Comment by derefr
3 years ago
To me, if I see a rule trying to ban "vehicles" without defining "vehicles", I take my concept of "vehicles" by deduction: I think about all the ways that things that I know of as being "vehicle-esque" could be problematic in various different ways such that you'd want to ban them — being loud; having a lot of inertial momentum when colliding with pedestrians; littering (the horse example); property damage (skateboards, dirt bikes) — and then I guess that the "spirit of the law" is to put whatever requirements in place would be required to reduce the instances of those problems.
The banning of certain explicit classes of vehicles is only a byproduct, not the end-goal, of such a rule; and so it doesn't actually matter what is or isn't a vehicle — the word "vehicle" in such a rule is acting as a conceptual stand-in for whatever things cause uniquely vehicle-in-the-park-ish problems; and anything that doesn't cause such problems, isn't "a vehicle."
I find that this lens on rule enforcement is a useful guide, because whatever the text of the law ends up saying, the enforcement of the law will hew to the spirit that the text of the rule is being interpreted to have, by those charged with its enforcement. (I.e., the non-working tank is almost certainly a "vehicle" by any definition a bylaw would pose, but if they deliver it to the park on a non-damaging sled, let it sit there for a while, then haul it away on the same sled, then it's not causing any of the problems that "vehicles" cause, and so it's very unlikely that any bylaw-enforcement officer would actually ticket the owner of the tank for having it in the park.)
The problem is that it won’t always be enforced that way.
For example: in the city of Melbourne, there are sometimes signs instructing cyclists to dismount (e.g. at railway level crossings), or that you aren’t permitted to cycle in such-and-such a place (e.g. railway platform). Their illustrations always depict an upright bicycle. I ride a recumbent tricycle, which the Road Safety Road Rules considers to be a bicycle. The reasons for dismounting simply don’t apply: my wheels won’t get caught in rails and I won’t fall over, and in fact dismounting will make matters worse. And the reasons for not cycling in most of the so-marked places are seriously diminished and heavily counterbalanced: I can easily and safely travel at pedestrian speed, and I will be far more of an obstruction on your thoroughfare if you require that I stand up and awkwardly push my vehicle along, steering only with difficulty (normally mostly by nudging one of the front wheels with one foot as I walk), taking up a lot more space and not going straight or at the same speed as others. Common sense says I should ignore such signs and assess each situation individually. But I tried applying common sense like this on a railway platform once and was severely threatened with a fine. Meanwhile, mobility scooters are really pretty similar to me in contextual characteristics (my vehicle interacts in such situations much more like one of them than like an upright bicycle), but they’re fine.
(Aside: in the state of Victoria, the road rules classify my vehicle as a bicycle; but in New Zealand, the road rules classify it and bicycles as cycles, and only mention bicycles in one section, about wearing helmets. No attention is drawn to the use of a different word, but it’s clear that tricyclists are genuinely not legally required to wear helmets—which does actually make some sense, as the majority of scenarios where a helmet is beneficial to a bicyclist either don’t apply, or apply vastly less often, to recumbent tricyclists.)
Sounds like the railway staff are indeed enforcing the spirit of the law by allowing mobility scooters on the platform. If I had to guess why your tricycle was not allowed it's because the staff perceive your tricycle as a potentially very fast moving obstacle on the platform which the mobility scooter obviously is not. They are probably more concerned about the safety of others than yourself when they apply that rule. In my opinion analysing the intent of rule is the right way to go about enforcement even if it means different people will arrive at different conclusions.
When visibly travelling at the same speed as pedestrians (… even when there are no pedestrians around!), and still insisting when you explain why dismounting is worse for everyone? No, it’s simply applying the rule because it’s a rule. The Protective Services Officers (cut-rate policemen) that are enforcing these sorts of rules are seldom interested in nuance.
On another occasion I was fined by PSOs for walking along beside the railway line, along a route that I understood to be a public right of way and which was not in any way blocked save an easily-walked-around vehicle barrier at the far end that they’d installed in the last year or so, and which our family and others had been traversing since before I was born. But no, they’d decided that wasn’t allowed any more, didn’t actually tell the locals, and ignored the explanation and an expressed willingness to not do it again (and the appeals process declined to listen too). I suspect and hope that regular police would have listened and just issued a warning to not use that route any more.
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>Common sense says I should ignore such signs and assess each situation individually.
Does it? How is it different from Car A driving the speed limit and Car B driving 20 over because "I have a big SUV/racecar/motorcycle"?
Laws are normally made knowing there are situations where it will not always seem common sense, but if we follow your logic we would have hundred of thousands of rules, like a complete set for each type of car, bike, etc. I see it as common sense that of course the same rules apply to your tricycle, unless it is for a disabled person.
Cycles that are not upright bicycles (e.g. recumbent bicycles, upright tricycles, recumbent tricycles, quadricycles) are (completely naturally and understandably) discriminated against in legislation because they’re not so common. Although the law classifies them as bicycles, many laws and rules that affect them are made clearly not considering their different characteristics—their size, their stability, their handling, things like that—and end up mandating things that make sense for upright bicycles but are for these other cycles counterproductive to the clear or likely (depending on the case) intent of the law.
Your example is patently unreasonable and a completely different thing.
Legislation defines various classes of vehicle, and changes the definitions and categories over time to match need. But it’s not good for the legislation to explicitly say “Category A encompasses Items B and C” and then to write a law for Item B but apply it instead to Category A. In this specific case, it’s probably mostly happened by sheer accident because they named Category A “Item B”, and so you can never tell whether the intention was to cover Item B or Category A.
This is why I like what New Zealand has done: by giving the category the name cycles and not bicycles, they’ve kept the opportunity to apply laws to bicycles specifically and not other forms of cycles, in cases where that makes sense.
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We recently had this problem in Sweden: There are parking spaces where "Caravans" or "Campers" are forbidden (because they either tend to stay there all day or sleep) - we have a VW T4, it is considered of class "car" in Germany. We still sleep in it. Are we allowed to stay on these parking spaces? We decided: No. Our interpretation was that overnight-stays are unwanted by the local population or government. But the sign wasn't clear. The pictures on these signs also showed no vans, just big campers.
To me, it is as simple as the questions in the link. It is a van. You sleep in it. It is clearly a camper van. In my opinion, anyone who disagree are doing so to be edgy or cause problems just for the sake of it. Of course, there are a lot of those kinds of people.
I think you might have arrived at the Mischief rule of statutory interpretation (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischief_rule).
This is seriously an amazing rule! Down the Wikipedia rabbit hole for now!
> being loud; having a lot of inertial momentum when colliding with pedestrians; littering (the horse example);
Well, there are many possible options, so this does not help unless you know which issue was bothering the rule-makers.
I know a park that allows horses but not bicycles.
It's interesting to think about the same sign and "vehicle" in different contexts could have different answers.
For example, the same sign in a school hallway leading to an enclosed play area for kindergartners would most certainly result in more violations.
But rules are a "contract" between two parties. The people who put up a sign are trying to fix a problem and they care about the intention behind the sign. But the visitors need to try to follow the rules, so they need to decide of the activity they were considering is allowed.
This ambiguity can cause issues. In a perfect world it doesn't exist. But in reality it usually does because you don't want to hire a lawyer to help you understand if the 30-page sign prevents you from bringing a toy boat into the park.
To put it more succinctly: the sign itself isn't the statute or bylaw! it's just a quick reminder.
Everyone is trying to interpret one line of text. But that line ks just a stand in for a much longer text that should answer all of the questions.
E.g. for emergency vehicles, there is certainly a statute somewhere that grants them exemption, if that is appropriate. We don't need to torture ourself wondering.
The sibling who mentioned his recombinant bicycle not fitting the intent of the bylaws should petition the relevant authority to update the text to clarify this detail. But that doesn't mean they're going to change the signs or graphics.
But this depends on "in what context am I being asked whether a rule is violated"? I didn't start out knowing I was doing content moderation for a website or I might've answered those differently.
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