The Senate Transportation & Energy Committee advanced three substantive bills and three board confirmations, with the most contested action being SB 26-035 — a traffic penalty increase bill that survived a chair-sponsored amendment to strip its mandatory court appearance provision, passing 7-1 to Appropriations. SB 26-003, an EV battery end-of-life management bill with a contested strike-below amendment, also cleared committee 8-1, while SB 26-026 closing a child restraint loophole for heavy pickup trucks passed unanimously to the consent calendar.
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Chair Cutter moved Amendment L004 to strike the mandatory court appearance provision, stating she worried 'people are going to get caught up in something that was unintentional, that they're not really a criminal.' Senator Roberts called it an unfriendly amendment and argued the requirement applies only on a second or subsequent offense and that FTA resulting in a bench warrant is 'exceedingly rare' for speeding violations. Dana Steiner (Colorado Freedom Fund) argued Section 5 'creates a path to criminalization and jailing for the lowest level speeding,' while Charles Testa (CCDB) argued it could lower penalties for higher-level speeding (10-24 mph over) while raising them for lower-level speeding (0-9 over). The amendment failed 3-6.
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“Speeding is a behavior that's normalized because we allow it to be. AAA foundation research finds that speeding carries the lowest social disapproval of any risky driving behavior. Nearly half of all drivers admit to exceeding the speedway limit by 15 miles per hour in the past month. This isn't five over, right? This is 15 miles per hour over. That's not the fringe, that's our driving culture.”
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Sign in to subscribeAfternoon. The Senate Transportation and Energy Committee will now come to order. Ms. Forbes, please take the roll. Senators Bazley, President Catlin. Here. Exum. Good afternoon. Linstedt. Here. Malika. Excused. Pelton R. I'm here. Sullivan. Here. Ball. Excused. And Madam Chair? Present. All right, today we have just a note. We're going to switch the order of bills that we published. We're going to be doing 35 first, as we planned with Senator Roberts, and then we'll go ahead and do 26 with Senator Catlin after that. And the end of life management for EV batteries will be at the end. So thank you so much. Senator Roberts, whenever you're ready, please proceed. Thank you so much, Madam Chair and members of the Senate Transportation Energy Committee for hearing Senate Bill 35 this afternoon. This bill is about one thing above all else, saving lives on Colorado's roads. Every year too many Coloradans are killed or seriously injured in crashes that are 100% preventable, often involving speeding or dangerous passing behaviors that risk everyone else on the road. I want to start by sharing a story that still haunts many of us in the Senate district I represent. Last August,…
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