Did you get a ticket yesterday?
Thanks in large part to the misguided efforts of the Tucson Bicycle Advisory Council, the police are now aggressively ticketing cyclists who roll through stop signs without coming to a complete stop. They say they have committed the resources to do this two hours per week, mainly in the University area, with six officers, indefinitely. This is not a one-time thing: it is a new program and it will continue indefinitely.
If you use your bike as a means of transportation, your life just got harder, because no matter how deserted that intersection is, you have to come to a complete stop. Slowing to a crawl, looking both ways, and moving on will not prevent you from getting a ticket — most people I spoke with yesterday were doing just that. One said he did stop but did not put a foot down.
I myself received a ticket last year for very slowly rolling past a stop sign in the middle of the night at a Dunbar Springs roundabout. The guy who gave me the ticket also serves as a bike cop and he readily admitted to me that he does not himself stop at those roundabout stop signs, but he said it’s different because he’s a police officer and he caught me committing an infraction, so I have to pay. I asked him if he would have cited a fellow officer for the same violation and he told me he did not want to debate me.
This was not an experience that gave me much respect for the TPD.
Unfortunately, in traffic court a mere allegation by a police officer is usually enough to convict you.
However, and this is important, if you don’t fight the ticket you will probably lose points on your license and your insurance rates will go up substantially, especially if you are young. I cannot stress how important it is to fight these tickets just so you have the opportunity to ask the judge not to report your bicycle violation to the DMV.
If you need help with this, call me. I also represent people in traffic court for just this reason — it can save you hundreds of dollars in the long run.
Let us know if you got ticketed yesterday.
–Erik Ryberg
October 24th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
I was ticketed yesterday. I was literally crawling through the intersection at 6th and University. Later I asked others further up if they had received a ticket. They said they all got warnings. I have good reason to believe that i was ticketed because I asserted my right to not show my ID. The officer asked once and demanded it twice. Then wanted to know if I had and wand wasn’t giving it to him or just didn’t have one at all. It seemed at this point he decided to give me a ticket rather then a warning. It seems to me that this is an unconstitutional violation of my right to be secure in person and papers. I will be fighting said ticket.
November 21st, 2007 at 6:54 pm
A lawyer friend who rides once advised me – and keep in mind that this was 20 years ago and in another state, this may not be true here/now – not to even carry my drivers license while riding. The reasoning he gave was that the ticket can go against your driving record just like a motor vehicle ticket if they have a license to charge it against, it can’t if they don’t; and it’s much less confrontational to be able to truthfully say “I don’t have it with me” than to flat-out refuse. He said that (again, long ago, far away) for positive ID purposes, cops have to accept as valid *any* gov’t issued picture ID such as a student ID, if issued by a public school or state U, or especially a passport.
I still follow this advice and only carry a UA ID when riding, but I’ve still not had the opportunity to test it. This might be a very helpful thing for Erik to verify and cover in a future blog entry.