Long Weekend Edition: Bike to Work, Just Not Too Fast
In the “Police With Too Much Time On Their Hands” file we find this story from Hermosa Beach, California:
Lawrence Petersen, who drives commercial vehicles for a living, hadn’t gotten a speeding ticket in about 15 years until a motorcycle officer with a radar gun pulled him over Feb. 17 – for riding his bicycle 19 mph on The Strand (ed. note: a beachside bike path). The penalty: $351.
Petersen, 43, said, “There was literally nobody else on The Strand” when he got his ticket, after pedaling past a Hermosa police officer parked atop his Kawasaki 1000 on a side street facing the beach. It was 7:40 on a cloudy Thursday morning and Petersen was pedaling from his south Redondo Beach home to Manhattan Beach, where he works part-time driving dial-a-ride minibuses.
… Peterson said the prosecutor told him he had “never seen” a bicycle speeding ticket, and Petersen wondered whether officials processing the ticket could tell it involved a bike.
… He plans to return to court to contest the ticket, arguing in part that he was not pedaling at an unsafe speed because nobody was out on The Strand to get run into.
… (Hermosa Beach Police Chief) Lavin said said his officers have written at least a handful of Strand speeding tickets after the City Council on Feb. 10, 2004 voted to reduce the speed limit to 8 mph, post speed-limit signs, and increase police enforcement.
and the best part:
… Petersen’s court date (was) Friday, May 20 – the last day of “Ride Your Bike to Work Week” sponsored by the League of American Bicyclists.
8 mph? You’d be at risk of being run over by a decent runner! And if my home was broken into that day, I’d be pretty p.o.’d about the police department’s allocation of resources!
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Bike Victory
Colnago needs no introduction, but attention tends to focus on the company’s very top, lightweight offerings because these are the bikes ridden to victory by stars like Oscar Freire and Michael Rasmussen.