Is a bicycle a car?

Is a bicycle a car?  Seems like a pretty straight forward question, but not once the California Court of Appeal gets it’s hands on it.  In Velasquez v. Superior Court (2014 DJ DAR 9391), the defendant left a Dodger’s game intoxicated on his fixed gear bicycle.  Fixed gear bikes, also called track bikes, have no breaks, and rely on resistance on the pedals to stop.  They are all the rage with younger hipster types these days, and are extremely fast, but require considerable skill to use properly, especially in traffic.  The defendant swerved into the wrong side of the road to avoid a car that pulled in front of him, and collided with a pedestrian, injuring her quite badly.  He was arrested and charged with felony reckless driving.  Here’s the rub:  Vehicle Code §670 excludes human powered vehicles from statutes written for cars, while Vehicle Code § 21200 subjects bicycle riders to all the provisions of the driver of a car.  The Court of Appeals finds that the legislative history of both sections support the finding that, as least for criminal charging, a bike should be considered a vehicle, though they recognize the friction between the statutes.  I guess this case is off to the Supreme Court and I see the conflict.  On one hand, reckless driving, a two point, jailable offense, is intended to deter driving which embodies a “wonton disregard for the safety of others.”  Implicit in this is the recognition that a car, weighing at a minimum 3,000 pounds, can be a capable of considerable carnage if not operated properly.  Bikes do not fit within that characterization.  On the other hand, many mid-twenties types have embraced urban biking, without respect for the rules of the road.  There is extremely bad and dangerous behavior from bikers who don’t respect the rules of the road.  This goes double for the track bike crowd.  What I learned a lifetime ago as a bike messenger:  if you break traffic laws, and go head up with a car, you will lose.  This is an issue of pure physics and Darwinian process.  I don’t think criminal charging is the answer.

It is no secret that California’s Court of Appeals is much of the time brazenly pro-prosecution, churning out death penalty affirmances by the score to the tune of “harmless error,”  and is known for torturing jurisprudence or facts to uphold convictions as well as the behavior of District Attorneys and law enforcement.  However, once in a while, they make me proud.  In People v. Garcia (C/A 4th, Div. 3, G048020), the Orange County District Attorney continuously tried to introduce evidence of defendant’s sexual orientation at trial despite a prior ruling, they argued in their closing that because the defendant was a lesbian, that she had motive to molest a minor female, and that her sexual orientation was “absolutely relevant” to the charges.  The Court of Appeals was outraged, and reverses for prosecutorial misconduct, recognizing that sexual orientation should never be put before a jury for consideration, stating that “it is painful to find this battle still being fought 58 years later.”  The Court concluded “due process and the interests of fairness dictate that appellant be judged by what she did, not who she is.  Nothing less will do.”  The fact that this could happen in open court, in this day and age, shocks the conscience. The behavior by the DA is repellent, inexcusable, and it is a stark reminder that race, sex and sexual orientation are not dead letters in our society.  It is good to know that justice can still be done if we are vigilant.