Ian Elliot
Northern News Services

INUVIK (May 15/98) - Inuvik's controversial all-terrain vehicle bylaw left a man unable to walk by the side of the road on Monday.

Floyd McKinnon, 38, was pulled over on Navy Road on Monday morning by bylaw constable Daryle Foster while on his way from the Power Corporation building to Arctic Tire to have a tire changed on his quad.

Foster spotted him riding without a helmet and as it turned out, without ATV insurance as the new bylaw requires. McKinnon does not dispute that, but says what makes him furious is that he has a broken foot in a cast and is unable to walk without crutches, which he did not have at the time. Foster made him leave the vehicle where it was pulled over and offered him no way of getting home.

A workmate of McKinnon's happened to be following behind in a truck but McKinnon said Foster made no attempt to discover if that was his ride or if he had a way to get home.

"It's humiliating, to leave a guy helpless by the side of the road like that," McKinnon said earlier this week.

"He could see I didn't have my crutches on the rack on the back of the machine and that I had a cast on my foot and it wasn't a walking cast. All I'm saying is there should be some judgement used in a case like that."

"I wasn't concerned about the ticket so much, I can pay the ticket if he wants to give me one, but to leave me by the side of the road with a cast on my foot when I can't walk....this is outrageous."

He has complained about the treatment in a letter to the town.

"I believe that it is incumbent on people vested with certain police powers to also possess discretion and good judgement rather than the callous disregard he showed towards me," he said in his written complaint.

MacKinnon says he was not speeding at the time of his trip to Arctic Tire. His attempts to raise his concerns with town staff later that day were equally fruitless and McKinnon said he felt as though the town was closing ranks on him.

Town clerk Don Howden said the town is unable to give people in that situation rides home because if there is an accident, the insurance would not cover it.

"The problem is the town can't escort him home in a (town) vehicle because there is a liability there," he said Monday.

Foster echoed that concern

"If I were to escort him and he were to become involved in an accident, he could sue me," Foster said, and noted that McKinnon was stopped where he could have phoned for a ride if he needed one.

"I pulled him over in the parking lot of AJ's and he could have called from there," he said, noting that a Power Corp truck pulled up seconds after the stop to give McKinnon a ride.

Ironically, when town council passed the ATV bylaw earlier this year, there was much discussion about the need to crack down on underage drivers piloting snowmobiles and ATVs at high rates of speed through the town but also fears expressed, as Mayor George Roach voiced at the time, that the only people who would be caught were law-abiding citizens moving their machines short distances and who unlike kids, would not high-tail it at the sight of the bylaw truck.

"Does that mean I should have tried to get away?" McKinnon asked. "The only people who get hit by this bylaw are the ones who stop?"

"We're damned if we do and damned if we don't," said Howden. "I'm not going to debate this through the press."