ASHLAND — Twenty-six Amish who refused to pay their fines for violating a law that requires flashing lights on their buggies appeared in court on Friday.
Once there, Ashland Municipal Court Judge John Good ruled out the possibility of jail time for them and instead said he would impose liens on their real estate.
They already use those. This goes a lot deeper than “buggies are hard to see” and gets into governmentally preferred classes. Requiring the Amish switch from reflectors to lights is an act of both victim blaming and attempted cultural erasure
Horse-drawn carriages are slow-moving vehicles just like construction or agricultural equipment, or stationary obstacles. They present a danger if visibility is limited by weather or the road’s curvature.
Where I live, every vehicle is required to be illuminated when outside city limits, including carriages, and the horses themselves.
I hate this framing. The danger doesn’t come from the slow moving buggies, it comes from cars moving too fast to stop within the driver’s line of sight. Instead of a buggy, the “obstacle” could also be a pedestrian, a deer or a fallen tree. Should blinking lights be required for those, too?
You can hate it all you want if that makes you feel superior, but it’s still true.
High-vis equipment is required here when a person has to spend an extended period on roads outside inhabited areas (actually high-vis gear is mandatory in all motor vehicles), and are required to walk on the left side to always have oncoming traffic in sight as opposed to behind. Larger roads have mitigation structures (mounds, fences, warnings signs, speed limits, or grade separation) where wildlife is known to cause problems. Our taxes pay for road inspection and maintenance services to clear natural or manmade obstacles.
If there are people on the roads they aren’t uninhabited.
“She was asking for it going to that neighborhood dressed like that.”
What’s the equivalent of rape culture but for cars mowing people down left and right?
Reminds me of this: https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
Wait, what? All this time I’ve been breaking the law by riding in cars without my high-vis vest?
Is “deliberately misunderstanding a sentence” a new olympic sport or something? Because goddamn, I’m putting bets on you winning at least silver (not gold though, that one goes to the crayon muncher that brought up rape for some weird reason).
I’m sure this will be shocking to you yankees, but not everybody is an American. Over this side of the Atlantic we have actual traffic laws to regulate how multi-ton death machines are operated, and they require certain safety equipment to be present in all vehicles. Things like:
Since you’re not an American, can you explain why you feel the need to comment on this when you don’t really know what you’re talking about?
The fine is from an Ohio state law that is (imho) unconstitutional in the United States. These people have been using their horse drawn buggies on these roads for centuries. The roads they go on are rural. Not interstate highways or autobahn or whatever.
It’s not economically feasible for every country road in the USA to have wildlife mounds/fences because of how vast our country is. Drivers here are required to stop for obstructions, fallen branches and wildlife and if you can’t you’re going too fast. I just don’t buy excuses about this, the Amish aren’t going down the road at 4 am in a blizzard. They’re way more visible than a deer and they have reflectors. I live around here (not Ohio, but basically Ohio), this law is inexcusable and targeting a religious group. It’s also legal to walk down these roads or ride a horse or drive your tractor at 20 kilometers per hour dragging a combine or something. It’s farmland.
The entire county this takes place in has only 50k people. Rural area.
I found that other commenters post about rape distasteful by the way. There are better ways to point out victim blaming.
…or it’s an effort to save lives…