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Legislation of importance to all New Jersey motorcyclists is pending in the New Jersey Legislature.

Senate Bill 2432, sponsored by Sen. Fred Madden (D-Sewell) and backed by ABATE of the Garden State, would impose additional penalties for vehicle operators involved in right-of-way crashes that result in serious bodily injury or death. It would also increase penalties for subsequent violations of failure to yield the right-of-way at an intersection or failure to obey stop or yield signs. [AMA SUPPORTS this bill]

For covered crashes resulting in serious bodily injury to another person, additional penalties of up to $500, a 90-day license suspension, and attendance in a Driver Improvement Program are provided.

For covered crashes resulting in death to another person, additional penalties of up to $1,000, a six month license suspension, and attendance in a Driver Improvement Program are provided.

You can check the status and read the text of this bill at http://www.njleg.state.nj.us.

Use the AMA "Issues and Legislation" area at http://www.amadirectlink.com/legisltn/rapidresponse.asp to learn who your elected officials are, then contact them to make your concerns known about the legislation above. Click on the "StateWatch" link to stay informed of legislation that could impact your right to ride. By entering your Zip +4 Code in the box provided, you're just a few steps away from the contact information you need. Make a call, send a letter or email message, and/or visit your elected officials so they know your ride, you vote, and you care.

Maybe it's just me but those penalties appear so small as to be almost inconsequential. A serious injury brings an extra 500 dollars? Death 1000?

The law is a step in the right direction but those numbers will likely not have any impact on current stats in that state.

Its good, but not something that will affect change.

Anonymity is a problem in our society. If you kill or horribly injure someone due to negligence in a car - it should be publicized. Everyone you know should know that because of your lack of skills (even though you tell everyone you are an above average driver) resulted in the sever injury or death of another person.

And it should follow you for life and they should be forced to donate $500 a year to motorcyclists oriented funds for every year they care to continue to be a licensed car driver.

But even that - or even more stringent rules - won't do anything for the severely injured or dead rider.

But of course legislation is already in place to charge people with vehicular manslaughter (in the case of a dead rider) or even attempted murder (of the 2nd degree type) when people's egregious carelessness results in harm to another individual.

RhadamYgg

Of course, to join this up with another thread - in NJ in 2007 there were only 75 deaths of motorcyclists. That would be a maximum of 75 times this law could be applied, but more than likely 30 to 40 percent of those fatalities are inebriated or partially inebriated bikers.

Damn, 75 bikers died in NJ in 2007, how many bikers are there? Must not be too many or else that is a really low number of fatalities per 100,000 bikers.

RhadamYgg

I didn't click on the links, but from what is posted, it doesn't seem like this is only for motorcycle/other vehicle incidents. So it could be applied many more times for other vehicle/vehicle incidents. It seems each year there are more and more people trying to turn left(without a left turn signal) before the oncoming traffic accelerates into the intersection (doesn't seem to matter if the oncoming traffic is a motorcycle, car, or whatever). I think some of those people think it's their right to do it nowadays.

Dragon on Wheels wrote:I didn't click on the links, but from what is posted, it doesn't seem like this is only for motorcycle/other vehicle incidents. So it could be applied many more times for other vehicle/vehicle incidents. It seems each year there are more and more people trying to turn left(without a left turn signal) before the oncoming traffic accelerates into the intersection (doesn't seem to matter if the oncoming traffic is a motorcycle, car, or whatever). I think some of those people think it's their right to do it nowadays.

The more expensive the car it seems the less likely they are to:
1) Use turn signals
2) Be pushy about merging
3) Look at you like you were wrong when they were the ones that did something wrong

Which is really funny because I'm riding around in my clunker going to the Lexus guy - yeah - go ahead hit me, what do I care - at least when I'm drivng my Honda Car?

RhadamYgg