Whew, it took a bit of time to read through this entire thread. Mostly, the level of discussion was much higher than I feared. A few points that ought to be made, however:
dougmc writes: "To be fair, he got several tickets before he was arrested. To make the analogy proper, you'd have to have a kid who keeps getting speeding tickets in the same place."
Actually, he got two, and one of the arrests took place on the day of the second ticket. Since then, he has been arrested twice more. Even the latest arrest doesn't appear to have resulted in the Ennis Police taking time to get themselves thoroughly familiar with the statutes affecting cyclists.
I would tend to agree with dougmc that the right hook danger is fairly small. HOWEVER, there are vehicles and other obstructions that periodically block the shoulder of the road in question, necessitating a shoulder rider to merge onto a road with a 65mph speed limit. In the last case in question, Chip told me that he'd BEEN riding on the shoulder but got tired of having to frequently merge back onto the road and finally stuck TO the road. They were waiting for him at the Ennis City limit. His blog has details of what transpired.
I observed the entire trial of Chip. It was night court, and my overwhelming impression was that the jury and most of the rest of the court wanted to get home and watch the Olympics. Chip tried to present the issues but was unable to do so in really short sound bites and that hurt him badly. Mostly, the cops said they had to ticket him for everyone's safety. I don't think the jury considered anything weightier than what fines to impose for each of the three counts.