They Won’t Obey The Law. So Why Pass It?

 

Community Board 6, Manhattan . Photo by Kevin Dugan for Streetsblog NYC.

People kill people. Therefore, laws against homicide and manslaughter are pointless.

Any lawyer who made such a statement probably wouldn’t be a lawyer for much longer. And anyone else who uttered it might be committed—or, in some places, elected.

While nobody in Manhattan’s Community Board 6–which includes the east side of the borough from 14th to 59th Street, one member of that wise and worldly body said something that is, at least to mind, just as logically flawed.

Or could it be that Jason Froimowitz has access that I lack to powers of reasoning. He was reactingto a bill, proposed by City Council Member Robert Holden, that would require, “ every bicycle with electric assist, electric scooter, and other legal motorized vehicle that is not otherwise required to be registered with the DMV, to be registered with DOT and receive an identifying number which would be displayed on a visible plate affixed to the vehicle.”

That sounds good on its face. But, perhaps not surprisingly for anything from Holden—who’s never met a cop or car he didn’t like—it’s not very well thought-out.  For one thing,  doesn’t address a legal loophole that allows moped buyers to leave the shop without registering the vehicle. So someone could buy a moped and the city would be none the wiser—and thus unable to enforce a mandate to plate.

The bill also does not acknowledge a major source of dangerous moped and ebike operation:  food delivery apps, which guarantee customers that their ramen will be delivered within 15 minutes or some similar time frame.  As it stands, delivery services and the restaurants that employ them face no penalties when their delivery workers maim or kill someone.

To be fair, requiring registration—from the point of sale onward—would make it easier to hold Doordash and their ilk to account, in part because the police will have one less excuse for not enforcing bans on motorized vehicles in bike and pedestrian lanes—and for not citing dangerous operation on the streets.

Froimowitz's objection to the bill, however, has nothing to do with the flaws I have enumerated.  Rather, he seems to think that passing any law to address the issue is pointless.  This would-be bastion of jurisprudential logic instead offers up this analogy as his reason for voting against the bill:

We currently require registration and license plates for motor vehicles in New York City and there is a prolific problem of vehicles obstructing, and removing, and defacing those license plates, so I fail to see how a solution requesting new implementation of  license plates would be effective. 

Before I proceed, I must say that I fail to see how a vehicle can obstruct, remove or deface a license plate.  And I am trying to wrap my head around "a prolific problem."  When someone or something is "prolific," they produce something in abundance, whether it's fruit from a tree or writing from a blogger.  A problem does not produce anything; it is produced and whatever produces it might be prolific if it is making more problems or anything else.

Now that I have pointed out the mixed metaphors and overall lazy use of language by a member of a community board that includes some of the city's most affluent and presumably best-educated residents, I will say, in fairness, that he is right on one count:  No regulation will stop all dangerous, discourteous and simply stupid behavior.  But to use that as a reason not to require registration and plating is a bit like saying that there shouldn’t be any restrictions on guns because someone, somewhere will find a way around them.

Bicycle Licensing: An Instrument of Racial And Economic (In)Justice

Last week, I wrote about the arguments over a planned bike lane in Berkeley, California. One resident referred to it as a "culture war."

If it is, I am surprised that controversy about another bit of bicycle-related policy or planning hasn't been seen in the same way.  I am referring bicycle-licensing regulations.

While bike lane battles have garnered a lot of attention during the past decade or so, bike licensing has been mostly an under-the-radar issue for nearly as long as bicycles have existed.  

The battle-lines in bike-lane conflicts are drawn largely along generational lines and between business owners who fear losing parking spaces and people who want more walkable and cycle-able downtowns. On the other hand, the quieter battles over licensing laws divide people, ironically, pit people against each other in a very visible way--one that has defined some loud and violent protests in recent years. 

While there was little or no bike lane construction, at least in the US, between the end of World War I and the beginning of this century, many jurisdictions, from small seaside villages to major metropoli, have had bicycle licensing regulations on their books for decades whether or not most citizens are or were aware of them. As an example, in 1957 Toronto repealed such a law that had been on the books since 1935.  Several times since, the idea of resurrecting the law, or some version of it has been re-visited and, ultimately, rejected, albeit for different reasons.

When the Canadian city got rid of the requirement that stood for more than two decades, few adults rode bicycle.  Thus, according to city fathers (yes, they were all men) "licensing of bicycles be discontinued because it often results in an unconscious contravention of the law at a very tender age; they also emphasize the resulting poor public relations between police officers and children."  Translation: Kids break a law they don't realize exists until they're busted for it, so no wonder they grow up hating cops.

The cost-ineffectiveness of the scheme was also cited in scrapping it and against reviving it.  Also mentioned in the discussions of bringing it back to life is that licensing does little, if anything, to promote bicycle safety or return stolen bikes to their owners--two rationales that have been given for mandating bike registration in what one of the city's most famous natives, Drake, calls "The Six." The cost of administering the program has also been invoked as a reason to end, or not to begin, bicycle licensing and registration programs in other locales.

During the last few years, however, an objection to bike licensing has echoed something that has motivated so many protests of the past few years:  racial injustice.  As an incident in Perth Amboy, New Jersey showed all too clearly, in those few instances when the police stop or even arrest cyclists for riding without a license--or not wearing a helmet, or for violating some other rarely-if-ever-enforced law--the ones penalized are not White and/or do not conform to gender "norms."

David Martinez

That is one reason David Martinez worked to abolish a bicycle registration mandate in his hometown and state of Costa Mesa and California, respectively. Three years ago, he went to the police to register his bike.  When he asked about the program and who gets ticketed, "they said, 'we might ticket the homeless."  That motivated him to make a public records request.  He found that, according to the department's own data, most of the citations were issued on the city's west side, an old industrial area where, not surprisingly, much of the city's nonwhite and homeless populations are concentrated.  He presented his findings to safe streets advocates who, in turn, contacted politicians.

Now Costa Mesa is about to comply with an omnibus bill California Governor Gavin Newsom signed in October.  It calls for, among other things, the abolition of bicycle-licensing and -registration laws and regulations, which have been locally administered, throughout the state. Costa Mesa is the latest municipality to align itself with the new law.

I don't know whether Martinez or anyone else in the Golden State has framed the effort to end bicycle registration as a "culture war."  However, whether or not he has used such terminology, he (like, I imagine, Newsom) no doubt understands bicycle licensing--or, more precisely, how it's enforced--as a racial and economic justice issue precisely because it has never served the purposes (safety, recovery of stolen bikes) given as its rationale.

Bill To Ban Bicycle Licenses In New Jersey

Perth Amboy, New Jersey is a largely working-class and non-White city over the Outerbridge Crossing from Staten Island, New York.  Last month, Perth Amboy cops stopped a group of boys on bikes who were popping wheelies and weaving in and out of traffic.  The cops could have used that stop to talk to the boys about bicycle safety. One of the officers did that, but the situation devolved into the cops confiscating the kids' bikes and handcuffing one of them.

The charge?  The kid they took into custody was riding without a bicycle license.

While the city has had a bike license ordinance on its books for decades, that incident marked the first time, to anyone's knowledge, that it was actually invoked.  That it was used to bring in a boy--who, guess what?, is Black--was, to be  polite, specious. 

The incident garnered national attention, which raised the question of what, exactly, are the reasons for, and purposes of, bicycle licensing regulations.  Most were enacted decades ago (That Perth Amboy's license costs 50 cents should give you an idea of how old that policy is!), ostensibly for purposes that are no longer, if they ever were, applicable.  Or increasingly-militarized police forces use them as yet another way to bully, intimidate and harass people less powerful than themselves. (The Perth Amboy cops could just as well have said they were arresting that kid for Riding While Black.)

Yvonne Lopez lives in Perth Amboy.  She also represents Middlesex County, of which the city is part, in the New Jersey State Assembly. On Monday, she introduced a bill (A5729) that, according to its synopsis, "prohibits municipal ordinances from from requiring license tag to use bicycles within municipality."  Currently, a few other New Jersey municipalities require tags or plates on bicycles, but specifics of those regulations vary.

In order to become law, the bill would have to pass in both chambers (Assembly and Senate) of the state Legislature.  I haven't heard any prognostication about the bill's chances of passing, but I suspect they're good, if for no other reason that the State probably would prefer uniformity from one jurisdiction to the next but doesn't want to be tasked with creating a state bicycle license system. 

What (And Who) Is This Law For, Anyway?

We shouldn't make a law we're not willing to use guns to enforce.

So opined Adam Sullivan of The Gazette, a newspaper and online publication based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

He voiced this conclusion in a discussion of bicycle licensing laws.  Though he was dealing mainly with such regulations in Iowa, what brought him into the discussion was the viral video of Perth Amboy, New Jersey police officers stopping a group of kids who were popping wheelies while weaving in and out of traffic.  While one officer lectured the kids about bicycle safety, the cops used the boys' lack of bicycle licenses as a pretext for confiscating their bicycles and taking one boy--who is, ahem, African-American--into custody.

Sullivan called this--and what he deemed "outdated" bicycle licensing laws--government overreach, if not in so few words.  He makes the legitimate point that many Iowa cities once had mandatory bicycle licensing laws, and the system mainly served two purposes:  to give the police a chance to interact and "make nice" with kids and other community members when they registered their bikes, and to aid in the recovery and return of lost and stolen bicycles.

While those might be legitimate purposes, bicycle licensing, which is now mainly voluntary, no longer serves them.  Few, if any, stolen or lost bikes are returned to their original owners, in part because police departments, especially in larger cities and towns, don't place bike theft or loss high on their list of priorities.  Also, most bicycle licensing systems began during the 1950s and 1960s, when most Americans still thought, "bikes are for kids."  Today, many more bikes are ridden by--and the stolen from--adults.  So, there is less reason for cops to use bike-safety classes to build rapport with kids, or the larger community.

Also, people's attitudes toward cops, especially in cities, are very different, to say the least, from what they were a couple of generations ago.  So the bike-safety and community efforts would be seen as condescending by some and overreach, as Sullivan says, by others.

While Sullivan frames his argument against bike licensing laws--or any other regulations that can't be, or aren't being, enforced--in libertarian terms, I think his editorial also implies another question:  What, exactly is/are the purpose(s) of bicycle licensing regulations?  If almost no stolen or otherwise missing bikes, with or without tags, are returned to their owners, and meaningful efforts toward improving bicycling safety aren't made by police officers or others who understand cycling (or, better yet, are actually regular cyclists), what good is it to require tags?

Oh, and there is the issue of cost:  Perth Amboy bike licenses cost 50 cents. (How long ago was their law enacted?)  As Sullivan points out, most Iowa bike licenses cost around five dollars.  I have to wonder just how much money is actually collected, and how much it actually helps to make cycling safer.  While I think low-income people shouldn't have to pay for licenses, I also believe that those who can afford to pay more, should, if bicycle licensing programs are to serve any real purpose.

On the whole, I am in agreement with Sullivan on his main point:  Any law that isn't going to be enforced--or, worse, that will be enforced selectively, as it was in Perth Amboy-- shouldn't be on the books.  Ditto for any law that isn't used for the overall public good--or no longer has, or never had, a real purpose-- as is too often the case with laws related to bicycles and bicycling.