Originally Posted by
I-Like-To-Bike
For you - avoiding lawyer fees and a year of anxiety, some of which I believe was caused by listening to the simplistic advice from some BF "legal" experts about the potential "good" that would/could come from the right outcome in traffic court.
For any/everybody else - nothing; which would be about the same amount of "good" that resulted from not paying.
ILTB, you've offered plenty of sound advice in this thread, even if I didn't always take it. Bek, take notes.
As invisiblehand noted, the ticket was given to me on a road that I travel daily for my commute, though the intersection where I was ticketted is not one I usually go through (not that it's any different than the intersections I do use daily). The main "good" that I saw coming out of fighting this ticket was having a quick and easy way of ending the inevitable next discussion with the police about riding in the travel lanes on this road. As I noted earlier in this thread, I had previous discussions with police on this road about the same thing though they did not ticket me for anything.
As to my out of pocket costs, I don't have an exact cost at this point. To date, my costs have been $0. Lost wages: I'm salary. Lawyer fees: A local lawyer has defended cyclists in similar cases and while he was not available for my court date, he had another lawyer in his firm do him/me a favor and handle the case at no cost to me. Court costs: Because I did not have a trial, I'm not sure if the courts will cash my checks that I wrote for the appeal. I wrote them almost 8 months ago and they haven't been cashed yet. I'll be watching my bank account to see if they hit in the next few weeks. Assuming they do, I'm out about $135.
Back to the "good", I do plan on discussing the matter with the state police and DE Bicycle Council once all of the paperwork is finalized. As Steve Goodridge noted a while back in this thread, road designs such as this one don't do cyclists any favors. They tend to promote higher speeds and motorists (even the lawyer who took my case) view the road as more of a freeway than a surface street. Ideally (though this is likely a pipe dream) the road could be configured to be more cyclist friendly by allowing cyclists to use the width available on this road without unintentionally breaking the law (going straight from a right turn only lane). I'd also like to address the fact that Delaware has no laws allowing cyclists to legally travel on the shoulder yet the bike council and the police both promote/suggest that it is the only place for cyclists to be. I'm personally not comfortable with the possible legal conflicts that result from that contradiction.
And thanks to everyone else who offered support/advice/humourous comments during this thread. It was certainly worth my while, for many different reasons, to post about this incident here.