So the Utah Legislature has voted 15-14 to not pass a law limiting UTVs on Moab’s streets between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m. Bud Bruening of UTV Utah equated limiting UTVs to dictating that “Honda Civics cannot be driven at midnight” and said UTV groups hadn’t been included enough in working out the details, proposing more “signs and pamphlets.”
The bill was introduced by Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, after Mayor Emily Neihaus took him and fellow legislators on a Colorado River float. When UTV Utah then photo-edited a SUWA ballcap onto McKell, he asked, “Do you intend to ride your OHV in residential neighborhoods in the middle of the night in Moab?
People don’t mow their lawn in the middle of the night. What if they did, and the state restrained us from making a local ordinance to restrict it? Even construction equipment is restricted between 10 pm and 7 am. Yet UTV Utah feels demonized and excluded for an even less restrictive designation for extreme vehicles in neighborhoods at night?
UTV users, despite being very loud, are a minority. They have a big impact on us. UTV advocates want consideration, but are unwilling to consider and support even the most limited and reasonable restrictions on vehicles driving small town streets that the manufacturer never intended for that use. They paint a Republican lawmaker as a closet environmentalist and wilderness supporter for suggesting that children should be allowed to sleep at night and locals should have some say on what’s allowed in their town.
What would you do with someone fighting a law banning midnight use of chainsaws, cannons, automatic weapons? Someone who argues that restricting semi tractor-trailer air brakes on mainstreet at midnight is the same thing as banning Priuses from the street?
Daniel R. Kent, Moab
