"dlakey" wrote in message
...
Hello fellow bikers.

I had a most interesting experience tonight. I was commuting home from
work.
It is approximately 3.6 miles from work to home. I was about a mile into
my
commute home at 9:30PM riding in the right half of the right hand land of
a
5 lane road. I usually average about 15 mph on my commutes. Speedlimit in
this area is 40mph I believe. I have reflectors on both front and back of
my
bike, I have a cateye headlight on and a blinking tail light. I am wearing
a
helment. I hear this PA come on behind me saying, "get off the road,
that's
what sidewalks are for." Well my first reaction is that this must be some
kid who has a PA hooked up in their car. Well I look back over my shoulder
and notice it is a police car. Well at this point I'm thinking what the
hell? I go ahead and pull over to the sidewalk and stop thinking he is
going
to stop too so I can ask him what the hell. Well he takes off and goes on.
Well I have read these boards enough to know that the sidewalk is not the
safest place to be. I also know the laws here in arksnas enough to know
that
I have a right to the road. Well I go ahead and pull back out into the
road
and try to catch up to the officer to ask him what the hell he is talking
about. Well at this point he has gotten so far ahead I can't see him.
About
a mile farther down the road I see the blue lights behind me. I go ahead
and
pull over into the parking lot of a restaurant. He get's out of his car
and
I can tell right away he has a serious attitude. Hell he was just a kid. I
wouldn't be suprised if he wasn't young enough to be my son. Well he
certainly didn't show me any respect. He get's out of his car and tells me
"I warned you once to get out of the road, now I should just throw you in
the car and haul you down to jail." I'm like whoa, what is this guys
problem. Anyway, I maintain my cool, and in a very sensible way try to
explain to him that my understanding was that a bicycle had as much right
to
the road as any other vehicle. He proceeded to tell me that this was
absolutely not the case, and if you were going to be on a bike you had to
either be on the sidewalk, or over in the grass if there wasn't a
sidewalk.
I tried to tell him that my understanding of the law was that you had to
have a reflector front and back and a headlight on the front. And ride on
the right side of the road. He tells me I am wrong. I ask him if he could
provide me with the particular law that backs him up. He tells me he
doesn't
have to do that and out there on the road he IS the law. I ask him if
there
is any one to appeal HIS decisions to he says NO. At this point he says he
is just going to let me go with a warning. I guess I should have just let
it
go at that. Well I wanted to know what his name was so I asked him very
nicely what his name was. Well this was apparantly the wrong thing to do.
He's like "That's IT!" He get's his little cell phone out and calls up the
station and starts asking them what he can cite me for. Well after talking
to one person and not coming up with anything, she passes him to someone
else and they finally come up with "Failure to obey a Police officer."
Which
just reinforces what I said all along, there was no law which said I
couldn't ride in the road

I'm sorry for my monoparagraph there but I am still somewhat upset about
this whole thing. I never did smart off to him. I maintained my cool the
whole time. The road was 2 lanes each direction with a turning lane in the
middle typical of a business district.

So is it true that the cops make up the laws while they are on the road??

Should I fight the ticket?

Thanks in advance for your advice

Dan

IANACOAL

A) Arkansas Legislation
27-49-111. Use of bicycles or animals.
Every person riding a bicycle or an animal, or driving any animal drawing a
vehicle upon a highway, shall have all the rights and all of the duties
applicable to the driver of a vehicle, except those provisions of this act
which by their nature can have no applicability.

I found nothing that regulates bikes to the sidewalk. Nor any prohibition,
either.

B) "Failure to obey.." - Obey an unlawful, potentially dangerous order? Not
a chance.

C) Fight it. I know I would

Pete