Quote:
Originally Posted by nynor
i am thinking that the vehicle i passed was an obstruction, pursuant to 1b, due to the fact that they were on their cell phone and driving erratically. the man on his cell phone was not constituting an immediate hazard (except to me, and breaking the law) and they were an obstruction, IMO.
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Good luck with that. The judge won't see it that way, seeing as the officer elected to stop you instead of the "obstruction". Traffic court judges have heard every excuse in the book for motorcyclists passing on double yellows. They see us as reckless and irresponsible for the most part anyway.
It's likely we all do this at times (it's ridiculously easy to do) while posing absolutely no threat to ourselves or anyone else. None of that matters. There seems to be this overblown sense of "fair play" in this country, where motorcycles are not given any allowances for their smaller footprint and much higher performance. We are supposed to pretend we are in a car, or a truck, with their larger size and lesser performance and ride accordingly. No lane splitting (except in California), no weaving around bumper to bumper stalled traffic, and no passing where a clapped out semi truck couldn't pass as well. Judges and cops love to enforce this sense of "fairness" upon motorcyclists.
Even if it was painfully obvious to the cop that what you did was entirely safe and within the bounds of common sense, most will still pop you. That's how they roll. They claim a strict adherence to the law and an inability to exercise independent judgement when it suits them, yet bend the law or turn a blind eye when it suits them in some situations. Motorcyclists very rarely come out on the winning end of this.
Bottom line is, the law may be "wrong", but you did break it knowingly and willingly. That said, this is America - you have every right, perhaps even an obligation, to fight it. I'm convinced we have only come to be burdened by such petty laws and petty enforcement of those laws because so many choose not to fight the charges. If every citizen fought every traffic ticket, we would soon overwhelm our law enforcement officers and court systems. They would then be forced to make the choice between focusing their resources on real crime and real criminals that hurt folks, or basically honest citizens that will likely just roll over and pay. Right now there seems to be far too much emphasis on the latter.