Saturday, February 4

Fw: SB 93

SB 93 comes for a cote on Tuesday, February 7 in the Colorado Senate Transportation Committee.  This bill makes it legal for bikers to treat stop signs as yield signs and stop lights as stop signs.  I encourage all of you to write to our representative, Senator Baumgardner (<randy.baumgardner.senate@state.co.us> ) who is on that committee and ask him to support the legislation.  I realize we all do this but it would be nice to make it legal.  Below is the email I sent in.

John Bowyer



----- Forwarded Message -----
From: John Bowyer <bikebreck@yahoo.com>
To: "randy.baumgardner.senate@state.co.us" <randy.baumgardner.senate@state.co.us>
Sent: Saturday, February 4, 2017 11:48 AM
Subject: SB 93

Dear Senator Baumgarden;

 As a biker in rural Colorado (living in Silverthorne), I support the Safety Stop Bill (SB 93) proposed by Senator Kerr.  I do realize the importance of checking both ways whenever approaching an intersection.  The extra energy and time required for a biker to come to a complete stop at a stop sign is considerable, and I feel bikers should be allowed to treat the stop sign as a yield sign.  In most cases bikers are out for exercise and in rural Colorado, when they come upon a stop sign it is very easy to determine if it is safe for them to proceed.  Requiring bikers to always stop users considerable energy and does not improve safety.

Likewise stop lights should be treated as a stop sign.  In many locations this is necessary since stop lights do not detect bikers are present and do not change automatically.  Requiring bikers to find and push a cross signal requires extra time, eventually leading to a loss in enjoyment and exercise.

Thank you for your vote to keep Colorado one of the healthiest states in the union!

John Bowyer