Portland courts and law enforcement officials are in a state of confusion about whether or not fixed-gear bicycles should be required to have a separate hand brake.
Judges have come down on both sides of the issue but some Portland police officers continue to issue citations.
A change in the law was sought by local bike lawyer Mark Ginsberg and southern Oregon Senator Jason Atkinson in 2007. Senate Bill 729 would have clarified the existing bicycle brake equipment requirement so that fixed-gear bicycles would not have needed an additional brake (as long as they meet the performance standard).
Unfortunately, the fixed-gear language was stripped from the bill by one pivotal lawmaker (Senator Ginny Burdick) at the 11th hour and the issue persists.
This morning Portland cyclist John Boyd successfully defended himself in a Multnomah County traffic court trial for a ticket he received for riding a fixed-gear bicycle without a hand brake. Boyd, a 40 year-old architect and resident of Northeast Portland, was given the ticket by Officer Barnum of the Portland Police Bureau’s Traffic Division. Barnum … Read more
[via the Portland Mercury Blog] [Notice of appeal] Portland lawyer Mark Ginsberg has filed an appeal in the Ayla Holland fixed-gear case. Ginsberg waited to make his decision until after he and his staff could closely scrutinize the transcript from the initial trial. Ayla Holland told me in a recent phone conversation that she feels … Read more
The Portland Mercury Blog is reporting that Multnomah County Judge Dale Koch has denied lawyer Mark Ginsberg’s request to have his stack of fixed-gear tickets heard in a real courtroom, instead of in lowly traffic court. Since the Ayla Holland case, Ginsberg has collected seven more cases of bicyclists being ticketed for not having a … Read more
[Click for full PDF, 2.1MB] Mark Ginsberg, lawyer in the Ayla Holland case, has just sent me the official transcript (PDF, 2.1MB) from her traffic court trial. It’s an interesting read. If you don’t get around to downloading the file, here’s the excerpt from the judge’s final decision: Judge Lowe: “The testimony here is that … Read more
[Jason Atkinson, Oregon State Senator.] Republican Oregon State Senator Jason Atkinson read about Ayla Holland’s court case on CyclingNews.com and was furious. Atkinson—who was elected to the Oregon State Senate at the ripe age of 30—is an avid cyclist and traveled through Oregon on a fixed-gear bike during his campaign for Governor in ’05. Atkinson … Read more
Last week—in the middle of the fixed-gear fiasco—I got an email from an employee of The Bicycle Business, a bike shop in Sacramento, California. They had stumbled across the story and thought the judge and the police were being, “completely ridiculous” so they decided to flex their capitalist muscles and do something about it:
[Photo: Dabby] In response to the following comments made by the traffic court judge in the Ayla Holland/fixed-gear trial, “If your client had a stick she could rub against her tire, you’d have a case.” many local messengers are now equipped with stick-brakes. They are also holding a stick-braking competition.
Several cyclists out on the streets in the last few days have relayed their concerns to me about what they perceive as increased police enforcement of fixed-gear riders. Given the recent court decision and heightened awareness of this issue, I asked Traffic Division Lieutenant Mark Kruger for an official stance on how the Portland Police … Read more
My recent story on a traffic court decision that upheld a ticket to a local messenger for not having a “separate braking device” on her fixed-gear bicycle has quickly spread around the web and seems to have struck a nerve in cyclists everywhere. This morning the article was linked to from BoingBoing.net, one of the … Read more
[Ayla Holland (L) and Mark Ginsberg (R)] Yesterday at the Multnomah County Courthouse the law came down against fixed gear bicycles. On June 1, 2006 Portland bike messenger Ayla Holland was given a ticket for allegedly violating Oregon Revised Statute (ORS) 815.280(2)(a) which states, A bicycle must be equipped with a brake that enables the … Read more