People with Bad Aim No Longer Exempt

Caption: What kind of marketing would convince you not to throw stuff at cyclists?

News from Colorado
People with bad aim no longer exempt

Until recently, drivers could legally throw stuff at cyclists without being cited by authorities...unless they actually hit the cyclist. Thanks to a new Colorado law, people with bad aim are no longer exempt. The new law also requires drivers to give cyclists a 3-foot wide berth when passing.

The new law is being hailed by some as a major step forward. As far as we are concerned, the part about throwing stuff at cyclists is a major step forward from medieval law.

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."
I think this saying means that if someone gives you a horse as a gift, you're not supposed to inspect the horse's teeth to figure out if the horse is actually a gift worth receiving or an old bag of bones barely capable of standing. In that spirit, I am sure that cyclists all across Colorado are now thrilled to know that the next time a driver hurls a half-eaten Filet-O-Fish at them, misses, and is observed by the authorities, the driver can legally be cited if the authority figure wishes to enforce the law.

We are grateful for this step forward, too. However, it is a bit of a sobering reminder of how few legal protections cyclists currently have in cities and states throughout our country. It is also a sobering reminder of how horrendously some drivers behave towards cyclists. When we heard the news, we couldn't help but laugh that such a small step in the direction of common sense and decency was being hailed as a major accomplishment. Then we got to thinking: perhaps, these types of laws weren't already on the books, because it was previously unimaginable that someone would throw stuff at another person for no reason.

Check out the article:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-08-03-bikes_N.htm

Finally, in the vein of strange laws, we discovered an important law from Vermont while doing serious investigative research for this blog post. I'd like to share it with you now:

"Women must obtain written permission from their husbands to wear false teeth."