The Nanny State Liberals Are At It Again
I’m p*ssed folks, I am really (really) unhappy, I seriously doubt you can possibly imagine just exactly how p*ssed off I am that the nanny state Liberal Government of Ontario is actually contemplating sticking its’ sh*tty little fingers so far into my personal life they they tell me I can’t take my grandkids riding with me.
Bill 117 2008
An Act to amend the Highway Traffic Act to prohibit the driving and operation of
motorcycles with child passengersNote: This Act amends the Highway Traffic Act. For the legislative history of the Act, see the Table of Consolidated Public Statutes – Detailed Legislative History on www.e-Laws.gov.on.ca.
Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Ontario, enacts as follows:
1. The Highway Traffic Act is amended by adding the following section:
Prohibition of passengers under 14 years old on motorcycles
38.1 No person shall drive or operate a motorcycle on a highway if another person under the age of 14 years is a passenger on the motorcycle.
Each and every one of my four children rode on the back of my bike from the time they were old enough to safely hang on.
I’ve already had one of the next generation riding with me (GO DANIEL!!) and am looking forward to getting the rest of them on the back of the bike with me as soon as they are old enough to safely hang on — except that Helena Jaczek, MPP (Oak Ridges–Markham) (email address: hjaczek.mpp@liberal.ola.org) and the Liberal Party of Ontario think I’m too f*cking irresponsible to know when that is, thinks that their parents are too f*cking stupid to prevent it me, and wants to deprive me of the pleasure of taking my grandchildren for bike rides, and wants to deprive my grandchildren of the experience of riding with me.
This is the one that will get me back into the voting booth folks, and, if they’re not supporting this piece of nanny state legislation that deems parents so f*cking irresponsible that they can’t be trusted to make decisions about when it is safe to take their children riding with them, I’ll be casting a very, very, blue vote in the next provincial election.
Woah, chill out SL.
Not sure how I feel about this one. Loaded terms like “nanny state” notwithstanding, I feel your pain. On the other hand, when kids safety is concerned I’m pretty open to ideas.
Don’t go vote blue…it’s not worth it.
I agree with SL. Small concession after small concession leads to giant concessions overall. Slippery slopes always begin with “kids safety”. Next thing you know the government mandates you buy glass baby bottles, make kids sit in child seats until they’re 9, and all sorts of other nonsense. The government should not be in business to tell us how to run our lives. Ever.
Perhaps you should wait to see how the PC’s vote on the issue.
This is another example of legislation that seeks to restrict all of us as a result of the foolish actions of a few of us. And try as we may to make our society foolproof, we can never make it damned fool proof.
Throbbin, with respect:
“If more government control and less civil liberties mean increased safety, why aren’t our prisons the safest places in the country?” Munchkin Wrangler
This kind of stuff is why I smoke cigars while I drive without a seatbelt.
I can almost feel the hand of the nanny reaching over my shoulder to buckle me up. It makes my skin crawl.
I think seat belt laws are as misguided as driving without one. Proper actuarial rates could just as easily take care of the difference in accident damage.
Still, a highway patrol guy was once asked what he thought about seat belts. All he said was “In twenty-five years I never unbuckled a dead man.” So, as it happens, I’d wear ‘em. law or not.
It seems like every time I turn around lately the state is there telling me I either can’t do this, or I must do that throbbin – and I weary of it.
I can’t sit in a pub and have a smoke, hell, now days I can’t even sit outside the pub and have a smoke if there are three patio umbrella’s close together because that makes me “inside”.
Pretty soon, if they follow the Quebec model, I won’t be able to pick up my cell phone to see what time it is on those rare occasions when I’m found driving a car – I certainly won’t be able to answer it, because you see, according to the state I’m too stupid and irresponsible to know when its’ safe to do so.
And by next summer if they have their way, by some magical act of the Ontario legislative Assembly, me and thousands of other bikers will wake up one morning and discover ourselves themselves too stupid and irresponsible to know when it’s safe to take our children or grandchildren for a bike ride.
I am tired of being told ‘what’s good for me‘.
I’m tired of being told I’m not responsible enough to make simple decisions.
I’m tired of the state looking at the most stupid and the most irresponsible among us and forcing me to guide my life based on that stupidity and irresponsibility.
Everybody has their ‘step to far‘ throbbin, I think this one is it for me.
Bob Runciman (leader of the Ontario PC party and the Opposition) received an email from me last night asking how his party would vote on this issue.
Hmm, I have no problem with a kid on the back of a bike. I do have a problem with people like the jackass I saw this past summer with a kid in a pair of shorts and t-shirt on the back of a crotch rocket with her noodle protected by a pink bicycle helmet. I am also fine with a modicum of regulation from the government when it comes to helping deal with those of the morbidly stupid among us. So, rather than a ban, I’d recommend that children on the back of a motorcycle be required to be in proper protective clothing and helmet and the driver of the bike should be held to zero tolerance in terms of alcohol or drugs in their system. Further, any traffic violations, speeding, illegal turns or passing, running stops etc have their penalties and fines multiplied by a factor of four when there’s a kid on board. Oh and Raphael is a twat.
Good rant SL. For a moment I thought I had arrived at the Sentinel’s site but then I realized that your argument had logic and no poopy references.
Undoubtedly there was one tragic example somewhere that precipitated this piece of legislation. Unfortunately, this is all too often the knee jerk reaction of politicians trying to get their name in the papers without a thought given to the bigger picture.
SL please don’t go blue anything else. The blues do the same thing. Don’t forget the squeegee laws. SL use the force. SL use the force. The net will work. Look what is happening with face book and teens disagreeing with the politicians. I agree that the state should mind it’s own business.
“This is the one that will get me back into the voting booth folks.”
And here, to be snarky, is the concession that to refrain from voting is symptom of indifference, not of passionate commitment to Revolution.
Sorry, bud, couldn’t resist.
I wouldn’t hold out much hope for Tory support for your position, although many of them would understand your anger/sense of loss and they might not have introduced this bill if they were in power. But quite apart from the timeless prejudice against bikers, we live in an age of hyper-fear for, and hyper-protection of, children…especially from their families. The state is just following the zeitgeist of popular demand in the face of a gazillion “experts” and members of the caring professions warning of a gazillion dangers from strangers, negligent drivers, drug dealers, molesting teachers, school bullies, warped and careless family members, etc. Haven’t you heard that it takes a village to raise a child? Parents lose custody because they smoke today. You are up against millions of mothers watching talk shows where some self-appointed advocate with a tragedy in their past terrifies them with the danger of this kind of thing and calls for this kind of measure to resounding applause from the audience. Do you believe your freedom to introduce your grandkids to the wicked thrill of biking with granddad is any match for a bereaved parent on primetime news saying “If this law can save just one life it will all have been worthwhile…”? Face it, SL, we not only don’t want kids bikes, we hardly want them outside at all. We want them warm and safe frying their brains in front of a computer.
This is from the same government that want to protect “older children” from the horrific results of two teenager sharing a car ride to school, or going on a date or the movies, and require them to pass all kinds of ridiculous tests just to drive a car.
Should we expect any different in this?
Its typical – when the Conservatives want to distract us from the things they have screwed up, the stampede to the “law and order” side of the house. When the Liberals want to do the same thing, its always “won’t someone think of the children?”!!!!
@Pretty Shaved Ape – So in other words PSA you think bikers should be more regulated than automobile drivers – thanks, we appreciate your thoughts [/sarcasm]
Just curious. Are airline pilots more regulated than automobile drivers? If so, is that okay?
Oddly enough b pilots are more regulated than automobile drivers, and given that they have the potential to damage far more people traveling with them that isn’t, IMO, necessarily unreasonable.
I await with interest how you are going to draw any sort of reasonable connection between motorcyclists and airline pilots – I hope it’s a goodie.
Oh, just wondering about your views on differential levels of regulation for different modes of transport, and the notion of responsibility for passenger safety impacting on the need for regs. Just curious.
Well let me see, one travels hundreds of miles an hour, thousands of feet in the air, and carries potentially dozens (or even hundreds) of people – the other does none of that.
I also think that space flight should probably be more regulated than skate boarding.
Now, now gentlemen, please see Lily and Max for your afternoon massages and pedicures immediately.
You are far more likely to die in a motor vehicle or motorcycle accident than in a plane. So by that fact, shouldn’t driving any type of vehicle be more regulated than flying?
I wish people, especially those in government, would learn the term “acceptable risk” and stop trying to legislate a risk free world.
Guess what? Driving a car or motor bike is dangerous. I personally would wear a seat belt and a helmet. I would have kids on my bike, but drive slower and more cautiously.
I don’t need the government to tell me these things, or to force me to do things I feel are unneeded in order to live my life. When do we draw the line, when the Liberals decide having kids near a motorbike should be illegal, because of the sound and the exhaust might be bad for them? When they decide that you cannot allow anyone under 25 in your car, lest they decide they want to drive?
Do we protest ridiculous and totally ineffective airport security measures now, or wait until it is illegal to fly except naked, sedated and wrapped in bubble wrap? Ok that might not be so bad, but you get the idea.
Everything is risky and it is up to the individuals involved to accept the risk, especially in situation where they won’t be a danger to anyone but themselves or a passenger.
Funny how they don’t want teens to have passengers, but will insist on diamond lnes in every city – exclusively for cars with passengers. That drinking and driving ad where the cop is hit talking to the teens in the car? he’d be arresting them for riding together under the Liberals new law.
Enough.
We have gone too far out of unfounded fear of death and injury. If we don’t let people live, they won’t.
“I also think that space flight should probably be more regulated than skate boarding.”
Nonsense. How can you espouse so unconscionable a nanny-state intrusion on the right of free spirited libertarian astronauts to boldly go etc.?
“It seems like every time I turn around lately the state is there telling me I either can’t do this, or I must do that throbbin – and I weary of it.” SL
Man, you are sounding like a rightwing redneck hillbillie.
Not that there is anything wrong with that.
And I am not disagreeing with you on this particular issue.
I still think a name change is in order, at least just a tad small shift from the left so perhaps ‘CenterStage’ is apt afterall.
SL doesn’t have to be categorized because of a very libertarian stance that is neither left nor right. He suggested he would vote for the political party that best protects the rights of the individual.
And I never really thought SL was an unrepentant far lefty anyway. He’s far too sensible, which is why I keep visiting.
You could make the argument that to the extent that the regulation of airlines raises prices and makes flying unattractive, it costs lives by causing people to drive instead.
There is a difference between air travel and going on a bike with your kids – the profit motive in cutting corners for an airline. In the long run their profits would be best served by doing the opposite of that, but I’ve been noticing lately that people don’t always think in long terms.
So if you take a kid over 14 on your bike does he have to have a birth certificate for when the cops pull you over? This is goddamned offensive.
I feel you rage bro.Nothing worse than the state or some other busybody/ do-gooder telling one what one can do or not,i.e raise one’s own kid,eat,drink,smoke…and on and on.
Enough already .
“So in other words PSA you think bikers should be more regulated than automobile drivers – thanks, we appreciate your thoughts [/sarcasm]”
not at all sl. i have no problem with onerous governmental intrusions into the lives of car, truck, rv, bus, snowmoble, atv, suv or bike drivers/riders. as far as i can tell our streets are over run by criminally stupid arsehats. i’d love to see a real crackdown on the dangerous behaviour of our vehicular friends. i’m a life long pedestrian, bicyclist and transit rider. on more than one occasion i’ve had my life imperilled on the frickin’ sidewalk. the number of unsafe, ignorant and dangerous drivers i see in a week have led me to believe that it is far too easy to get and to keep a driving permit.
i would love to see a lot less vehicles on the road, smaller and smarter vehicles at that. i’d feel safer knowing that those in control of vehicles had gone through mandatory instructions that were far more rigorous, including time on skid pads, accident avoidance courses and the like. i have no problem with making the standards much higher and the penalties for breaking the rules of the road much harsher and in egalitarian terms spread the love to all behind the wheel. and for that matter, hold bicyclists to similar limits as i see far too many of my pedalling peers behaving like ignorant bastards as well.
i understand that people like you, who aren’t crazed idiots, will have the common sense not to imperil the lives of children or strangers. it is the rest of what sometimes appears to be the majority of drivers that i am more concerned with. should the bad acts of others effect you? in a perfect world no. this world ain’t perfect.
Seeing how the traffic code and highway etiqutte seems to be a boutique specialty of this blog (in addition to your quest for universal peace and social justice), SL, if I support your right to thrill your grandkids, will you support my campaign to bring back the thumbscrew for drivers who speed up and pass you from the right the moment you signal an intention to move into their lane?
What a wonderfully disingenuous way of phrasing a question Peter – no points awarded, but please….. don’t let that stop you from playing again.
>Just curious. Are airline pilots more regulated than automobile drivers? If so, is that okay?
Is the distinction between “commercial” and “private” of any relevance?