trip about the possibility of a blow-out. Realistically, I should have had a new tire put on right there in Page, but ever the optimist and a cheapskate to boot, I didn’t. And it did get me home safely.

But I tell you what, these days I have it on my calendar to check tire pressure on both my bikes and my car at the first of every month. And if I’m getting set to go on a trip I check the pressure before I leave.

This is really all just common sense, but it’s so easy sometimes to ignore common sense. It is far, far harder to ignore your own eyes when you see the tread vanish from a tire that quickly. We all learned a good lesson that day.

Biker Quote for Today

If you think it’s too dangerous, go home and cut your lawn, and leave us to it. — Guy Martin

One kind of hill in Florida.

It has been a long time since I did one of these posts. Here you are, direct from the Adventure Riders forum, 10 more reports on close encounters on the road.

1. Hit birds (like a baseball hitting you), black cat during Halloween (shattered the 89 GSXR750 fairing), and a big dog trying to bite my front wheel. The latter knocked the bike (07 750) out from under me at about 60mph. Killed him, and broke my collarbone, ribs, both rotator cuffs torn. Didn’t do the bike any good either.

2. I was headed north on I-5 when the top of an RV peeled off like a tuna can lid. A wall about twelve feet tall of aluminum and interior stood erect and on end, like a wall, in the middle lane and the piece was sliding at about eighty miles an hour. Sparks were spitting out from under it. I was lucky that I was riding the inside lane because a diesel was in the outside lane and he was jack-knifing his trailer in order to avoid it. I only had enough time to see it coming in the center lane.

3. Man, I wish I had a picture of this one. Making my last left turn on my 86 mile commute home, 5 mile zone of death and am paying extra attention. I have a green, catch movement from the right, it’s 11 o’clock at night, bicycle riding against traffic runs the light, process and wait for him to go by, then fireworks thrown into intersection by bicyclist, ok I’m too tired for this, start to go, wait what? Bicycle is towing a 12 foot canoe and I almost rode right through it. This.Is.California.

4. A chicken, on my 2010 Ultra….chicken did not survive…the guy that was riding next to my right saddlebag was covered in feathers and chicken parts…..

5. If any of you have ever been near the Mississippi River (northern part) in the spring, you know all about May flies. Those things FILL the air to the point that after just a few miles, you are literally covered in dead bug juice….the Iowa DOT goes as far as to put signs up showing a mayfly on the road, with the word “Slippery”…and it CAN be….absolutely disgusting cleaning cooked bug guts off your pipes and radiator.

6. How about a 3 foot alligator, in Idaho! Was playing on the ST1100 at work, call it playing because I just patrol to be visible, going through an area along the river with a bunch of hot springs. Came around a curve and saw what looked like a log in the road, but one end moved and had two reflective dots. Got stopped and saw what was and tried to back pedal. It turned and scooted back into brush. Turned out to be an attempted theft from a private farm by high school kids. For years didn’t know why they called that place a gator farm, do now. Raises them to about 3 feet for boots.

7. A month ago, riding in the N. California coastal hills with a buddy, I pulled over and my buddy came alongside saying he had to clean off his jacket. What? Turns out about a mile back a buzzard had lifted off ahead of him carrying a huge load of purified road kill. It flew low over my pal and suddenly dropped his load like a precision bomb, a direct hit. It was about the consistency of jelly and so putrid I almost puked while helping wipe it off his jacket. We rode on a couple miles further to a small lake where we were able to wash off the worst of it while flies buzzed around us.

8. Downhill, country road twisty at a high rate of speed. Not one but TWO peacocks in full plumage centered in my lane! They flew up and I drove under them!

9. Narrowly missed a mirror off of the car in front me when an oncoming car sideswiped it at highway speeds. Dodged oncoming, ducked under flying mirror, dodged car in front of me after they locked up their brakes.

10. Riding along a dirt lane to a campground in Steelevile MO, what I thought was a mass of about 40 to 50 dragonflies hovering and darting around over the middle of the road turned out to actually be a mass of humming birds. I never slowed down since bug guts never really bothered me. But I recognized what they were as I rode through the cloud of birds. Never touched a one of them as they simply just parted enough to let me through. It didn’t even faze them and they returned to their buzzing over the middle of the road as if nothing ever happened.

Wow–totally cool about the hummingbirds. I’m sure he would have hated massacring a bunch of those little guys. So there you have it. Ride carefully, it’s dangerous out there!

Biker Quote for Today

When people talk about how many times I’ve gone down . . . yeah, but did I die?

If we feel vulnerable on our motorcycles, how vulnerable must scooter riders feel?

I have no idea what led up to this but I caught the very end of an ugly encounter on Wednesday.

Following my surgery in March I am now going to rehab sessions three times a week over at Porter Hospital. I was heading north on Downing, getting near Porter, when my eye was caught by the unusual motion of a scooter heading south.

The guy on the scooter was pretty interesting all by himself. He was wearing a helmet and for a jacket he wore a Mexican-style serape. Kind of odd looking. But that was not the point.

The point was that there was a pick-up right behind him, very close, and as I watched the scooter came to a very abrupt, very unstable stop, and as the pick-up blasted on past him the obviously angry rider threw up his arms in a middle finger salute. Holy crap, what just happened?

Of course the supposition is that the pick-up was crowding the scooter. Maybe he was not going fast enough for the pick-up driver’s sense of urgency or whatever. Whatever the case I’d say it’s pretty certain the guy in the pick-up was being a total jerk.

It wouldn’t be the first time. Heck, one time I watched as a guy in a pick-up deliberately pulled up slowly behind a motorcycle and tapped bumpers. The rider pulled forward and the guy pulled forward again and tapped his bumper again. Deliberately. Just being a jerk. Why do people do things like that?

I’ll never know the details of this vignette over by Porter but I will remember for a long time what I saw.

Biker Quote for Today

The only way to see the sunset is to ride into it.

What if that blue Honda suddenly–and quickly–moved into the lane to its left? That’s how it was for me except there weren’t all these other bikes ahead of me.

On Thursday last week I took my first ride after more than two months, thanks to bypass surgery, and it was not without its very own moment of excitement.

My timing (bad timing) was such that I was homeward bound up I-25 in the middle of rush hour. There was a bit of stop and go but mostly we were moving pretty well. Of course, you know how it is in that kind of traffic. If you want to change lanes you need to act quickly when the opportunity presents itself. And a woman in a Nissan Altima did just that.

I’m sure she looked in her mirror and saw an opening and jumped on it. What I’m also sure she did not do was to do a head check–turn her head to see for sure that the lane was clear and nobody was in her blind spot. And guess who, at that particular instant, was indeed in her blind spot.

So I’m cruising along trying to maintain a distance between myself and the car in front of me so I’m not constantly braking and accelerating and with no warning whatsoever this car next to me starts moving decisively into my lane . . . which is where I am. We were probably going between 30 and 40 miles an hour and I had to brake hard to let her get ahead of me. I braked hard enough that I nearly stalled the bike and with no speed the bike started to lay down, such that I put my left foot out to hold us up. Plus, this meant I was veering into the adjacent lane to my left.

I got it all stabilized and got moving again and I could hear the guy behind me blowing his horn long and loud. I knew he wasn’t blowing it at me, but at the woman who cut in on me. After a moment I was able to move into the right lane and I sped up to pull alongside her. I shook my fist at her and blew my horn, and meanwhile the guy who had been behind me–a guy in a CDOT tow truck–was right behind her blowing his horn. She just stared straight ahead: I see nothing. I hear nothing.

Then a minute later the tow truck guy pulled up alongside me and rolled his window down, yelling to ask if I was OK. I gave him a thumbs up and a nod of thanks.

So yeah, first ride after being off the bike awhile and already some excitement. I only wonder if I would have been more alert to the intention of this driver if I hadn’t been away from riding for so long. I’ll never know, but that’s all the more reason I want to get in a good 1,000 miles this month before we take off on this Canada trip. I always want to be at the top of my game when I’ve got Judy on behind me.

Biker Quote for Today

Don’t fear dying, fear not living.