Denver's Law Lets Cyclists Treat Red Lights Like They Probably Already Do - Above the Law
Some good news just hit for the lawyers in Denver who commute to work on their Cannondales! Or their 30-year-old beach cruiser they bought off some guy who was also selling homegrown shrooms at a yard sale. I feel like both of those things are proper Denver behavior.
Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill into law on Wednesday that allows bicyclists to get out of intersections faster by treating them as safety stops.
Under the new law, anyone who uses a “low-speed conveyance” – including bicycles, electric bicycles, electric scooters, skateboards and wheelchairs – can treat stoplights as stop signs, and stop signs as yield signs, when they have the right-of-way.
Finding out that this law was passed made me happy for two reasons. The first is that less time spent in intersections hopefully means that more people get home safely — intersections are a hot spot for accidents. The second is that I now have a new way of classifying my hot ride. Most of us are familiar with the age old how-to-think-like-a-lawyer hypothetical of asking if a vehicle ban in a park excludes bicycles. The scenario is a good way of getting people to try their hand at analogical reasoning — is an 18-wheeler really the same type of thing as a Huffy? Surely a motorcycle would be a vehicle for the purposes of the park ban on account of its speed and noise, as would a car, but would it make sense to ban a bike along those lines? Now we can cut straight through the Borromean and argue “low-speed conveyances” are an exception to the vehicle rule! That might not be true, but it would at least help you think like a lawyer by asking if redefining a thing lets you do what you want!
That’s a lawyer thing, right? Tax lawyer, at least.
New State Law Lets Bicycles, Scooters Roll Through Stop Signs When They Have The Right-Of-Way [9 News]
Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s. He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at [email protected] and by tweet at @WritesForRent.
source: https://abovethelaw.com/2022/04/denvers-law-lets-cyclists-treat-red-lights-like-they-probably-already-do/
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