Public
Hearing for the 2017 Legislative Session,
January 7, 2017
January 7, 2017
Statement
by Allen Muchnick,
Virginia Bicycling Federation board member
Virginia Bicycling Federation board member
Good afternoon. I’m Allen Muchnick, a board member of both the Virginia Bicycling Federation and Active Prince William. Active Prince William was founded one year ago to advance bicycling, walking, and public transportation in Prince William County and greater Manassas.
For the past
eight years, the Virginia Bicycling Federation has sought to improve justice
for bicyclists injured by negligent motorists.
As a result, the General Assembly has modified Virginia’s traffic laws to
finally prohibit motorists from following or passing a bicyclist too closely
and from carelessly opening the driver’s door of a parked vehicle into the path
of approaching traffic. While we appreciate these long-needed changes, more
must be done to hold careless and distracted motorists accountable for their
negligence.
Last year,
Senator Surovell and Delegate Sullivan each introduced bills to charge a
careless or distracted motorist with a Class 1 misdemeanor and to suspend their
driver’s license for one to three years if their negligence is “the proximate
cause of serious physical injury to a vulnerable road user.” Although both bills died in committee last
year, we are pleased that both legislators will file similar bills this year. Delegate Sullivan’s new bill is HB 1633. We ask the entire Prince William County
delegation to endorse both bills as co-patrons.
Distracted
driving due to handheld electronic devices has been a growing cause of traffic
crashes, injuries, and deaths for well over a decade. We strongly support Senator Surovell’s SB 860,
which would generally prohibit the manual operation of a handheld personal communications
device while driving a motor vehicle and would establish a reckless driving
charge if a violation of this new prohibition is concurrent with an additional
traffic offense or if the violation results in a crash. We ask the Prince William County delegation
to strongly support this bill as well.
Senator Surovell has
also prefiled a bill to establish a reckless driving charge for motorists who
pass, or attempt to pass, another vehicle by driving in a bicycle lane. We fully support that bill and would also
support a reckless driving charge when a motorist passes another
same-direction-motorist who is stopped at a marked crosswalk for pedestrian or
bicycle traffic.
In 2015 and 2016,
bills were filed to not reduce highway maintenance payments to municipalities that
have implemented road diets, whereby the space occupied by one or more
conventional travel lanes is reallocated to create one or more bike lanes. Road diets are widely used, including in
Northern Virginia, to effectively retrofit bike lanes while simultaneously improving
a road’s capacity and safety for motorists; they should not be discouraged with
counterproductive disincentives. We expect
Delegate Villanueva to carry the road diet bill this year, and we ask you to
endorse it as co-patrons. Cities,
including Manassas and Manassas Park, would benefit significantly from this
legislation.
Thank you for
considering my requests, and best wishes for a productive legislative session.
