Friday, January 7, 2011

Are You One of Those Cops?

I rode my bike between a line of parked cars and a line of cars waiting at a stoplight. When I arrived at the light, I found a police car sitting first in line and ready to go when that light turned back to green. I stopped and looked. No cars were coming on the cross street. This is a dilemma I'm faced with on a fairly regular basis. Do I wait for the red light to turn green, or do I run the red light right in front of a cop and take my chances with the ticket? Most police, I would argue, are not the kind of people who will give you a ticket for running a red light on a bicycle. My solution is simple: I run every red light I can find, regardless of whether a cop is sitting right in front of me or not. I always make sure it's safe to run the light, and so far I have not been ticketed. My logic is that when I finally do get a ticket for running a red light, if I look at it as if the cost of that one ticket is spread across every red light I've ever run, the price will have been very competitive.

1 comment:

  1. The cops around here would ticket you. For sure.

    And they would be dicks about it.

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