Seattle Cyclists Decide The Probable Cause Probably Isn't Worth It

Once the profiling is over, they can focus on wider bike lanes!

A young female Black character riding a bike with a basket and a bottle holder, modern lifestyle

Pictured: A lawless criminal (Image by Getty)

Cyclists are the vegans of athleticism — you don’t have to ask us if we cycle, we will tell you. We have our niche areas for sure, some of us want to go fast, some of us want to go really fast, others love a good cross country trek where they pack all of their gear on their back wheel. But despite our differences we, for the most part, are a safety-loving people. Body tight neon orange spandex, obnoxious lights at the front and the back, ALL of the fixings. Which is why when I read that cyclists wanted to have a law overruled that penalized people for not wearing helmets, my ears perked up.

It has been illegal to ride a bicycle in King County without a helmet since 1993. In recent years, a growing number of community advocates have rejected the premise that the law’s enforcement is evenly distributed, with the Cascade Bicycle Club, the nation’s largest statewide cycling advocacy nonprofit, calling for the law’s repeal in 2020…Data presented to the King County Board of Health Thursday indicated that roughly half of helmet-less citation recipients were homeless. Black riders were four times more likely than their white counterparts to get ticketed.

This is why we can’t have nice things. This is not the first time that a rule meant to protect public health somehow became a race thing. Remember how police enforced early COVID mask mandates?

I wonder if there would be some form of legal redress for racially discriminatory law enforcement if the 14th Amendment actually had teeth. But hey, it doesn’t really — so long as there’s probable cause, traffic stops are fair game, even if 800 out of a thousand are from a minority group. The move then is to go through the legislature, and it is nice to see that the cyclists burned the energy it took to help make things right. At least until cops find the next excuse to harass Black and homeless folks. Maybe jaywalking?

Let it be known that I have no hard data to support this specific claim, but it probably would have been cheaper on the city to just give helmetless riders helmets. Lee Lambert, executive director of Cascade Bicycle Club, put it pretty clearly: “A majority of riders in King County already wear helmets, but it’s people who can’t afford one that are being targeted for enforcement, and that’s not just or right.” And its generally cheaper to just outright help people rather than penalize them for not meeting the floor — it’s the case for violent crime, and curbing homelessness at least. Time will tell how Seattle handles this, but if they decide to hand out ATL-branded headwear, let us know!

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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