The best I can make of it is that the judge sees the traffic laws as coming from two places:
1.) Written traffic laws.
2.) Traffic culture in practice.

And he's right that while he was riding within #1, he was probably so far out of #2 that he caused monkeys driving high speed vehicles to risk their own necks. I don't think it's a completely ridiculous premise. It's sad though that a minority is, in some incredibly minor sense, punished because the majority is too stupid to handle them.

The judge was probably also thinking "what the heck is so bad about that shoulder?" He can't say that though.


Caveat: I have no side in this. I really could see both sides of this discussion (not Bek's, he's making this a partisan thing in my opinion). It seemed, from the bad pictures, like that highway had a pretty decent shoulder and I'd probably ride that. But I don't want to say I can tell better from some bad pictures than Reed could from actually being there. But when you add in that the cop said "hey, just ride on the shoulder" it adds in an element of not listening to the authority. It's not that the cop is writing permanent law in his command. No, he's saying "today ride on the shoulder."
If the cop had made the opposite demand I'd probably tend to side with the guy on the bike. If the guy on the bike thinks the lane isn't safe he shouldn't be forced into it. You can't slow down and ride more cautious to alleviate that fear like you can with a bad road surface on the shoulder.