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October 6, 2008
Police Give Ticket for Signaling, Then Not Turning
It's probably one of the least heard of tickets, especially given to a bicyclist. But a ticket for signaling and then not turning was apparently handed out to one Critical Mass rider in Santa Monica on Friday night. Fellow rider to the cyclist and a photographer Alex Thompson said it was "biased enforcement."
Santa Monica Critical Mass and Santa Monica Police have a history of meeting up every first Friday of the month. Hundreds of cyclist show up with a few to fifteen officers trailing behind. In August, the department spent over $3,000 for sixteen officers to monitor the ride.
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lol
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Easy solution -- don't signal if you're not turning.
And to solve the overall issue, don't ride like douchebags and the police might stop giving you a hard time.
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How many times have you turned on the turn signal in your car, and then changed your mind. Or for that matter, how many times have you seen people riding down the street with their blinker unwittingly on. It's an inane law and should be removed.
The over-enforcement of the ride is a whole other issue. People "break laws" constantly throughout the day, many of them they don't even know, like stepping off of a curb if it's not at an intersection, or parking facing out in a slanted parking spot. They key to a civil society is that the police officers overlook these minor and harmless infractions because they have better things to do (like investigating homicide?)
When you have a police force that is out to get it's citizens, it's a very scary society to live in.
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And Sasper - this coming from a non-biker (me), but those "douchebags" have just as much right to ride on the streets as all those "douchebags" who drive cars recklessly and endanger those who live and work around them. The difference is that the douchebag on a bike can't run over your neighbor's kids.
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Ugh, great, make the extra effort to ticket cyclists but ignore all the people on the street who DON'T signal and turn, or blink once AS they turn/change lanes (the signal is intended to NOTIFY car behind you - no point in notifying mid turn/lane change), flick their cigs on the road, swerve dangerously on the 10 because they cannot stay in the lane at high speeds while holding a coffee/cig/phone/lipstick, and of course, my favorite, almost hitting pedestrians crossing the street while making left/right hand turns and then blame the pedestrian for walking on a green light because THEY forgot to check if anyone was crossing.
Yeah, ignore all those far more dangerous pricks and pick on cyclists whose top speed is usually less than a car.
Way to go Santa Monica PD douchebags. Well, really any police department in CA.
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Live/work in Santa Monica and have seen cyclists doing many things such as riding two abreast on narrow residential streets, blowing through stop signs and traffic lights, and zigzagging from sidewalk to street to take advantage of a green light but I don't recall ever seeing one actually signal a turn. This rider should get a commendation not a ticket.
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Thank God this is a law. Nothing more irritating than following a douchey driver at 10 mph who has a signal on but never turns or changes lanes.
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Selective enforcement by the SMPD as per usual. Ticket a cyclist on the night of critical mass for something bogus like this signaling thing. Then completely ignore cyclists blatantly breaking the law by riding the wrong way, weaving between street and sidewalk, and riding without lights, and more on all other days of the month. Not to mention ignoring motorists who blow through stops, speeding on surface streets, exiting parking spaces without signaling and any number of things they allow to happen unharassed every day.
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I think CM is a nuisance, but this is pretty dumb.
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What, no mention of why the cops were following the bike riders? It was obvious when I was there - they had donuts on sticks hanging off the backs of their bikes.
SMPD found the donuts to be irresistible.
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This is not real is it? A TICKET to a CYCLIST? With all the other shit going on out there? Are you kidding me?
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This not a joke. This goes on every month. However I am not opposed to citing cyclists entirely. What I am opposed to is the selective enforcement of the law that punishes those with minor infractions greatly (for political agenda) while ignoring far more dangerous infractions made by others on every other day of the month. Letting the wrong way rider who hops between sidewalk and road and blows every light they can, get away with their behavior without so much as a warning, while they hand out tickets like the one in this article, is just absurd.
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LOL @ the ignorant people who forget to turn off their turn signals while driving and causing other drivers to slow down. They deserve tickets as much, if not, more than this cyclist.
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Thats true Gary... but whats weirder is that you see the type of biking youre talking about WAAAY more than you see bikers signaling and all that. Yet how many times have you seen a cyclist stopped for riding the wrong way or riding on the sidewalk? I dont ride as much as you do but I have never seen it.