The chatter among legislators to address All Terrain Vehicle (ATV) laws is laudable but a poorly allottment of time and resources toward a fight the law can’t win. These four-wheel monsters are the scourge of Northern New Mexico making a lovely quiet day miserable in the time it takes for one to start buzzing up and down a trail nearby your chosen activity.
There are many laws already addressing who can ride an ATV and what safety measures apply. They’re not enforced. Occasionally, someone goes too far and we have a bad accident or a death. Usually these are avoidable had the rider(s) adhered to state law. But that’s the point. ATV riders rarely heed state law.
Communities in the Valley are plagued by them, the worst victims being Alcalde, Hernandez, Chimayó and some areas of La Mesilla. Much Indian and BLM land in these areas are torn up and scarred by ATV use. No one does anything about it.
Try sitting on a porch in Brazos Canyon during the summer on a weekend. Kids whiz up and down the street all day, and sometimes into the night, riding for recreation. They’re noisy, send out plumes of exhaust and if ridden on a dirt road, you get a nice blend of dust, oil and gasoline in the air. It settles everywhere.
But back to safety. The law already states, if you’re under 16, you have to wear a helmet. When was the last time you saw some kid riding down the dirt roads running parallel to Hwy 84/285 through Hernandez wearing a helmet? It doesn’t happen. We’ve seen state police and Rio Arriba County sheriff’s deputies pass these darling children and wave at them. Wave at them.
We’ve got big money trouble in New Mexico, just as in any other state. We need to address some serious money issues, the education funding formula, title insurance reform and payday loan rates. Fighting for ATV law changes is a waste of time and legislator’s minimal ability to focus.
How about our elected leaders try to solve the $500 million state deficit for this fiscal year and take a gander at next year’s awful numbers. Once they’ve deciphered that code, perhaps they’ll tackle the education funding formula. Those two issues alone could take 60 days when considering the glacial pace anything gets done in the roundhouse.
And it would be grand if they were too busy helping working New Mexicans instead of trying to unravel HB212. This bill many years ago took away local school boards’ abilities to hire and fire people in the school system. All that control went to superintendents. School boards tolerated the passage thinking they could control the superintendent’s hires through threatening his or her contract. It hasn’t worked out well and political hires are quite difficult.
Leave HB212 alone, please. It’s not perfect but at least all the politicians, unqualified to make hiring and firing decisions, are out of the equation.