New state law adds protections for pedestrians and bicyclists
Gov. Charlie Baker has agreed to a brand new law geared toward making roads more secure for “inclined customers” together with bicyclists, pedestrians, skate boarders and every person else who isn’t always in a car.
Baker signed the invoice (H 5103) Sunday after it received momentum all through the quiet casual classes which have been held because formal classes ended on Aug. 1.
The law requires large cars to be ready with lateral defensive devices, extra mirrors and backup cameras. It additionally calls for officers to file statistics approximately crashes related to inclined avenue customers and lets in municipalities to petition to regulate velocity limits on kingdom highways inside their borders.
Baker in September back the invoice to the Legislature with amendments whilst additionally expressing help on the time for numerous additives of the invoice. The House and Senate rejected the governor’s amendments, however made in addition changes (S 3162) to the invoice remaining week earlier than returning it.
Sen. William Brownsberger has found out firsthand approximately the subject of the invoice via way of means of driving his motormotorcycle from his domestic in Belmont to his workplace on the State House. He celebrated the invoice’s re-enactment on Dec. 27.
“I’m so satisfied we ought to get it to Governor’s table again,” Brownsberger wrote on his website. “I sense the very last invoice is as robust as what we at the start submitted: It will store lives at the roads.”
The invoice extensively defines a inclined avenue consumer as either “a pedestrian, along with someone engaged in paintings upon a manner or upon software centers alongside a manner or engaged withinside the provision of emergency offerings withinside the manner” or “someone working a bicycle, handcycle, tricycle, skateboard, curler skates, in-line skates, non-motorized scooter, wheelchair, electric powered non-public assistive mobility device, horse, horse-drawn carriage, motorized bicycle, motorized scooter, or different micromobility device, or a farm tractor or comparable car designed by and large for farm use.” It additionally authorizes the registrar of motor cars to designate “different categories.”
In passing a inclined avenue consumer, in line with the invoice, “the operator of a motor car shall byskip at a secure distance of now no longer much less than four ft and at an affordable and right velocity.”
The law in addition states that if it isn’t always viable to overhaul a inclined consumer or different car at a secure distance withinside the identical lane, “the overtaking car shall use all or a part of an adjoining lane, crossing the centerline if important, whilst it’s miles secure to accomplish that and whilst adhering to the roadway velocity limit.”
The law calls for the Department of Transportation to “erect and hold signage alongside public approaches important to inform operators of motor cars of the necessities for passing a inclined consumer from a secure distance.”
