BCNM Action Alert – Legislation Important to Cyclists Being Considered by the NM State Legislature
The
Bicycle Coalition of New Mexico urges cyclists and others to support
three bills that have been introduced in this session of the State
Legislature. You all already know about SB 290, which BCNM supports.
Please write to your senator and representative expressing your support for the following bill, if you do support them:
1. Senate Bill 17 / House
Bill 43, which would prohibit texting while driving. The importance of
this bill for the safety of all New Mexicans, but especially for
pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorcyclists is obvious.
Here are links to the Senate and House versions of the bill:
http://www.nmlegis.gov/lcs/_session.aspx?Chamber=S&LegType=B&LegNo=17&year=13 http://www.nmlegis.gov/lcs/_session.aspx?Chamber=H&LegType=B&LegNo=43&year=13
2. House
Bill 582 is a simple common-sense draft that provides that bicyclists
could use their right hand to signal a right turn. Here is the text of
this bill:
A draft letter you can use to express your support for all three bills is attached to this e-mail.
You can find contact information for NM state representatives including e-mail addresses here:
Thank you for contacting your Senator and Representative. You can find your Senator and Representative here: http://www.nmlegis.gov/lcs/legislatorsearch.aspx
Diane E. Albert, PhD
Board Member, Bicycle Coalition of New Mexico (BCNM)
League of American Bicyclists LCI #2292
LAB National Board Member
P.O. Box 30548
Albuquerque, NM 87190-0548
2 comments:
The Texas governor vetoed a similar bill about texting while driving. While I don't agree with his rationale, a better law would be to consider texting within "X" minutes of a crash a rebuttable presumption of negligence and disregard of human life by the offender. Of course, such use could also be considered by the court as an aggravating circumstance in any other vehicle-related offense.
This is not a comment about the original post, but rather a response to something I saw recently on the pajarito riders (or something similar) email list, to which several contributors here also contributed there:
The intersection of Diamond and 36th is rather worse than it was before the Diamond drive redo came through this section a few years back. The reason is that they regraded Diamond to be slightly shallower through that section, which caused it to be a couple of feet higher in elevation at the intersection. The problem is that they didn't similarly raise 36th street. Instead they created what amounts to a rather substantial dip that you drop into as you come down 36th and hit Diamond. Together with the slight wave of Diamond and its sidewalk there, that means that in order for a driver to see much of anything about the oncoming traffic coming up from the golf course, he or she pretty much has to drive up out of the dip and into the bike lane.
That has the obvious consequences for safety of not only bikers (but especially them) but also the cars and such too.
Post a Comment