Midnight Movie: Legally Causing Traffic in Santa Monica

so..lets get this straight...you "fight back" buy frustrating motorists who most of them dont even live in santa monica and are trying to get home after a long week possibly putting lives at risk and call it a protest?

and whats with the video footage?

please explain.

Ah, the knee-jerk reactions of two people who probably haven't ridden a bicycle on a public street in recent memory, if ever. (OMG, *I* drive a car, so these crazy meddling cyclists must hate people like *me*! I must leap to defend my Car People!)

All protests should be confined to inconveniencing only the actual persons who are directly responsible for the problem, right? :)

I don't even own a car, but I still think it's counterproductive to alienate people like that, not to mention the exhaust that must have generated.
If you want to get the motorists of SM on your side, do something to show how fun/different/cool it is to ditch your car and ride a bike.
I think it comes down to whether you want to make a point to the cops or actually influence public opinion in a positive way...

Creative way to protest but not making many friends or swaying many people (drivers) to your cause.

I think the problem we need to address is that bicycle riders have no idea that most bicycle riders are pricks on the road and have this crazy sense of entitlement.

This is like a Civil Rights issue.

African-Americans, according to the law before 1964, had all the rights of any US citizen. Yet when they showed up to vote or walk the streets of a Southern town, they were harassed and threatened. It took the Civil Rights act of 1964 to finally allow them to live without fear.

Bicyclists, according to the law, have all the rights of a motor vehicle. Yet when they ride down a street, they are harassed and threatened by intolerant drivers. In Santa Monica, there is institutionalized bigotry against the cyclists by the police department.

Will it take a Cyclists bill of rights
act to finally give bicyclists equal treatment? To make it a serious crime to harass or threaten bicyclists with a motor vehicle, a crime to deprive them of their rights to use the road as the California Vehicle code mandates, a felony to use the "color of authority" where a police force illegally harasses bicyclists.

Martin Luther King Jr. marched across the South to give rights to African-Americans. Bicyclists may have to walk across the street, over and over again, to get their rights.

Once again the bike-inistas reveal themselves to be whiney little bitches by screwing up someone else's day because they think they have some kind of distorted sense of entitlement.

Like impeding traffic accomplishes sympathy for your right to endanger yourselves in traffic?

Grow the fuck up and get over yourselves. Do something constructive like supporting mass transit or blocking autos from certain areas of the city.

Yeah, you have a right to use the roads. You also have a social responsibility to not impede traffic by acting like assholes.

I'd love to know what some of the citations are, as I'd like to remind bicyclists that they must obey the law as well.

Frankly, when you have over 100 cyclists, there are bound to be infractions. For example, one person complained that he was given a citation for "leaving the bike lane" which is certainly not illegal--providing that you signal before doing so. I'd be willing to bet that he didn't.

Of course, most of these bicycling martyrs forget the parts of the laws that are inconvenient. You know, stopping at stop signs causes them to lose their momentum, so they roll through them. If there's no traffic at a red light, they shouldn't have to wait--after all, they're saving the planet! They can tie up traffic by riding in the middle of the lane because it would be inconvenient to pull over and let cars pass--it would break their rhythm. Yes, the law requires white reflectors on the front and red reflectors on the back, but I have a $5000 racing bike and those reflectors create drag and add weight. Besides, I watched the Tour De France from start to end and I didn't see any of those guys with reflectors on their bikes, so I shouldn't have to have any on mine.

And, of course, if the police have the temerity to point out that bicyclists must obey the law, it's harassment! "We're being oppressed!" they cry. "We have the same rights as motor vehicle!" Yet, rather than questioning what those nine riders did to earn themselves a citation, it's obvious that the police were the bad guys.

If those nine riders feel they were unjustly ticketed, take it to court. Make the police explain what the bicyclist did to earn themselves the citation.

I'm a cyclist, and although I find my self questioning the usefulness of the critical mass movement these days, having gone out to see the Santa Monica critical mass my self, I feel the police action is excessively heavy handed. Unlike critical mass almost anywhere else, SMCM actively strives to keep cyclists to a single lane, they stop at lights and go through stop signs in small clusters allowing automobile cross traffic to go through. I've even seen them handing out lights to encourage lightless riders to comply with regulation for night riding.

I witnessed and photographed bogus tickets being handed out, one for a rider for not having lights. This was obviously a pretense to try and tie up someone they perceived to be in a more leadership role, since he had a megaphone for directing riders. He had 5 lights on his bike, 2 in the rear, 2 in front and even one light on the side, in addition to reflectors and a high powered air horn for making him self heard in traffic too. No later then 15 seconds after they finished that ticket they pulled over a rider in a Santa suit (this was the holiday season at the time), and this time they had trouble figuring out what to right him up for, so the bicycle officer called in a patrol car to pull out the vehicle code and literally search for a reason to ticket him. They settled on riding to far to the left, which the rider later successfully had tossed out after a written declaration.

The SMPD is using selective enforcement of the law to target critical mass, and are willing to write tickets they know are unjustified. Meanwhile riders who blatantly break the law are routinely ignored as long as they are not part of critical mass, for example a rider not part of our group passed with no lights at all while they were citing the CM rider with tons of lights for not having lights. Huh? I'm not saying I necessarily endorse the methods of this crosswalk protest, but the police are the ones who escalated this situation by writing bogus tickets in mass and ignoring efforts made by cyclists to negotiate a peaceful existence.

SMPD has a task force to deal with the monthly Critical Mass ride. Yet just a few days ago a
70 year-old woman was beaten, tied up and robbed in a home invasion robbery on Ashland Ave in Santa Monica.

It seems SMPD should spend more resources protecting its citizens from crime instead of following a bunch of bicyclists.

The level of stupidity here amazes me.

Countless riders and "organizers" of Critical Mass rides count themselves as "victims" in this situation and view this confrontational and flat out STUPID "protest" as their "only" option.

They are SO deeply lost in narcissism that they are literally incapable of seeing the road from any other perspective other than their own.

Sheer stupidity.

By creating disturbances in residential areas and yes, by failing to obey the CVC at all, bikers like these give every cyclist in L.A. a bad name.

These particular cyclists look at the law selectively and then get mad like angry babies when the law responds to them. They then shout, "UNFAIR!! HARASSMENT!! CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT!!"

It is embarrassing for those of us who would like to see an improvement of the relationship between motorists and cyclists.

If anything this encourages less cyclists to participate in group rides, and kills the already fractured and broken bike movement by creating further chaos. Truly, something to be proud of.

Well done!

I am encouraged to read the comments in response to this article, they are very revealing.

I'm a bike rider and I just don't get it. I've NEVER had any problems with the cops while riding my bike and I rode all over Manhattan and many places in LA.

Then again I don't go around with a chip on my shoulder trying to piss people off.

Critical Mass or Critical Gas?.

HAHA!

Fabricio, get a grip on your own anger.

My neighbor's son is a cop and he's got quite a different outlook. These Critical Mass things are a pita because people get injured and disturbances have to be dealt with. He'd much rather be out looking for real bad guys than babysitting a bunch of petulant idiots.

Try the different perspective, it's very tasty.