Apr 26, 2010
Illegalities of bike passengering?
BikePortland.org has a recent write up trying to tackle the question we’ve addressed or encountered many times since setting up shop: is carrying someone on your bike illegal?
Well, turns out sometimes it is illegal and sometimes not:
[Portland bike lawyer Mark Ginsberg] said that people who carry kids and friends on Xtracycle decks have nothing to worry about because those bikes pass the “consumer expectation test.”
One of the first cargo loads Ross carried on his prototype Xtracycle were his friends lending a hand. Since then, we’ve improved passenger carrying with LongTail standard accessories like Footsies, MagicCarpet and Stoker Bars. Not content with just carrying young kids and adults, we designed our PeaPod LT to carry tykes as young as 12-months and offer additional safety with our center stand, KickBack.
In making our products specifically designed to carry passengers, and then marketing them through photos showing passengers riding on board, we’ve essentially legalized passengering on Xtracycles. Why? Ginsberg says:
“…because the manufacturer displays photos of the bike being used to carry people in that manner, consumers have the expectation that the racks are designed for that purpose (he cited the 2001 Oregon Supreme Court case of McCathern v. Toyota Motor Corp. as precedent). “The consumer is allowed to look at the advertisements and rely on them.”
In the long run, Police officers aren’t going to be ticketing people riding in a safe, smart manner when passengering. They’re not out looking to ruin people’s days, well maybe a grumpy one here and there, but overall they want to avoid working preventable accident scenes had people used proper equipment and judgment.
Ride safe, ride with love, ride on!
[...] wrote its own blog post about carrying bicycle [...]