In the interest of balance I thought I should post a little incident that happened to me this morning… I think we’re all a little quick to post up our bad stories… and this is a good one… so here it is.
Coming down the North Circular this morning - a little packed so a nip down a side road to join the A41 a little further down… now the naughty thing I did there was ‘not see’ the no left turn side. So about 400m down the road blues and twos behind me - local patrol car… crap.
Copper jumps out and comes up to me - I take my helmet of and nice as pie say good morning what can I do for you officer… ‘do you know why I’ve pulled you over’… ‘no’ say I (mmm) he then explains why I shouldn’t ignore road signs - even when it’s busy - polite as you like… I sit and listen with a polite smile and appriate nods… just being nice. I then notice he has a Welsh lilt and ask where he’s from - Swansea - so we then spend 5 mins nattering about Swansea when his colleage comes round and asks me for my licence etc… turns out he’s being doing the check on the bike and it’s come back as a CBF600 - and he thinks my bike is a VFR So we then spend 5 mins having a look at my bike - nattering about what I’m going to do to it and that I’m off to Russia on it… talked about lb.com etc…
To sum up… 15 mins at the side of the road - good natter, slightly told off, and given some free advise
You’ll have much more fun with the police in Russia. I got pulled over for speeding on a dual cariageway at 65kph. He then made up an appropriately low speed limit (30kph! - on a dual carriageway - I ask you!) then tried to fine me $100 on the spot! Ended up giving him a packet of Marlboro lights instead.
Failing that just take small denomination dollars, you’ll get pulled all the time and they’ll generally let you go for about $5 a time.
Also got pulled for going round a roundabout twice (another made up offence) and for doing a U-turn in a quiet backstreet (and that time I was right behind a Russian car that didn’t get pulled - he showed me the no U-turn sign in a Russian Highway Code - didn’t seem to matter that there was no actual sign)
IMO, some cops are great and some pigs are winkers. It only takes a minute to find this out and lucky for most of the people on bikes most bike cops are great (trying to cover myself for the ones I know on bikes )
The bottom line is we have not choice but to keep an open mind about the cops and if one does act like a twit it may be what you done that has triggered this?
So we then spend 5 mins having a look at my bike - nattering about what I’m going to do to it and that I’m off to Russia on it… talked about lb.com etc…
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