Thursday, March 19

Quit fiddling, Nero

Representative Jules Kopel-Bailey of Oregon's 42nd district,

I am appalled that you are supporting HB 2690. I, too, am a bicycle commuter, but I am vehemently opposed to allowing bicycles ignore traffic signs in this manner. There are too many ill-behaved cyclists in this city as it is, and this bill rewards their ill behavior. We should be cracking down on cyclists that ignore stop signs, not give them a free pass.

More importantly, I am greatly disappointed that the only two issues we've heard the most about involving you since you went to Salem to represent us are HB 3122 and HB 2690. You're playing around with petty things like measuring pints of beer, letting cyclists run stop signs, and meaningless gestures while our education system is on the verge of a financial collapse! I am disgusted that you choose to serve our district and our state in such a trivial and worthless manner. Forget pints of beer and bicycles, do something abut health care, unemployment, and adequately funding schools and universities.

Stop emulating Nero. Quit fiddling and start putting out the metaphorical fires threatening our state.

4 comments:

  1. Personally, I'm really hoping the Idaho-style stop sign law passes, and I think you're mischaracterizing it. It wouldn't allow us to *ignore* stop signs; rather, it would allow us to treat them as yields.

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  2. I know it's effectively making stop signs yields. It's more that it sticks in my craw that this bill seems to reward that small minority of overly-aggressive, rude, and generally terribly-behaved cyclists that give the rest of us on two wheels a bad reputation. It's giving them a free pass to do keep misbehaving instead of providing a disincentive for ill behavior.

    That said, what bothers me far more is that the Representative is choosing petty issues like this and the whole "fair pint" thing as his primary focus rather than the vastly more important problems facing the state.

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  3. Check out your district's map, schools there are decent. Maybe these are the important issues for your district. :)

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