Pulled over by police

Twice in one day - now that's bad luck 😄

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ur said:

*I wouldn't go boasting that there aren't any laws about unicycles in
the NY Bi-Laws, that's the kind of attitude that will get laws put in
place! But it's silly that the officer pulled you over just for
that... he probably didn't have anything else to do or was just
bored... And what is this about the terror-alert being mauve?? Is that
a joke, or do you really have different colours for levels of
terror-threat i.e. the equavalent of fire-threats during the
dry-season or float-threats during the wet-season??? *

We really do. As far as we can tell, it's the only thing the "Office of
Homeland Security" has come up with.

It's a 'five-point scale'
(http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?theme=29), with strangely-chosen
colors. (Green, blue, yellow, orange, red). It might as well be a
three-point scale, because it will never go below "yellow" as long as
the Office of Homeland Security exists.

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Good work, i understood that American police shot on sight anybody who
tried to argue with them or have an intelligent thought.

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Dave

- what a thoroughly post-modern subversion of the cycling genre -
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ur said:

*I wouldn't go boasting that there aren't any laws about unicycles in
the NY Bi-Laws, that's the kind of attitude that will get laws put in
place! But it's silly that the officer pulled you over just for
that... he probably didn't have anything else to do or was just
bored... And what is this about the terror-alert being mauve?? Is that
a joke, or do you really have different colours for levels of
terror-threat i.e. the equavalent of fire-threats during the
dry-season or float-threats during the wet-season??? *

As others have answered, there are indeed color-coded threat levels, and
I think that regardless of whether the color-coding can go city-by-city
or is only a national thing, this city is def'ly experiencing a LOT more
police presence these days.

As for the kinds of things that get laws put in place: I thought about
that, but cops rarely get laws put in place. Had I ridden into a
pedestrian and killed her, you can bet the law would change virtually
over night. That's why I'm so careful to be nice around pedestrians
(except when I have to attack pepper-spray-wielding nutcases or
something). As I mentioned, this stretch of sidewalk is a 'sidewalk' in
name only -- no one walks there these days except the police who are
standing by the road, watching for suspicious cars that are about to
enter the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.

Twice in one day: Sorry, I double posted by accident. I didn't think the
first one went thru.

Max's comments: Yes, I've had cops ask me not to ride on a sidewalk
before, and because they have been so nice, I've complied without
instructing them about the law. But this young guy was a little on the
Napoleanic side, and I guess he wanted to chalk up another summons to
his belt. It was purely frivolous.

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I'm currently working with my state representative and state senator to
get the laws in Tennessee revisited to address some of these issues.
The rub is that "unicycles" in laws means nothing because there is a
huge difference between a 20" and a Coker.

I don't want to be made to ride my 20" in the street and I don't want a
Coker flying by while my kids are walking down the sidewalk. As David
noted indirectly, it is about speed.

The laws need to reflect that there is a difference.

As I understand it, the National Transportation Safety Board says that
sidewalks are designed for about 4.5 mph.

Tommy

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Tmornstar - Grandmaster 2T

Tommy Thompson
[email hidden] (No PMs. please)
Memphis Unicycle Club
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Hey Dave, glad it all worked out. You're lucky he didn't get you for
speeding on your Guni. :p

--
shibumi - On A Uni

Jeff

"Everyone is my equal, so in that I may learn from them." Quote from
'All in the Family'
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Danny Colyer said:

*ur wrote:
If the police are worried about terrorist attacks, it might be
reasonable for a policeman who's not used to seeing unicyclists
riding
around on their daily business to consider that the unicyclist
(something unusual) may be there to divert attention away from
something
more sinister.

I don't now what the current level of paranoia in NY is like, or
whether
it's justified, but if there is considered to be a high risk of
further
terrorist activity then the policeman may have been right to stop
David
(although not to threaten him with a summons). OTOH, if he was
genuinely concerned that the unicyclist was supposed to be a
diversion
then he probably should have ignored David completely and taken a
good
look at what else was going on around him.*

You are absolutely right. A cop is within his rights (and reason) to
suspect that something is a bit odd abot a unicyclist flying down the
sidewalk towards (or near) him, and I had no problem stopping for him
(other than physics -- it took awhile to decelerate!). He should have
assessed a few things and then made the determination (as he ultimately
did) to let me go, but one thing he could have considered is whether I
was an actual diversion or simply an unusual sight.

As for what Tommy said, I really hope no one goes the extra step here in
order to specify about sidewalk safety, but I think it's inevitable. At
some point, it really WILL be illegal for me to ride on a NYC sidewalk.
I'll enjoy my time till then (and I'll keep policing myself!).

David

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Dictator for Life,
NYUC
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Learner, as I hope you've surmised, I would NOT be riding 15 mph on a
busy sidewalk. In fact, I don't even ride 10 mph on a busy sidewalk. In
fact, I don't even ride in high gear on most sidewalks. The area I was
riding in is industrial. I know my routes very well and ride cautiously
each time I vary a route or learn a new one (as circumstances dictate).
I would never jeopardize myself or, even worse, a pedestrian. I would
rather crash into a wall than run into someone who is walking on a
sidewalk.

The same isn't true for bike paths, tho. We've had this discussion on
this forum before: There are some people who flaunt the rules and common
sense. They're the ones who walk dogs on long leads on a bike path next
to a perfectly good sidewalk that they should be on. I slow down when I
see these people, but we had a consensus here once that if necessary,
we'd use the dog-walker to break our fall in order to avoid hurting
ourselves or the innocent dog. This has never come up for me or anyone
else, but it's all part of the notion that you should try to prepare for
any eventuality.

I hope this answers your questions. Basically, we should always ride
with others' safety foremost and our own safety a close second. What
works for one area doesn't work for another, and what works for one
rider doesn't work for another. You have to know yourself and you have
to know your conditions and surroundings.

David

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David_Stone - New York Unicycle Club

Dictator for Life,
NYUC
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Learner said:

*I find your comment that you could not stop for 50feet very
interesting.
Accepting that this sidewalk is not used a great deal by
pedestrians,
you are probably safe to ride there. However, if the sidewalk was
busy,
then it's difficult to predict what's going to happen. You may need
to stop in a hurry to avoid crashing into a small child, old granny,
whatever. In those circumstances, do you still feel it would be
acceptable to ride such that you couldn't stop quickly? Surely
common
sense overrules laws in such circumstances?

Learner *

One can go around people without having to stop.

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rupert said:

*One can go around people without having to stop. *

Depends on the sidewalk. In New York you may be able to, but around
here sidewalks can only hold maybe 3 people wide. It's hard to dodge
moving targets, too.

--
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actually in my local area someone died riding a bike on the sidewalk and
crossing an intersection or street. the car didn't expect the bike so
the driver did look for it and ended up hitting him, so that's the thing
to watch for.

--
carsonpalooza - www.oddtodd.com

I'm jealous🙁
I just wear bike shorts...* the tight kind*
I think it really does help with performance.
I like your hair. You look like my friend.
Good luck finding a working pirate
That site is making me drool.
Edit... next time, post something like this in JC, and a string of
question marks does not constitute a title.
I was drooling over all those spools.
-Dave aka fcwegnm0b

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In Boulder, the law is that you can't ride on the outdoor mall with any
wheeled means of transportation.

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In article <[email hidden]>,

unign said:

In Boulder, the law is that you can't ride on the outdoor mall with any
wheeled means of transportation.

--
unign - Level 5
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time for the unipillar to be born!

..max

ur said:

*... And what is this about the terror-alert being mauve?? Is that a
joke, or do you really have different colours for levels of
terror-threat i.e. the equavalent of fire-threats during the
dry-season or float-threats during the wet-season??? *

tholub said:

*We really do. As far as we can tell, it's the only thing the "Office
of Homeland Security" has come up with.

It's a 'five-point scale'
(http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/display?theme=29), with strangely-chosen
colors. (Green, blue, yellow, orange, red). It might as well be a
three-point scale, because it will never go below "yellow" as long as
the Office of Homeland Security exists. *

Our Department Of Homeland Security uses five "Threat Level"
designations to help us determine how paranoid we are expected to be as
we go about our lives over here. The masses are fairly well able to keep
straight what "low" (the world is populated only by fuzzy bunnies
gamboling merrily in fields of daisies) and "severe" (planeloads of
Osama's minions are parachuting into Washington with 50-gallon drums of
weaponized anthrax strapped to their backs) mean. But no one can
remember whether "high" is worse than "guarded," or "elevated," or
whatever, so they have this color coding system to aid them in
communicating the Threat Level to those few members of the public who,
unlike myself, are still paying attention.

Never mind that they could have just used simple numbers for this, from
Threat Level One through Threat Level Five, the comprehension of which
would require no knowledge beyond the ability to count to five, and
which would also make intuitive sense to blind people. What pains me is
that the dim bulbs who implemented this thing didn't have even the
necessary grains of sense in their thick heads to put the color spectrum
into the proper sequence. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo,
violet. Roy G. Biv. The visible spectrum. There are some bits of
scientific knowledge more basic than that, but not many. I paid
attention for a few minutes in science class way back in grade-school,
naively trusting that this information would be useful to me at some
point in the future. Dammit. I could have spent those precious moments
of my youth more productively by covertly shooting spitballs into the
back of Lisa Paige's frizzy hair, and at least have gotten a bit of a
giggle out of it. Now when the time comes for our leadership to
communicate information that is supposed to help us "reduce the
likelihood or impact of an attack" on our country, they use a color
spectrum as a visual aid, but they CHANGE THE NATURAL ORDER of the
colors, so that the very mnemonic device that they are using becomes
contradictory to the message that they are using it to express. I
understand what is probably their thinking. Only a small minority of
people on the street will be able to tell you the order of the color
spectrum, but the traffic signal is our omnipresent god, and so the
opposite of red is always green, no matter what else may be between the
two. Our world here is shaped to cater to the needs of the ignorant, and
those who clutter their minds with obscure bits of arcane trivia like
what the colors of the rainbow are will only end up confused.

But of course the Threat Level will indeed never drop below yellow in my
lifetime anyway, and so the bottom two colors will never be relevant. So
I guess I won't have practical cause to rant about it. I'd just rather
my intelligence weren't insulted on such a regular basis.

Oh, and if Ms. Paige is somehow reading this, I'm only kidding about the
spitballs.

I suppose I should make some token gesture toward the original topic,
so...

rupert said:

*One can go around people without having to stop.*

One shouldn't go around people without being ABLE to stop, certainly in
much less than fifty feet. People do not make good slalom-course pylons.
They frequently move in unexpected, illogical and often just plain
stupid directions without warning, even when the sidewalk seems
completely empty, and they come bounding out of a shop doorway right in
front of you.

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To avoid danger of suffocation
keep away from babies
and small children
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David_Stone said:

*But Joe, I still need that law -- just to be safe.*

Sounds like it should be on the back of a T-shirt.

weeble said:

*but they CHANGE THE NATURAL ORDER of the colors. *

Didn't you listen when 'Daddy' (http://tinyurl.com/d6s4r) was making
speeches?

--
GILD - Waffle-[censored], Time-bider and JCTK

if you can't say anything good about someone, sit right here by me.--
'alice' (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/custom.html?) 'roosevelt'
(http://tinyurl.com/963jr) 'longworth' (http://tinyurl.com/78ybd)

I feel like a 'fugitive' (http://gallery.unicyclist.com/Daves-Tattoos)
from the law of averages.-- 'william h mauldin'
(http://www.johnconyers.com/)
...using nietzsche's metaphysics to escape from
christianity...-'metro_tramp on the value of metaphysics'
(http://tinyurl.com/4sjw6)-
it's hard to be sure, and good to be paranoid...john childs on life on
the internet
'harper' (http://tinyurl.com/c9epx)
'NAMASTE!' (http://tinyurl.com/4qcxw)
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Quoted message said:

One shouldn't go around people without being ABLE to stop, certainly
in much less than fifty feet. People do not make good slalom-course
pylons. They frequently move in unexpected, illogical and often just
plain stupid directions without warning, even when the sidewalk seems
completely empty, and they come bounding out of a shop doorway right
in front of you.

I agree totally, people are illogical and unreasonable. They see a
unicyclist and assume 'unbalanced clown' and either run & hide or move
in a totally unpredictable way. More than once I've been forced to
dismount (at low, pedestrian maneuvering speed) but someone who saw me
coming but refused to act normally. They'd try to get away from me, and
move into the gap I was aiming for, and then berate me for putting thier
life in danger...
"Well maybe if you weren't so paranoid I might get on better. I'm
prefectly capable of missing you without your help, thanks"
...Remount, ride off.

Loose.

Disclaimer: The above is not a direct quote. I am not that sharp witted
to think up something like that at the time, usually I apologise
profusely, give them all the space they need and then carry on my way
(sometimes on foot).

--
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Dave: "I had a particularly bad UPD & found I'd lost a shoe"
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Loosemoose said:

*Disclaimer: The above is not a direct quote. I am not that sharp
witted to think up something like that at the time, usually I
apologise profusely, give them all the space they need and then carry
on my way (sometimes on foot). *

It was rather snappy, so I think you should remember it for next time.

--
rupert
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