The bill is a very, very thinly-veiled attempt to get people on bikes off the state’s roads.

Not be outdone by lawmakers in Missouri who recently introduced a bill requiring cyclists to ride with a 15-foot fluorescent flag attached to their bicycle, a group of legislators in South Dakota are taking anti-bicycle-crusading-disguised-as-safety-regulations to the next level. The legislators just announced House Bill 1073, an act formally titled, I kid you not, “An Act to require persons operating bicycles under certain conditions to stop and allow faster vehicles to pass.”

The certain conditions, in this case, are when a person is riding a bicycle in a no-passing zone on a roadway that has no shoulder, or a shoulder of less than three feet. In this case, the person on the bike would have to stop the bike, move off of the roadway, and allow faster vehicles to pass. Given that “faster vehicles” are going to be every single vehicle with four wheels and an engine versus two wheels and a set of pedals, this is going to result in a whole lot of pulling over and stopping for the people trying to ride bikes.

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Honestly, I’m not even sure where to begin with this one. This is probably the most blatant attempt one could make at getting cyclists off of the roads short of straight-up making bicycles illegal. I mean, it literally states that bicyclists have to get off the roads. It’s pretty impressive when you think about it. But beyond that, there are a lot of practical considerations that don’t really add up. If there is no shoulder, where is the person with the bike supposed to go? Sure in an urban setting they can stand on the sidewalk while letting streams of car pass them by, but what about on any one of the state’s 5,875 bridges? Or roads with guardrails such as this one, which you’ll note has a shoulder of less than three feet in a no-passing zone. I can only assume bicyclists in this case are just supposed to toss the bike over the edge and sit on the fence while the car passes?

Along with a this fairly ludicrous principal goal, House Bill 1073 includes a series of amendments to the roadway operation section of the state’s current bicycle regulations. At present, the state has a “far right as practicable” law which requires bicyclists to always ride as close to the curb or right side of the road as possible when they’re traveling at less than the normal speed of traffic. For most people on bicycles, this is all of the time. Already, this is an unsafe law because it puts people on bikes in the door zone, or makes the vulnerable to drivers who believe they can pass the bicyclist without switching lanes. The law does have an exception though, the “substandard lane width” exception, which states that a person on a bicycle can travel further out into the lane when the roadway is not sufficiently wide to allow a vehicle and bicycle to travel side-by-side within it.

The new bill would amend the law so the “substandard lane width” exception no longer existed. It would also remove the text “conditions including, but not limited to” which precedes the other exceptions, thereby limiting the exceptions to “fixed or moving objects, parked or moving vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians, animals, or surface hazards.” Basically, if there’s no truck, human, or bison in the way, you have to be over at the side. If you’re not over at the side enough, you have to just get off the road.

The sponsors behind this latest bill are a full 11% of the South Dakota House of Representatives and nine percent of the state Senate. The prime sponsor is 71-year-old Mike Verchio, a Republican member of the South Dakota House of Representatives who chairs the state House Transportation Committee. Verchio’s track record involves consistently voting against measures to improve road safety, such as restriction on mobile device use while driving, and voting in favor measures to decrease safety, such as higher speed limits.

The full text of the bill is available here, along with contact information for each of its sponsors, should you wish to politely express your opinion.

Hilary Angus is the Online Editor at Momentum Mag. @HilaryAngus