By Chris Genovese, Marketing Director
If you’ve spent any time recently in motorcycle circles online, you’ve probably seen the memes about Harley riders and lawn clippings, aka “the clibbins!”.
One of our favorites includes the unfortunate grandpa that was thrown in the air by a Yellowstone bison, shown on a Harley, and with a pile of fresh lawn clippings causing his upside-down misadventure. It’s become something of an inside joke among riders, and we laugh at it because most of us understand that a little humor is a (good) part of motorcycling culture.
But like many jokes, there’s a grain of truth behind it.
At the Kantor Gullo Law Firm, we’re proud to be active members of A.B.A.T.E., as we believe it’s important to support—or oppose—legislation that affects the safety and freedom of New York’s motorcyclists. One pair of bills that recently earned our support is A4305/S8725, legislation that specifically addresses lawn clippings being deposited on highways and adjacent roadways.
At first glance, supporting these bills might seem unnecessary.
After all, it’s already illegal. New York State Vehicle and Traffic Law Sections 1219 and 1220 already prohibit depositing materials on roadways that create a safety hazard or obstruct traffic, and that includes grass clippings. So why would the law firm and A.B.A.T.E. support bills addressing something that’s already covered by existing law?
The answer is simple: awareness.
If you’ve ever watched someone blow freshly cut grass directly into the street, there’s a good chance they weren’t intentionally creating a hazard. More likely, they simply didn’t realize that what looks harmless from behind the wheel of a car can create a different situation for someone riding on two or three wheels.
Is this the biggest issue facing riders today? Certainly not.
If we were ranking the threats motorcyclists encounter every day, distracted drivers, aggressive driving, reckless driving, impaired driving, and motorists who simply fail to look for motorcycles would all sit much higher on the list. Frankly, we’d also need to place impaired, aggressive and dangerous rider behavior a little higher on this list by comparison. These are the dangers that seriously injure and kill riders every year, and they remain our primary focus.
That doesn’t mean smaller hazards should be ignored.
Unlike someone traveling in a vehicle with four wheels, a rider depends on a relatively small contact patch between the tires and the pavement. Fresh or wet grass clippings can reduce available traction under the wrong circumstances. While they’re rarely the sole cause of a crash, they’re an unnecessary hazard that can easily be avoided.
More importantly, this legislation has sparked conversations that otherwise might never have happened.
If these discussions surrounding “lawn clibbins!” cause homeowners and landscaping crews to think twice before blowing grass into the roadway, then the bills have already begun accomplishing something worthwhile. Sometimes educating the public is just as valuable as creating a new penalty.
Thanks to some wonderful volunteers (thanks again, Jay and Sandy!) our A.B.A.T.E. chapter recently collected signatures from 22 riders and sent 44 signed letters to New York State legislators expressing our support for these bills. We wanted our elected officials to know that riders support their efforts to improve roadway safety—even when it’s not one of our top legislative priorities.
Because we sit on top of and balance on our motorcycles, riding will always involve the risk of going down. We accept that every time we throw a leg over a bike. But many of the risks that riders face are manageable, and reducing the risk level doesn’t always require sweeping legislative changes. Sometimes it starts with something as simple as reminding people that the road belongs to all of us.
We’ll probably keep laughing at the “lawn clibbins!” memes. They help us to laugh at ourselves a little bit, after all.
But if these bills—and the conversations they’ve inspired—encourage a few neighborly New Yorkers to keep their grass clippings off the roads, that’s a result every rider can appreciate.
As always, do what you can to keep the shiny side up, and let us know if you or a loved is injured. It’s not always the negligence of another vehicle or driver that causes a motorcycle crash, and slick road conditions are a great example. So, give us a call and let us know what happened, and together we’ll figure out what your next steps might be toward the justice and compensation that you deserve.
