02-22-2004, 07:36 AM
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#8 (permalink)
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| Guest | Re: Bike snowplow guy threatened by park district.
On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 22:15:07 -0900, NO_SPAM_TO_dpharris@gci.net (Dennis P.
Harris) wrote:
>On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 21:11:32 -0500 in rec.bicycles.misc,
>Badger_South <Badger@South.net> wrote:
>
>> Would it not be prudent for Dave to get a lawyer. It may be that there are
>> liability issues, or there may not be.
>
>a couple of springs ago, when we couldn't get our local DOT crew
>to get the winter's grit out of the bike lane on a heavily cycled
>highway, a few club members got together a saturday morning work
>party and started with a truck, push brooms, & shovels at the
>edge of town. after about 2 miles & 2 hours, an irate DOT
>foreman showed up and threatened to have us arrested if we kept
>sweeping. said it was a "liability problem" although we all had
>on safety vests and it was a nice sunny day.
Again, I think just touching base with the lawyer would be helpful. Any
cycling law students on here?
I can't believe the liability is for the cleaners/sweepers/plowers, like
you could get a hernia or something? It's gotta be that your actions could
cause a liability to a pedestrian that would follow, or something.
In addition, WTF would (sorry mad at them not you...) a DOT dork bother to
get PO'd and stop and threaten ppl? Like you said, it's probably a turf
issue, and there's probably no freakin' way they'd arrest anyone, b/c they
couldn't prove anything, yadda, yadda. I'd have given him the finger and
threatened to kick him in the leg. <g> What's he gonna do, detain you?
Write down your bike's serial number? (again, mad at them, not you...)
>one of the guys took pix and i sent a short note to the
>governor's office (our previous governor was quite athletic and
>did cycle occasionally) along with the pix, to the staffer
>responsible for DOT liason. 2 days later they sent out the
>sweeper; the lanes were clean for the rest of the summer.
>
>i think the liablity issue is just a control issue for some anal
>bureaucrat. it may not be necessary to get attornies involved if
>the agency has a governing body of some kind, or if he can find
>out which legislators, council members, or other elected official
>can lean on them to have common sense prevail.
Good plan. Probably the way to go. Get a couple pix, call the newspaper,
hell get the name of the anal bureaucrat.
Hope it works out, b/c I love the Snowplow Guy. He rules! (I sent him an
email to that effect last month.)
-B
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