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While I agree that car driver punishments are beyond just light, you can't use that as guage on this one. If you did, pretty soon, no crime would have a punishment.
I think the punishment was fair. These guys didn't make a little "oops", they knew what they were doing. Trails that are marked for hiking only are marked that way for a reason and bikers need to respect that. A message was being sent by the punishment and valid message. There are trails that bikes simply don't belong on.
While I suspect the trails in the Grand Canyon are more durable than those up in tree cover north, there is also the cost of trail maintenance. We have a long distance hiking trail that is maintained by volunteers. Whether we want to admit it or not, bikes are harder on trails than people. I suspect that there are a few of those volunteer trail maintainers silently cheering and wishing we could do more than slap a $100 fine <sigh>only if they get caught</sigh>
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I didn't mean to imply that I thought that the grand canyon punishment should be gauged by the car driver punishment.
Just the opposite....shouldn't the careless car driver have at least the same punishment that these guys had.
I definately agree with the Grand Canyon incident punishment.
I was just saddened by the disparity of it all. :( :( :(
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I also believe the punishment was fair for the various reasons stated in previous posts.
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Sorry, Silver, didn't mean to misinterpret.
It is sad that there is such a disparity in punishments. Reform is long and tedious, although I'm not sure why it has to be.
Still, while most people thought the 48 hours in jail was excessive (perhaps, but the law says you can be held for 48 hours and, just maybe it was meant to make them slow down and think), I liked the fact that they tailored the punishment to the crime. "You disrespect our parks? Then we won't let you back in." But, mostly, I like the forcing them to remove all postings that were inviolation and to post the apology. That's creative on the judge's part. And, while the 48 hours in jail gets them sympathy from some, my gut feel is the web site changes affected them more.
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I agree with most posters here that the punishment fit the crime. The thing that really gets me about these young boys is that activities like this hurt bicycle advocacy and trails access more than they know. These kinds of infractions make it to the forefront of the media and then the people who would like to block access to national parks, etc. that might be good places for bikes get a lot of negative ammunition and hurt the fight for access for bicycles to parks (not saying that bikes should have access to the grand canyon).
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I think it is too harsh and wastes resources better used on violent offenders. Communty service fixing trails or something would better serve community and miscreants. But then again - I am a criminal defense attorney.
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I think the punishment is a fitting one. And I think it matters.
