Speedier roads, weaker helmet rules on Nevada legislative agenda

Every time you climb aboard your trusty vehicle, you’re going to be tested on the rules of the road.

Meanwhile in Carson City, the Nevada Legislature is working on more rules to add to the list.

The Senate Transportation Committee reviewed a few last week that drew considerable interest.

Senate Bill 142 would repeal the requirement that motorcyclists must wear a protective helmet. It’s a bill that seems to come up every session and has failed to win the support it needs for passage.

The way the bill is written is that it requires helmet use but provides exceptions that apply to practically every motorist.

“The driver shall wear protective headgear which meets the standards … unless the driver is 21 years of age or older and has been licensed to operate a motorcycle for not less than one year,” the bill says.

Why a motorcyclist would choose not to wear a helmet is beyond me, considering the number of inattentive drivers on our streets. We all get the personal freedom aspect of the debate, but the risks seem far greater than the reward of that cool breeze blowing through your hair.

In the committee meeting, lawmakers toyed with the idea of requiring additional insurance coverage for motorcyclists who choose to ride helmetless but concluded that it would be nearly impossible to determine whether a driver purchased that coverage until after it’s too late.

Senate Bill 245 would increase the maximum term of imprisonment for a person who leaves the scene of an accident that results in death or bodily injury and would prohibit a prosecutor from striking a plea agreement deal on such cases.

The bill’s proponents say current laws encourage drunken drivers to leave accident scenes because they give them a chance to sober up enough not to be charged with driving while intoxicated. Supporters reason that if the penalty is increased for leaving the scene to the equivalent of driving under the influence, it would remove the incentive to flee.

Several friends and relatives of people killed by drunken drivers testified on behalf of the bill, including Stop DUI co-founder and Executive Director Sandy Heverly.

A bill that was discussed by the committee earlier this month has a lot of motorists fired up on both sides.

Senate Bill 2 would increase the maximum speed limit on rural highways. Initially, the bill set a maximum of 85 mph. That was amended to 80 mph by the committee, approved and sent to the Senate floor.

It’ll be interesting to see whether it wins approval whether Gov. Brian Sandoval would sign it into law. He weighed in at a Nevada Transportation Department board meeting about how he was skeptical about the benefits of a higher speed limit compared with the risks of greater injury or damage from a high-speed crash.

If the bill is signed into law, the Transportation Department will be charged with figuring out where to implement the higher speed limits. The bill seems aimed at increasing speeds on the wide-open spaces of Interstate 80 in Northern Nevada, but there could be some stretches on Interstate 15 northeast of Las Vegas that could be considered.

At the risk of going too “inside baseball,” there’s been considerable interest by the taxi and limousine industry for Senate Bill 376, which would strip some of the power given to the Nevada Transportation Authority. The agency regulates limos, tow trucks and moving companies in addition to taxi companies outside Clark County.

The bill intends to fix the so-called “competitors’ veto,” a provision in the licensing approval process that enables existing operators to testify against the licensing of a new market entrant if the new company’s presence does not “unreasonably and adversely affect other carriers operating in the territory for which the certificate or modification is sought.”

The fix in the bill is that instead of going to the Transportation Authority as an appeal, disputes would go to judicial review in District Court. Nevada Taxicab Authority appeals also go to the Transportation Authority and they, too, would go to court.

A small Reno limo company and a California moving company have gone to court to fight the “competitors’ veto” provision. The ride-hailing app company Uber has said the provision is one reason it hasn’t applied for an operating certificate in the state because it suspects — and it’s probably right — that it would never get past that review.

And speaking of Uber, legislation that would enable the company to operate legally resides within Senate Bill 439, which the Senate Labor, Commerce and Energy Committee is expected to review.

Under the bill, Uber would be regulated by the Public Utilities Commission — not the Transportation Authority or the Taxicab Authority.

With strong opposition from the taxi and limo industries and strong support from thousands of people who have signed petitions in support of Uber, it will be an interesting political battle.

Stay tuned.

FLAMINGO WORK AHEAD

Contractors began lugging out concrete barriers to sections of Flamingo Road last week in preparation for the 14-mile, $40.3 million, 1½-year improvement project on one of the city’s busiest east-west corridors.

Workers will resurface and restripe 7 miles of the road, install more than 100 new bus transit shelters, upgrade traffic signals, improve traffic flow with the installation of intelligent transportation system technology, improve pedestrian crosswalks, restrict left turns from driveways and unsignaled intersections by installing channeled left-turn lanes, and beautify the median with non-irrigated decorative landscaping.

Crews are coordinating work so that the entire length of the road involved isn’t disrupted at the same time.

When road crews begin distributing cones closing off one of three travel lanes in each direction, they’ll work first between Grand Canyon Drive and Rainbow Boulevard and between Las Vegas Boulevard and Eastern Avenue. Once that work is completed by year’s end, crews will shift to between Rainbow and Hotel Rio Drive and between Eastern and Jimmy Durante Boulevard, completing efforts by fall 2016.

The Nevada Transportation Department and the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada are collaborating on the project. That dynamic duo will begin working together a week from Monday with the groundbreaking of the Interstate 11 Boulder City Bypass project.

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