At a recent Oak Bluffs selectmen’s meeting, after a tense exchange with selectmen regarding moped rentals, Tim Rich, a Mopeds Are Dangerous Action Committee (MADAC) member, quipped that banning them was probably the one decision that would garner the board unanimous support from townspeople.
He’s not far off.
Mr. Rich, in addition to seeing the carnage caused by moped accidents in his 32 years in the Chilmark Police Department, and as an EMT, has a personal stake in the issue. His son, Jonathan Rich, was involved in a fatal moped accident in 2014, when Alexandro Garcia, an experienced moped driver, lost control and drove into the path of his truck. Mr. Rich said his son is still “deeply affected” by the accident. Mr. Garcia was an employee of Sun ’n’ Fun mopeds, and his tragic death should serve as a reminder that no matter how experienced the driver, mopeds are dangerous.
Except for two business owners and a small number of employees, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would object to the elimination of these vehicles, and their ill-trained drivers, from Vineyard roads. The selectmen are understandably reluctant to shut down viable businesses, but the dangers posed by moped rentals make them a different animal.
Ben Retmier, chief of Tri-Town Ambulance, which covers the three up-Island towns, reports crews responded to 39 moped accidents in up-Island towns alone over the past five years, including one fatality in 2014. The eight incidents in the 2016 season tied the previous annual high in 2011.
Mr. Retmier told The Times that moped injuries and bicycle injuries tend to present similar abrasions and minor broken bones, but the extent of those injuries is more severe with moped accidents. “My experience is you see either a fatality or a significant injury with a moped every year,” he said. “I’ve been doing this 10 years, and the significant accidents are usually moped-related.”
Oak Bluffs selectmen have tried, over several years, to draft regulations to mitigate the inherent risks attendant on mopeds. At its last meeting, for example, the board discussed a bylaw amendment limiting the number of riders to one person. Much time has been spent on licensing procedures, proper sign-offs on permit applications, and the definition of grandfather clauses as applied to these particular few businesses.
In a vacuum, these might seem like logical and positive steps, but in the face of years of failed enforcement and management, and the inevitable risks still facing inexperienced operators and Island drivers while hurtling down narrow Vineyard roads at 40 miles an hour, it’s only a matter of time until the next tragedy.
To their credit, at their last meeting, the majority of selectmen publically acknowledged they have dropped the ball. “What I’ve seen has disturbed me greatly,” Kathy Burton said. “It’s pretty clear we’ve not been doing a good job enforcing the bylaw.”
Activists from MADAC have documented several years of shoddy recordkeeping by the town, and poor enforcement of its bylaw. They revealed the latest instance at the Nov. 29 meeting: the fact that licenses had been signed by only two selectmen at the start of this season, instead of the three required by the bylaw, suggests that this claim has merit.
At the same Nov. 29 meeting, Oak Bluffs Police Chief Erik Blake told selectmen that parts of the moped bylaw were “absolutely outrageous,” and vowed to bring clear-cut changes to a town meeting vote in April. It seems well-intended, but raises the question of why the town should work so hard, especially in the light of repeated past failures, to save enterprises that deliver so little benefit. And it still leaves inexperienced drivers on narrow roads built long before mopeds arrived.
Over the years there have been several attempts to impose a ban on moped rentals. Revisions to the applicable bylaw made in 2004 were intended to bring an eventual end to this business in the town. One revision made the licenses nontransferable, so that when a business closed up shop, a new license could not be granted. The requirement that a license holder have a practice track of a certain size on its premises would seem to have been a condition that was impossible for any of the existing businesses to meet, and should have made it impossible for them to be licensed.
The board should not swerve around the issue any longer. It is time to ban moped rentals in Oak Bluffs.
The post Editorial: Mopeds, time to get off the road appeared first on Martha's Vineyard Times.
