It appears that the effort to ban bicycles from select roads in St. Charles County, MO has ended. The Post-Dispatch reported that the County Council vote was a unanimous 6-0. So, council member Joe Brazil voted against his own proposal. Why? According to the P-D story, he still believes that a majority of residents in his district favor taking away cyclist's rights to the road, but will likely pursue alternate bills regarding group ride permits and required equipment.
"If you want to ride on them and take chances, that's unfortunate, but you can't fix stupid," Brazil is quoted as saying by the P-D. It's unfortunate, but he's right. If we could fix stupid we would no longer have drivers speeding, texting, and drinking and driving on MO-94.
The effort to ban bicycles on certain St. Charles County roads has been covered here before. In that post, I detailed a few reasons the ban was a bad idea, both practically and legally. In hilly, rural St. Charles County, roads rarely cross MO-94 and other major roads, so riding anywhere requires at least short stretches of highway riding. Legally, MoDOT has stated that they, and only they, can regulate state highways and they do not support a bike ban.
And of course there are other arguments against the ban. Motor vehicles require a license to operate for a reason. They can be dangerous to the operator and others. One does not have a right operate a motor vehicle, one does have an individual right to operate a bicycle. The issue hasn't really been about safety though, it's been about clearing the roads so that drivers can drive faster and pay less attention to what they're doing.
