chomish

I do my daily riding around Staten Island every night (love the peaceful night time riding) and see alot of cops around, and always wonder if they ever pull people over?

Out here they dont care, but im sure there are states where they would pull u over, and ticket you.

has anybody ever had any encounters? And what was the reason?

cachehiker

I was given a written warning in high school drafting off a buddy's Challenger on a 3-4% downhill grade. The buddy got a warning too. There was no such thing as a cyclecomputer but I had the old Columbia 10-speed up to about 40 mph in a 30 mph zone. That was 28 years ago.

I was recently pulled over after stopping on the left edge of a wide straight through / right turn lane at a stop light and an officer pulled up behind me. I rode straight through and he pulled me over. He reminded me that I'm supposed to ride as far to the right as "practiceable". I reminded him that I'm legally required to turn right if I pull up on that side of that lane. Much ado about nothing. No warnings, no tickets. I doubt he wanted to show up in court and argue traffic code with a cyclist who has actually read it.

calamarichris

I had it coming. I'd run a few red lights one early morning in a deserted little Dutch town. I heard a siren a good ways back, so I ran one more light and zipped down a flight of stairs into a narrow walkway. I thought I was pretty clever, but the cop was on a motorcycle and he came rolling down the stairs with a big smile under his mustache.
20 Guilder fine (which was less than ten bucks): Niet stoppen voor rood licht.

frymaster

motorcycle? that's cheating!

i was saddened the day i noticed the local pd hiring cops who were actually fit to do bike duty. used to be you could outrun any ticket on the mup without even breaking a sweat. now, you gotta really put the hammer down if you want to stay away.

BlazingPedals

You mean on my bike? No...

DX Rider

I was stopped while walking down the street at night minding my own business and was accused of the same thing. I tried to get him to tell me where the TV could possibly be, in my back pocket?

That cop has since blown his brains out, so it won't happen again.

Keith99

Nope.

Closest to a problem with police when on my bike was during the Mayor's here in L.A. There was a police escort, including in front. I tried to draft off one of the motor officers. Turns out they are better trained on cycling races than the motorcycle riders at the TDF.

sd_mike

I was ticketed in May here in San Diego, California, on my way to work. My "violation" was for CVC 21202 - riding position. Since I was on Park Blvd heading south (downhill), I was in the middle of the #2 lane, riding the speed limit (25mph). Now, when all was said and done, cop said I was blocking him (perhaps he didn't notice the #1 lane was WIDE OPEN!). If I was blocking him, or other traffic, then perhaps he should have considered ticketing them for speeding in a school zone. I did not violate the CVC, I adhered to it rather well. As such, I am fighting the ticket, with sadly little help from the local bicycling coalition. They seem to be useless in this. But hey, even if it doesn't go my way, it still doesn't count on my driving record. One does not need a license to ride a bicycle in California.

It more annoyed me that I seem to be one of the few cyclists that I see actually obeying the law, gets a ticket for OBEYING the law.

JanMM

My understanding of straight/right turn lanes (at least in Indiana) is that you may go straight or turn right irregardless of where you are in the lane. I usually try to position myself in the middle of the lane so that I don't get right hooked. Haven't seen any of those lanes that are wide enough that I would feel comfortable in the extreme left side.

dmac49

Bad guys often utilize bicycles in their work. Where do you hide a TV.. in the bushes etc until later when you can come back. That's just an example. Often drug couriers use bicycles to and from drop offs. Fact not fiction. While it is often obvious to pick out the "real" riders from the not so real ones having some probable cause to stop someone on a bike can reap some interesting things. In NY for instance lights are required at certain times of the day as are bells etc. Stopping a "violator" and being able to articulate the purpose of the "stop" is often not fully realized until court. I know ...but I was stopped for..blah blah blah. A million one sided incidents. There are at least two side to each one of these stories. Some may even have validity in being a pure "ball busting " routine by a cop OR for that matter just plain ignorance to the appropriate laws pertaining to bicycles and the operation of them. Now let us venture to the weekend worriers dressed like their favorite super hero. Most obey the rule of the road. As with anything it usually is the one percent that screw it up for the rest of us. They are the ones that feel the rules don't apply to them etc etc. They make us all stand out. Everyone makes mistakes. Often you can avoid tickets etc by acting in a mature manner with the cop. The street is not the place to hold court . Judges make the final decision, but again you can often avoid going this far by exercising some common sense. I can think of a young man on this board a while back having a problem with his school bus and school on where he was supposed to ride. He took a mature approach and did win in the end mostly by how he approached the problem. A lesson we can all learn by. Common Sense and Maturity.... think about it. Just a thought.

chomish

Couldnt have agreed more.

Love your Gene pool saying, but i dont think i get what u mean... Hehe

bikegeekmn

Yes,but I did have it coming.I was going to work @ 5a.m going the wrong way on a one way, not stopping for red lights.There were no other cars on the road anywhere,except a cop.I was a little surprised,but,he cut me no slack.I did give him all the respect deserving of an officer (Sir and all that)he was right-paid the ticket and never did that again.

calamarichris

Oh well if we're allowed to bring up the times we were simply pulled over and not cited, I got pulled over by a little female cop in my local PD. No idea why and no explanation ever given. She had cold sores on both corners of her mouth and lectured me about "how some people are unaware that they can get a DUI while riding a bicycle..." but when I offered to take a sobriety test, she interrupted me to continue the wandering lecture.
Perhaps she'd planned to blather until after dark so she could bust me for not having lights?
They must get bored here. Carlsbad is ClubMed for cops, especially compared to nearby Oceanside where police are occasionally killed in the line of duty.

njkayaker

??? This pretty-much applies to cars too. Cops often use minor violations as excuses to look for other (more major) violations.

steve0257

Twice. Once in high school for speeding and once in the Army for running a stop sign.

Kimmitt 

Yes, as part of a pattern of harassing Critical Mass riders.

powerhouse

I've never been stopped or ticketed by the police while bicycling.

bicycletothesun

I ran a red light @ 10mph with excellent lines of sight on both directions. Nobody was coming either way. All of the sudden I heard "STOP!" and I saw what appeared to be a bike cop. All I did was pedal even faster and escaped.

bicycletothesun

edited out sarcastic reference to the suicide. Very poor taste

cachehiker

I'll have to reread the Utah traffic code and see if anything I can find anything that applies but, when going straight, I've always left just enough room on the right for somebody who wants to make a right turn at a red light. I sure as h@!l don't want anybody on my left whose trying to make a right turn at a red light when I'm going straight when it turns green. Nobody going straight has ever pulled up on the right side of me either. At least that's how I explained things to Officer Cummings. I guess I sounded lucid enough and didn't seem like a potential drug courier so he let me go my merry way.

longbeachgary

There are 3 lanes of traffic and then a left turn lane. I was between the left turn lane and the number 1 lane. I was turning left. I've been at this light literally hundreds of times and what I do is anticipate the green arrow so that I don't block other traffic making their left. So I leave early (about 5 seconds) and make my left. A motor officer sees me and pulls me over. Ticket cost $362.....

skol

While mtb riding in CA Bay Area years back some trails would have speed traps set up and they would radar gun you on the steepest downhill sections. The speed limits were set so low you had to really fight the bike to keep below - they even had big screens showing your speed. People would lock up rear brake and slid all the way down tearing up the trail. I never got busted but saw plenty of people get ticketed. Usually close to a trailhead so hikers/horseback riders would probably complained enough to warrant.

bicycletothesun

I hate cops.

Rex G

In the Houston area, except for the Downtown business district, few cyclists seem to be ticketed by HPD, even ones who flagrantly run red lights right next to a patrol car. One factor seems to be that cyclists riding dangerously is largely seen (by the officers) as a self-correcting problem. Another factor may be that so few cyclists carry proper ID, and it is HPD policy to book folks without ID into jail, rather than letting them verbally provide a name, and sign a ticket. Booking a cyclist into jail is a time-consuming pain in the neck for the officer, as the bike needs to be transported to the property room for safekeeping, and a report entered to document all of that. Half the shift taken up ticketing/booking one cyclist without ID? Better to let the cyclist ride on, unless the officer just really wants to ruin the cyclist's day.

Just to be clear, I did not say folks are arrested for not having ID. Folks with no ID are booked into jail for the offense for which they would have been ticketed, had they had ID. The violator still gets the ticket, but does not sign for it, and has to post a bond, or see a judge.

Bellaire police, where I live, are sticklers for most traffic laws, compared to HPD, and write LOTS of motorists, but I have never seen them ticketing a cyclist. Cyclists in Bellaire seem to behave themselves a lot better than cyclists in Houston, however, so Bellaire PD may indeed ticket cyclists.

Ironically, HPD, in Downtown Houston, will ticket cyclists for riding on the sidewalk, whereas in the outlying sprawl that is the rest of Houston, officers will, in their ignorance, often tell cyclists to get ON the sidewalk.

Rex G

I strongly dislike hate.