FAYETTEVILLE -- Members of the Town and Gown Advisory Committee agree: Accidents involving uninsured scooters are a problem in Fayetteville.
But it's a problem best addressed by state lawmakers, not with local legislation, the joint city-University of Arkansas committee decided in a meeting Monday.
Insurance requirement
Arkansas drivers are required to carry insurance policies that at a minimum cover:
• At least $25,000 for the bodily injury or death of another person.
• At least $50,000 for the bodily injury or death of two or more people.
• At least $25,000 for the damage to destruction of someone else’s property.
“Motorized bicycles” that displace less than 50 cc are exempt from the state’s insurance requirements.
Source: Arkansas Code
"To me, it really should be handled on a statewide basis," said Tommy DeWeese, one of 21 committee members. "Anything we could do to help get new regulations passed ... I'll be for that."
The committee was asked to weigh in on a proposal by Alderman Alan Long requiring scooter drivers to buy insurance for their vehicles.
State law exempts vehicles with 50 cc or smaller engines from vehicle registration, licensing and insurance requirements.
Long has said it's unfair for other drivers to have to file an uninsured motorist claim on their insurance policy if they're involved in a wreck with an uninsured scooter driver.
Members of the City Council's Ordinance Review Committee last week asked whether the university's Transit and Parking Department would be willing to require proof of insurance before selling parking passes to students who want to park their scooters on campus.
"The whole idea here was just: How's this going to be properly enforced, so that you actually get people to buy insurance before they have an accident and we're not just giving them a ticket when it's too late," City Attorney Kit Williams told members of the Town and Gown Committee on Monday. "We wanted to hopefully have some enforcement mechanism so they would actually have insurance and protect themselves as well as others."
Not all scooter drivers are students, but, according to Gary Smith, director of Transit and Parking, the university sold 1,493 on-campus parking passes for scooters last year. That's up from 988 during the 2011-12 school year.
According to statistics from the university and Fayetteville police departments, there have been 146 wrecks involving scooters over the past three years. Just 38, or 26 percent, of the scooters involved in the wrecks were insured.
Smith said he would take the idea of requiring insurance for on-campus parking permits to the university's Transit, Parking and Traffic Committee. If approved, the new requirement wouldn't take effect until at least this summer, he added.
Mike Johnson, another university representative on the Town and Gown Committee, said he wasn't sure the suggestion was a good idea.
"The university is not required to set up a bureaucracy to replicate what the state really should be doing," Johnson said.
DeWeese suggested approaching officials in Conway, Jonesboro and other university towns to try to get state legislation passed.
Mike Reynolds, Fayetteville's deputy police chief, said the city is also working with the Arkansas Association of Chiefs of Police to try to remove exemptions under state law for 50 cc or less vehicles.
Williams, the city attorney, and Don Marr, Mayor Lioneld Jordan's chief of staff, both said Monday they, too, would like to see state lawmakers take up the issue. But, Marr added, because scooters are more common in university towns, the issue is unlikely to appeal to lawmakers throughout the state.
Williams said he expects the City Council to move forward with Long's proposal with or without statewide legislation.
"If (aldermen) decide to go forward, we would certainly do it in conjunction with the university, not just expect the university to do everything," he told the Town and Gown Committee on Monday.
Aldermen last month tabled the scooter insurance proposal until their Feb. 17 meeting. Another Ordinance Review Committee meeting is also scheduled Feb. 18.
Joel Walsh can be reached by email at jwalsh@nwadg.com or on Twitter @NWAJoel.
NW News on 01/27/2015