Bike safety hearing not all it’s cracked up to be.

I made my way down to the State House basement Wednesday to cover a hearing on new bike safety bill that is going to the state legislature. I thought as soon as the meeting was brought to session they would break into the bike safety issue. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The first issue to be taken up was for seat belt safety laws. Interrupted only sporadically to hear testimony from state senators and representatives on other bills, the seat belt supporters took nearly 3 and a half hour. After sitting through their speeches, I though they would run up to the end of the meeting time, which was one o’clock. I couldn’t quite understand their arguments, as I was pretty certain that everyone knew to wear their seat belts and Massachusetts already had mandatory seatbelt laws.

While this took up the major portion of the meeting I knew there was no story there. The majority of the speakers related the horror stories of accident victims who weren’t buckled up. There was no opposition to the bill. The only thing detracting from it, at least that I could see, was the potential for police to pull people over on the basis of unbuckled seat belts.

When the supporters of the bike safety bill took the floor I was eagerly looking at my watch. I had class at one o’clock and it was already 20 after noon.

Each was very brief in their testimony, having delivered pre-written statements for the members of the committee. About 20 minutes after they had started they were done.There was no opposition to the bill present to give testimony. ‘

-SPH3