As used in the Motor Vehicle Code:
A. "bicycle" means every device propelled by human power upon which any person may ride, having two tandem wheels, except scooters and similar devices;
B. "bureau" means the traffic safety bureau of the department of transportation;
C. "bus" means every motor vehicle designed and used for the transportation of persons and every motor vehicle, other than a taxicab, designed and used for the transportation of persons for compensation; and
D. "business district" means the territory contiguous to and including a highway when within any three hundred feet along the highway there are buildings in use for business or industrial purposes, including but not limited to hotels, banks or office buildings, railroad stations and public buildings that occupy at least fifty percent of the frontage on one side or fifty percent of the frontage collectively on both sides of the highway.
History: 1978 Comp., § 66-1-4.2, enacted by Laws 1990, ch. 120, § 3; 1993, ch. 68, § 38; 2015, ch. 3, § 33.
ANNOTATIONSThe 2015 amendment, effective July 1, 2015, amended certain definitions in the Motor Vehicle Code to reflect the reorganization of the department of public safety; in Subsection B, after "bureau of the", deleted "state highway and" and added "department of", and after "transportation", deleted "department".
The 1993 amendment, effective July 1, 1993, inserted present Subsection B and redesignated former Subsections B and C as Subsections C and D.
Frontage of buildings within 300-foot area is what determines whether the scene of an accident is within a residential or business district rather than the combined area of the buildings and yards. Floeck v. Hoover, 1948-NMSC-021, 52 N.M. 193, 195 P.2d 86.
Not error to refuse instruction where definitional criteria not met. — Where a total distance of 640.9 feet, 396.5 feet was found to be building frontage that within any given 300-foot distance the building frontage was less than 50%, and there was no substantial evidence that the area in question was a business district, the trial judge's refusal to allow instruction on defining area as a business district was not error. Stoll v. Galles Motor Co., 1955-NMSC-097, 60 N.M. 186, 289 P.2d 626.