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.
People are so up in arms at the seeming contradiction of Amish using a light and a battery on their buggies.
Guess what: most Amish businesses have cell phones. If you drive through Amish country in Ohio, you will see dozens of people in Amish garb riding e-bikes.
I hate cars and judges, and frankly Ohio is a hellhole; but if some lights are going to make people safer it really isn’t going to be that big of a burden. If the judge says they have to do it, then their community elders will approve it, nbd.
None of you ever had Mennonite friends and it shows.
The idea behind the typical Amish perspective on technology is to preserve community. Exceptions are sometimes made as necessary or reasonable, washing machines being one of the most popular exceptions. It seems to be working well for them.
I honestly really like that approach. I have a feeling they have a much more warm and supportive feeling of family when all goes to plan and there are no predators.
Yeah, they can even use computers and Linux distros exist for the Amish.
Wouldn’t reflectors work and be low-to-no technology to allow Amish to keep to their tradition? I’m thinking similar material to diamond grade street signs.
No. I live in PA, and we have a similar law. I remember before it was passed, and seeing buggies with just the reflectors.
Close up, directly in front of lights, you can see reflectors fine, but your lights aren’t always pointing at them. Maybe it’s a curve or a hill, maybe they are approaching an intersection, but flashing lights can be seen from all angles.
Also, most Amish have no problem using modern technology when required. It’s not like a pathological fear, it’s a religious devotion to self-reliance. They use cell phones and power tools when they need to, and they hire “English” (non-Amish) to drive them in cars. Some are more insular than others, and they rarely get involved in politics, so they mostly just do whatever is required.
Maybe it’s a curve or a hill, maybe they are approaching an intersection, but flashing lights can be seen from all angles.
Note that this law requires Amish use lights even in daytime, which won’t be visible around a bend or hill at such times. What’s next…telling bikes/peds they also have to go around wearing daytime strobe lights?
Bikes should have daytime strobes and headlamps. Cars should always have their headlights on. Visibility reduces accidents.
You can be on a curved road or a hill and have vehicles you can see that are not within your headlight beams. Further, if a vehicle is obstructed by a curve or hill, you may see lights illuminate the dark ahead of you before the vehicle comes into view.
There’s no reason not to have lights on vehicles on the road.
Further, if a vehicle is obstructed by a curve or hill, you may see lights illuminate the dark ahead of you before the vehicle comes into view.
Plus this sometimes works during the day in shadey areas or when it is very overcast.
Or when people are idiots and just don’t turn them on when they’re supposed to.
You’d think with how prevalent automatic headlights are nowadays there’d be a lot less people driving with them off in the rain/dark, yet every single night I see at least one idiot doing it in a car that I know has automatic headlights.
Why do they turn this feature off? It’s mind-blowing.
There are some very edge case scenarios where you’d want it off. Ex: a while back I was sitting in a parking garage and my headlights were shining right into some poor dudes face 0.5 floors below me.
But I think it mostly comes down to these people are fucking morons and probably shouldn’t be allowed to drive on public roads.
The issue could be solved with something similar to what ford does with their shift lever. If you turn the car off when it’s in drive and try to get out the car puts itself in park and the shift lever moves into the park position. Just do that with the headlights and snap them back into auto every time you turn the car on.
The idea of having lights on these buggies is literally counter to their whole belief system. You or I might not share the same world view but it is mind-blowing that you wonder why the Amish would not run electric lights on their horse and buggies…
Wait… I am an idiot and this was not the right statement to make in this case. Please point and laugh at me.
It probably has more to do with always on dashboards and infotainment systems in SUVs more then anything else.
Bikes should have daytime strobes and headlamps. Cars should always have their headlights on. Visibility reduces accidents.
This is so utterly car brained. Bicycles and Amish buggies aren’t even remotely the ones making the danger here. Are we going to require stupid flashing beacons on pedestrians now to?? No, the solution here is a road diet, traffic calming, speed governors on SUVs, and modal separation.
There’s no reason not to have lights on vehicles on the road.
Because it costs money to run lights, and good lights cost money. (https://www.bumm.de/en/products/akku-scheinwerfer/parent/1922/produkt/1922qmla.html)
Yeah, and we should fit all the wildlife with strobes too, because drivers should absolutely not be responsible for driving slowly enough to actually be able to see an obstruction within the range of their own headlights in time to stop without smashing into it.
Right, because that’s entirely the same thing.
Vehicles on the road are there intentionally, operated by humans who are respon- You know what, man? You win. I really don’t care enough about this to keep arguing with you. I’ve explained this, and if you still don’t get it, that’s on you.
I honestly can’t tell if this is sarcasm since motorcycles and cars in the US have required daytime running lights for a couple decades.
Nowhere in the US are cars required to use daytime running lights…certainly not in Ohio.
Daytime running lights are required on large sections of the highway in Alaska. It’s posted on signs on the road and you can get ticketed for it.
“( c ) Every vehicle traveling on a highway or vehicular way or area must illuminate lights when traveling on any roadway that is posted with signs requiring the use of headlights.
(d) For the purposes of ( c ) of this section, lights include low intensity headlights and daytime running lamp devices…”
Daytime running lights are required on large sections of the highway in Alaska
Wow, totally not being misleading here. /s The place we’re talking about is in the lower 48 smart guy.
I was responding to a previous comment that said “Nowhere in the US.” Alaska is still the United States.
Car manufacturers are required to have daytime running lamps on all the cars they sell.
While many car manufacturers provide this feature, it is not required. See 49 CFR 571.108 (Table I-a—Required Lamps and Reflective Devices).
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.
…or it’s an effort to save lives…
I am looking at all the comments and sub comments and realizing almost all the people commenting don’t realize this is posted in fuckcars.
The entire point of this community is to point out how cars have screwed everyone else from using roads and paths that at times predated cars. Most major city’s could add good bike paths and lighten the traffic by using bikes or any other non vehicle option.
It’s fucking stupid. Anyone who can’t see an object in front of their car needs to have their license revoked.
I’m from an area where this can be a problem. In my experience it’s pretty easy to see the buggys during the day, but at night on an unlit state road even with good head lights they can be hard to see until you are practically right on top of them.
Yeah, fuck cars, but it’s just kinda a crap situation in general.
Especially because the buggies are black, which blend in at night/dusk.
But like deer and dogs are basically camouflaged. So is a fallen tree. A driver needs to be able to avoid road hazards that haven’t been designed for visibility.
If it’s so dark that it’s hard to distinguish non-reflective objects on the road, the driver needs to slow down until their object perception time is well within their stopping time. And that needs to cover the hardest objects to perceive, IMO.
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It’s the responsibility of the driver not to hit something, not the something not to get hit.
See halfsack’s comment. To elaborate on that point, actually good & competent drivers have many responsibilities. Among them is to see…and be seen.
As others have said, a lot of these buggies are all black. And they’re puttering around the road, on a dark nights, well under established speed limits. 2 vehicles traveling at very different speeds, the slow one is hard to see. That’s just begging for an accident.
At least where I live, it is technically illegal to drive without headlights on when it’s raining. If windshield wipers are required, so are headlights. This is to bolster visibility in poor weather conditions. Also just headlights in general, you can get pulled over & ticketed for driving at night without headlights. Why should the Amish be a dangerous exception to the rules of the road??
This alone: Roads funded by taxpayers, which IIRC the Amish are largely tax-exempt. Thus: if they wish to travel on our roads, they need to abide by our rules & not make the roads more dangerous.
To be slightly more accommodating to Luddites, we could put hi-vis reflective tape on the buggies. But again as others have said, the Amish have all kinds of workarounds/exceptions/justifications to get what they want. They have mobile phones. Some have snowmobiles. They have generators, so they’re not “tied into the worldly grid” but they generate & use electricity. So maybe they can get used to the idea of battery-powered lights on their buggies, for visibility.
This comment is surprisingly car brained. Just change a few words and see what it reads.
As others have said, a lot of these buggies are all black. And they’re puttering around the road, on a dark nights, well under established speed limits. 2 vehicles traveling at very different speeds, the slow one is hard to see. That’s just begging for an accident.
As others have said, a lot of these cyclists all wear black. And they’re puttering around the road, on a dark nights, well under established speed limits. 2 vehicles traveling at very different speeds, the slow one is hard to see. That’s just begging for an accident.
At least where I live, it is technically illegal to drive without headlights on when it’s raining. If windshield wipers are required, so are headlights. This is to bolster visibility in poor weather conditions. Also just headlights in general, you can get pulled over & ticketed for driving at night without headlights. Why should the Amish be a dangerous exception to the rules of the road??
At least where I live, it is technically illegal to drive without headlights on when it’s raining. If windshield wipers are required, so are headlights. This is to bolster visibility in poor weather conditions. Also just headlights in general, you can get pulled over & ticketed for driving at night without headlights. Why should the cyclists be a dangerous exception to the rules of the road??
That’s the general idea, but life’s not that black and white. It’s better if both parties contribute to avoiding collisions. It’s the same reason why I’m required to have brake lights and hazard lights on my car.
Absolutely, I still don’t ride my bike on the freeway, and I still check both ways before crossing roads, even when there is a crosswalk.
Sometimes reality is at odds with our idealistic views.
It’s the responsibility of everyone on the road to follow the same laws. A horse and buggy are about the same size as a car and everyone I’ve ever seen is painted completely black. Many Amish communities have been running battery powered led signal and head lights for decades with no issues.
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- Non electric reflectors
- Change the roads and have separate roads for motorized and non motorized vehicles. Either put separate roads along them, widen the current ones
- Move the blame towards the damn people that crash into these buggies, as they obviously are not paying attention to the road
- Put more road lights. With LED and solar panels the installation cost for a simple light is pretty minimal nowadays.
- Make it a rule that they can not drive at night instead of forcing electric lights upon their buggies. If they still drive at night, they are responsible for their own well-being
People and especially government forget that these kind of rules and laws are meant to protect the people. But instead the people they are supposed to protect are fined, forced to go up to the judge, forced to defend themselves against something that other people are telling them they should be doing. They are now victims because somebody else is supposedly trying to protect them from being victims.
The last one is bullshit. They’re not putting themselves at risk, but others too.
It’s like saying the solution to DUI is to make it legal but they are responsible for their well-being.
Yes and i do think that should be the case. There are people that can drive better than other drivers even when they have a beer or a small amount of drugs in their system.
But then you should also be responsible for everybody’s wellbeing
Change the roads and have separate roads for motorized and non motorized vehicles. Either put separate roads along them, widen the current ones Put more road lights. With LED and solar panels the installation cost for a simple light is pretty minimal nowadays.
This is still expensive, impractical, and unrealistic for many rural towns. The last place I lived struggled for two months just to pull together the funds to spray for mosquitos because they already had plans to work on the town’s ditches.
I gotta say I already thought this was a thing.
All the buggies in my area all have these lights already.
Festooned is a great word.
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.
…
On Thursday, Good told them that while they may prefer jail, an Ohio Supreme Court case prohibits him jailing defendants that refuse to pay fines for non-jailable offenses.The State is going to steal their property and render them homeless for following their religion, as if that’s somehow better than a short jail term.
It’s free (prime farmland) real estate!
It’s the American way
Good luck with that, the Amish have more money then they know what to do with. This is just a cash grab.
Their religion is causing danger to other drivers. If their religion is that important they can not use the roads.
Nah, that’s car-supremacist bullshit. There are any number of unlit things that could be in the road that automobile drivers have a responsibility to watch out for: pedestrians, cyclists, deer, etc. The notion that a driver could smash into something because they were driving too fast for the throw of their headlights and somehow not be 100% responsible for it is ridiculous blame-shifting.
There are other things too, but as long as there are safety rules for vehicles a religious exemption is moronic. Safety is safety.
Fuck religious-supremist exemptions from valid* public safety requirements.
*Visibility for safety, pandemic distancing and mask requirements in public, etc. are valid. Mask bans are not valid for anyone, so there shouldn’t even be a reason for religious exemptions to come up.
I hate cars, but I hate getting stuck behind the Amish even more. Doesn’t mean they need to get hit by cars, but their religion is fucked up to a degree most people don’t realize, especially when it comes to women.
Those buggies are straight up hazardous to people, including the people driving them
why flashing lights and not reflectors?
I believe they were already required to use reflectors. Back in the 80’s when I was sometimes in Ohio with my parents we used to pass Amish buggies sometimes, and they always had an orange triangle retroreflector thing on the back.
Not as popular as his cousin Johnny B.
Why not use oil lamps or candles in wind-proof lanterns? Red glass for rear, clear glass for the front. My grandparents rode bikes back in the days before reliable battery lamps were a thing and that’s what they used.
I believe they used carbide lamps and not oil lamps.
The lights must be “flashing” according to the headline
Where did these buggies drive before there were paved roads designed and maintained for multi-ton haulers and passenger vehicles? 🤔
Gravel and dirt roads that were there before
Surely they were made without the multi-ton equipment that require paved roadways to use.
If I keep seeing people get hit on any of the poorly designed roads around me, I find a new path or make my own.
Sorry it works this way.
Maybe new paths could be forged. Something says you won’t be shoveling anything to help out. Enjoy being mad at the world.
those roads were still on state Right of Way, they’re competing for the same real estate
Yeah sure, if there wasn’t productive farmland or other private property where these roads would be placed.
Unfortunately space like that exists, but it’s taken up by the paved roads…
I don’t know if you know this, but people get mad if you dig a road through their property.
Too bad the Amish are anti-violence since the real way to fix this issue is not flashing lights but cleverly places shaped charges that go off toward whatever hits them. If you told this to drivers I think most would start looking for buggies with a bit more gusto.
