|
Snowmachines
require new state laws, lots of enforcement
 By
Mike Doogan
If nothing else, this week's series of Daily News stories
on the dangers of snowmachining should put an end to the idea of
letting people drive the machines in Anchorage. Too many people
without good judgment drive the machines too fast. Too many people
drink and drive them. Making it legal to drive snowmachines in the
city is a bad, bad idea.
Keeping snowmachines out of Anchorage is a minimum response to
the situation. Here are some other things that should be done.
First, make it illegal for anyone younger than 16 to drive a snowmachine.
Make driver training mandatory, and require people to pass a test
before giving them licenses.
Second, establish a statewide snowmachine speed limit.
Third, outlaw highmarking.
Fourth, raise snowmachine registration fees, and put most of the
money into manning and equipping police forces to enforce these
laws and other laws like the drunken driving law.
The state's snowmachine groups should have no problem with these
proposals. Their spokesmen say over and over again that snowmachiners
are overwhelmingly people who want to enjoy safe family fun, that
only a tiny minority does bad things like drink or drive too fast
or attempt dangerous stunts. These proposals can only make it safer
for that overwhelming majority of families to enjoy their fun.
Of course, there will be people who complain that it isn't fair
to impose limits on the law-abiding majority because a tiny minority
does dangerous things. But only a tiny minority blows up airplanes,
and we have accepted - applauded, in fact - a series of restrictions
on our behavior and privacy to prevent that. Most laws, including
traffic laws, are intended to protect the majority of law-abiding
citizens from the tiny minority without sense or conscience. Why
should snowmachines be exempt from such laws?
Other people might argue that we don't need laws because riders
in the tiny minority kill or injure only themselves. If that were
true, I'd be the first to agree. Damn fools should be free to kill
themselves any way they choose. Unfortunately, that's not true.
Just this year, a drunken snowmachiner killed a pedestrian near
Wasilla. It's only a matter of time until some drunken snowmachiner
plows into a crowd at high speed. Or some highmarker sets off an
avalanche that kills a whole bunch of people.
Because the likelihood is that it isn't just a tiny minority that
drives foolishly. Snowmachine sales are aimed at young men who want
to drive fast. Why else would Polaris advertise its machines as
"the way to follow your heart at full throttle" or Yamaha tell prospective
buyers to "get ready to hammer the trails - and absolutely pound
the competition"?
Then there's alcohol. Since there is no real enforcement of drunken
driving laws for snowmachiners, it's impossible to tell how widespread
drunken driving is. But the prevalence of alcohol at events like
the Arctic Man and the popularity of "poker runs" from lodge to
lodge suggests drunken driving is much more widespread than the
spokesmen for snowmachine groups are willing to admit.
So just how big is this tiny minority? Twenty percent of snowmachiners?
Thirty percent? Fifty? In a state where no one even has an accurate
count of the snowmachines being driven, there's no way to tell.
But there's no reason to suspect that the percentage of drunken
or reckless snowmachiners is any lower than the percentage of drunken
or reckless drivers. In fact, there's every reason to suspect it
is higher.
Snowmachine groups should be at the forefront of the effort to
make their pastime safer. Instead, they are silent. But there's
no getting around the truth: Until we take steps to eliminate the
excesses, there will be no escaping the threat reckless snowmachiners
pose to others.
* Mike Doogan's column appears each Tuesday, Friday and Sunday.
His telephone number is 257-4350, and his e-mail address is mdoogan@adn.com.
©2000
Anchorage Daily News
|
