Bicycle Ticket

While on parole in Seattle and living near downtown on Seneca street, I bought an inexpensive mountain bike off the shelf at Sears. My plan was to save a little money on my daily commute to the North end of Lake Union where I worked as a telemarketer six days a week near Gasworks park. Monthly bus passes where about $55, so the bike could pay for itself in just over a few months if I rode to work every day instead of taking the bus. It seemed like a pretty good plan since the trip to work was nearly all downhill, about seven miles, if I remember right, from my apartment. So, I'd arrive at work fresh and ready for the day, and then get a good work out on my way home each night. And the plan worked well for several months, up until the day I found the lock cut and my bike missing from the locked basement of the building I lived in (I reported the theft to the police, and never found out who took it; though I suspect the manager stole it simply because he didn't like the daily traffic up and down the stars to the basement just below his apartment).

I ride the bike everywhere and enjoyed it a lot, despite Seattle's hilly location. I didn't mind the slow low-gear trod up all the hills because for me the downhill sprints were always worth it. But, it wasn't all smooth sailing, as they say, and a couple of incidents stand out aside from the bike being stolen.

On my way home from work one day, on the front one mile stretch down Broadway Avenue after a trudguous two-plus mile hill climb, I had taken my hands off the handlebars so I could sit up and relaz a little on the flat part of my trip. Like any regular cyclist knows, riding without hands might be showing off for a child, but after a while it becomes so easy that you end up doing it without much thought and at times when you really shouldn't, like on a busy street with a lot of traffic and parked cars as obstacles.

This was one of those times. I don't remember exactly why, but for some really dumb reason I reached down and attempted to grab the LEFT handle, and apply the break, with my RIGHT hand! Well, as you can imagine this didn't work out so well for me. I immediately lost control of the bike and crashed into a parked car (in order to avoid crashing into the street and a moving car). I was unhurt, except maybe for a few scratches. But, the car I hit --- an unrestored “classic” (i.e. older car) of some sort from the 60s --- was scratched and now had a busted sideview mirror.

I thought about just riding off, but there were a lot of people on the sidewalk and they clearly saw what had happened. So I deicded to leave a note. But, as I was writing it the owner of the car came out of a nearby establishment and asked me what I was doing (I think someone told her that her car had just been hit). I admitted to what I had done and offered to pay for the damage, which in hindsight was even stupider than the stunt that caused the accident in the first place. She ended up bilking me for about $500, which is what she claimed it cost to fix the damage. And to make things worse, I found out later that my renter's insurance would have covered the accident with only a $100 deductable payment.

Well, the real reason I'm relaying all this now is not about the accident at all, but because of the ticket I ended up getting as an indirect consequence. Here's how it happened...

After that accident I started riding my bike to and from work on side streets, with far less traffic so I didn't have to ride so close to the parked cars all the time to make room for the traffic to pass. This worked well, until one day, on my way to work, I got pulled over by a motorcycle cop and ticketed for riding my bike straight, through a “right-turn only” intersection.

The bizarre thing was that it was a side street, and there was no traffic at all. The cop had been parked out of sight, apparently just waiting for a victim to come “violate” the barely visible traffic sign marking the intersection as “right-turn only”. If I had been driving a car I probably would have observed and obeyed the sign, as I consider myself a good, and lawful, driver. But, on my bike, and with no traffic, on a side street, I honestly wasn't even paying any attention to the traffic signs. So you can imagine my surprise when I heard the police siren “bloop” and looked over my shoulder to see the cop on my tail!

I pulled aside, to let him pass, as if he really needed the room, but then he parked behind me and swaggered, literally swaggered like some T.V. motorcycle cop, wearing the tight riding pants and apparently obligatory sunglasses under his helmet.

I thought it was a joke, even though he wasn't smiling... at all! Dead serious, he asked for my license, which I produced and handed him after asking a couple of times if he was serious. He assured me as often as I asked that he was serious (and he WAS), and then proceeded to write me a ticket for a “moving violation”, insisting that because I was riding my bike on the street I was subject to the same rules and laws as any car. I could tell he hated his job, and later I came to realize that the only reason he ticketed me was probably because he was behind on his quota, and hadn't had anyone else to pick on all morning.

Well, against the advice of several friends, who all told me to just pay the ticket, I took the ticket to a judge, if for no other reason than the principle of it. I was just an honest Joe trying to ride my bike to work and not causing anyone any trouble. I thought the ticket was nuts! Apparently so did the judge, he not only threw it out, but deleted the record of it on the computer right in front of me. He said he deleted it so it wouldn't effect my driving record (it was the only ticket I had ever gotten), but even then I knew the record he was really concerned about was the city's record, and the cop's (percentage of “bad tickets” is supposed to be tracked and used to gauge performance; so by deleteing the ticket he kept it from being recorded as a “bad ticket”). But, at least I didn't have to pay for the ticket!

[J.D. February 9, 2015]