Autocomplete Zeitgeist Revisited - 2026

Before we begin

In this post, which examines the American zeitgeist, I adopt a tone of playful criticism. Please don’t mistake me for one of those tedious killjoys who only finds fault. Believe me, I am grateful for my country and its people.

Introduction

As everybody knows, Google Autocomplete is a function of Google Search that starts providing feedback even before you’ve finished typing your query. The search engine predicts what you’re looking for based on others’ recent searches across the Internet. I find Autocomplete a good indicator of where people’s heads are, so in a long-ago post I asked Google a range of questions designed to examine the national zeitgeist as of March 31, 2018. Then, exactly four years later, I googled the same questions to see how things had changed and what people sought answers for in 2022. And now, another four years later (to the day), I peer back into Autocomplete suggestions to see where our heads are at in 2026.

(Note: to improve the accuracy of this experiment—that is, to make it more about the American people instead of about me—I turned off “Personal Results,” so my own previous searches won’t influence the suggestions.)

Persecution mania

Four years ago, the query “is it illegal to…” prompted Autocomplete suggestions that included burning money, hitting a girl, and working weekends in France. Today, this same short phrase produces these suggested queries as the top five:

• Is it illegal to write on US currency
• Is it illegal to talk to dolphins
• Is it illegal to drive barefoot
• Is it illegal to collect rainwater in California
• Is it illegal to drive without insurance

Driving barefoot has appeared in the top five for both my previous studies, suggesting that—even though Gen Z doesn’t seem very interested in driving—they’re still interested in this topic. Maybe they’re tired of their parents (or Uber drivers) going barefoot?

Now, this bit about writing on US currency I’ve never seen before, not even in the top ten—it’s completely new. So I asked myself, what’s changed that this is suddenly a #1 concern? The answer is simple: as described here, Donald Trump will soon be the first sitting president in history to have his signature adorn US currency, specifically the $1 bill. Now, I’m not here to take sides in matters of politics, but I think everyone can agree that this presents a tantalizing opportunity for the anti-Trump camp: they naturally want to write something like “sucks” right after his signature. Kind of a tit-for-tat: like, fine, you wanna write on my currency, I’m gonna write on it, too. But to consider actually indulging this temptation begs the question: will I get arrested for this?

If you think I’m being ridiculously paranoid, I’ll just say that a) it’s not necessarily the case that the typical American isn’t paranoid, and b) there is ample precedent to reasonably ask this question. The Donald saw to it that his face is prominently displayed right next to George Washington’s on US National Park season passes, and the backlash created a cottage industry of stickers designed specifically to obscure his picture.

The Department of the Interior reacted by prohibiting these stickers, claiming that they somehow bypass “security features,” and declared that affixing them can invalidate the $80 pass. As related here, this led to companies innovating again, this time with handy sleeves that cover up the picture until it’s time to present the pass to a park ranger. Given the history here, I can’t blame my fellow Americans for being careful.

Now let’s talk about the legality of talking to dolphins. As it turns out, the popularity of this search query is largely Google’s own fault because their AI summary indicates that it basically is illegal to talk to dolphins.

There’s not a direct link between this AI summary and the popularity of the Autocomplete text, but this kind of overstatement tends to get people up in arms, which is exactly what has happened. As described in a legal journal here, “A viral claim spread … suggesting that simply speaking to or near a dolphin is a federal crime.” So a paranoia has emerged about this activity, just like with defacing currency.

I’m going to skip over the rainwater thing for a moment and address “driving without insurance” next. (You’ll see why in a minute.) I am perplexed by these driving-related inquiries given how Gen Z isn’t much into cars. So I dug a little deeper into that, and surfaced this fascinating blog post challenging the popular theories about this generational change in driving behavior. The data do not show that this reluctance to learn to drive is due to the popularity of ride-sharing apps, or teens being too busy studying or doing extracurricular activities that improve their college applications, or because of our tough economic times, or because of increasing rates of depression. All of these explanations are refuted via data going back decades. The author argues, instead, that Gen-Z teens are just growing up more slowly—they’re “less likely to date, have a paid job, drink alcohol, and have sex than teens in previous generations” and that young adults “also take longer to get married, have children, and settle into careers.”

Worrying about having to get car insurance sounds like exactly the kind of grown-up task Gen-Z kids shrink from. I can just sense the eye-rolling and their thinking, “OMG, if I have to get actual insurance just to drive a car, forget about it!”

Could this delayed adulthood miraculously explain the rainwater gathering thing as well? Well, maybe. It could be Gen-Z, while afraid to drink tap water due to widespread mythology about it being unhealthy, also lacks both a car and the grown-up discipline of knocking out errands, and is thus too lazy to head to the grocery store for bottled. Or who knows, maybe young adults are so stunted they forget to pay their water bill. So they’re like, maybe we just put a bucket out back and drink from that … if we’re allowed.

Moving on to a slightly different search, “is it against the law to…” I get mostly the same results, but with these two additions appearing in the top five:

• Is it against the law to burn an American flag
• Is it against the law to not file taxes

Interestingly, flag burning was the very first Autocomplete suggestion eight years ago, but four years ago it didn’t appear at all. So why has this one returned? Well, it may well be a political matter, so let’s look at who was president when I did my two previous studies. My first Autocomplete post was halfway through Trump’s first term, which is when we first saw this burning question (pun intended, couldn’t resist); my second post was halfway through Biden’s term (when this suggestion disappeared); and now, halfway through Trump’s second term, it’s back. I’m not suggesting that Americans are more interested in burning flags during conservative reigns. It could be that the American flag simply figures more prominently in the national dialogue when we have a polarizing, populist president whose followers seem to believe they own this national icon.

In case you think that’s just a pet theory of mine, I did a little light research, and this article describes a 2025 poll of 2,404 U.S. adults on the topic of flags vs. party. (The sample was “weighted to be representative of adults nationwide according to gender, age, race, and education, based on the U.S. Census.”) The poll found, among other things, that forty-two percent of respondents assume a person flying the flag is conservative, whereas only ten percent assume a person displaying the flag is liberal.

I’m not suggesting that liberals want to burn our flag and are making sure this is allowed. I’m also not insinuating that conservatives, fearing that liberals are going to start burning flags, are seeing whether or not they can call the cops. Probably more to the point, when people are politically agitated in general, as they are now, the flag itself and notions of waving vs. desecrating it are more top-of-mind.

Moving on to our next query, “can you be arrested for…,” the top five include “a misdemeanor,” “speeding,” and “driving without a license,” all of which I saw last time. “Driving without insurance” shows up here, too. But I also see a newcomer to the suggestions, which is “can you be arrested for littering in Texas.”

I know my point with this post is to determine what can be inferred about the American zeitgeist from Autocomplete suggestions, but these highly local issues make it tricky. The question is, what happened recently in Texas that would drive this kind of query? I’m generally the wrong guy to ask because I keep my finger as far from the pulse of my fellow man as possible, eschewing all social media and most news sources. Whereas many people have FOMO (fear of missing out), I’m more plagued by “FONMO” (fear of not missing out)—that is, fear of being dragged into pointless gossipy discussions about this or that viral inflammation. But it’s really easy to research such stuff now, thanks (?) to AI chatbots. Claude drew my attention to this article about a cop beating up a woman for littering. Obviously this is a travesty, but worrying whether or not it’s illegal to litter seems to be missing the point. If this is how people fact-check before joining an online dialogue, I doubt they’re really in a position to fix the problem. It’s likely just more performative outrage.

Mercifully, since I have a lot to cover here, suggestions to complete the query “can you be arrested for…” haven’t changed since four years ago so I can skip them. No such luck with “can a police officer…” but that does turn up some very interesting results:

• Can a police officer arrest an ice agent
• Can a police officer search your car
• Can a police officer serve a restraining order
• Can a police officer arrest a federal agent
• Can a police officer date a felon

The first one naturally reflects current events, which have little to do—I suspect—with the American zeitgeist and more to do with remarkable changes in federal law enforcement. I mean, if Mount St. Helens erupted again with widespread atmospheric effects, it would certainly influence search suggestions, even though nothing about Americans would have changed.

But it’s an interesting scenario. I suppose the gist of this inquiry is whether a cop could arrest an ICE agent just for doing his or her job (and I’m going to guess the answer is “no” but I’m not performing that query because I don’t actually care). But what if people are just wondering if ICE agents can do as they please? Hold up a liquor store and the cops turn a blind eye?

The second query is pretty dumb, obviously. If a cop can punch you in the face for dropping litter from your car, he can certainly search it. So make sure you never have a taillight out, if you don’t want a cop finding that exploded can of Spam in the storage area where the spare tire used to be. (True story! My wife had stashed foodstuffs in case of, like, a zombie apocalypse. Turns out tinned meat can expire, big time.)

I have to confess, the popularity of the restraining order inquiry threw me. (Fortunately, my experience around this is nil.) The law is somewhat complicated around serving restraining orders and sometimes it’s the sheriff, not a patrol officer, who does it. So the question becomes, why now, when this question wasn’t popular four or eight years ago? Domestic violence hasn’t obviously increased, but light research indicates that there have been important legal updates lately, including explicit coverage of cyberstalking, GPS tracking, and smart home device manipulation. I find all of this kind of depressing so let’s move on to the final suggestion: can a police officer date a felon?

This one is kind of fascinating. Is it police officers asking this, because they think felons are kind of hot? Or is it felons (convicted or not) who are kind of turned on by cops? I have to think there’s some frisson there; I mean, it’s not like anyone is asking if urban planners can date botanists. Specifically, this query puts me in mind of Lil Wayne’s song “Mrs. Officer,” which includes the passage, “Yeah, doing a buck in the latest drop /  Got stopped by a lady cop, haha / She got me thinking I can date a cop, haha / ‘Cause her uniform fit her so tight / She read me my rights / She put me in her car, she cut off all the lights…”

(If you’re puzzled by that first line, “doing a buck” is driving at 100 mph, and “latest drop” means a recently released luxury car model. So Lil Wayne goes from being the man, all cocky driving at insane speed in his high-status car, to suddenly being chastised by a cop, but without the terror that would normally accompany that … all in the span of a few short lines. It’s really very clever.)

Now, four years ago I’d have simply shrugged at the popularity of this Autocomplete suggestion because honestly, how could I really learn the reason without a whole lot of work? But now, of course, we have AI, and I asked Claude for some perspective. It replied, “The broader cultural backdrop is probably the explosive growth of true crime, prison content, and ‘felon influencer’ culture on social media over the past few years. People with criminal records have become a significant content demographic on TikTok, sharing their experiences openly in a way that simply wasn’t happening in 2018.” Who knew? I questioned Claude further about this trend, and it explained that “lot of felon-related content isn’t really ‘influencer’ content in the glamorous sense — it’s practical. ‘Can I get this job with a felony?’ ‘Can I rent an apartment?’ ‘Can a cop date me?’ These are real pressing questions for millions of Americans — there are roughly 19 million people in the U.S. with felony convictions — and TikTok became a place where people with lived experience answer those questions in a way that law-related websites don’t.”

And here’s where things get really strange: one of the search results Claude cited included “a “caption/hashtag description from a TikTok video: ‘I got stopped by a lady cop… she got me thinking i can date a cop #texas #fyp #viralvideo #texasstatetroopers.’” Remarkably, Claude surfaced this without the context of the Lil Wayne song I mentioned above. Whether this caption was a deliberate reference to the song or just an independent expression of the same widespread fantasy, we can only guess.

Wrapping up with our final query for today, we’ll see what Autocomplete suggests for “are you allowed to.” Here are the top five:

• Are you allowed to fight in hockey
• Are you allowed to be gay in the military
• Are you allowed to carry a gun in California
• Are you allowed to bring food on a plane
• Are you allowed to go to Antarctica

The only suggestion that’s same as four years ago is fighting in hockey, which moved up from fourth place. I examined this topic at length in my previous post so if you’re interested, click here.

This second one might be a case of faulty memory. I mean, it’s such old news that “don’t ask, don’t tell” was repealed (this was in 2011, for crying out loud) that I have to suppose people have just forgotten. Either that, or people far below military age back then just weren’t paying attention. (In fairness, an 18-year-old now would have been just three then.) Or who knows, maybe people who were gainfully employed adults in 2011 ignored the issue then but are suddenly considering joining the military since corporate America laid them off. (On a related note, a popular query both four and eight years ago, “are you allowed to retire at age 50,” no longer appears in Autocomplete suggestions, surely because in modern times it’s beside the point: anyone approaching 50 can expect to be laid off at any time, so why not wait for the severance package?)

As for carrying a gun in California, four years ago we had a similarly popular query, “are you allowed to carry a knife in California.” I guess things are even scarier here now, but at least people have wised up a bit. I mean, illegal to carry a knife? Seriously? I carry a pocketknife on bike rides!

Now, the next one, “bring food on a plane,” is just ridiculous and reinforces the notion that Gen-Z is just slow to enter adulthood. Anyone asking this clearly hasn’t been to an airport and watched—and smelled—people bringing their takeout food with them to the plane. And it’s not like airport personnel are going to bother differentiating between airport food and “outside” food. What, they’re gonna be like, “Sir, that looks like a Ziploc bag. You didn’t make that sandwich at home, did you?” (And by the way, I’m pretty sure I’ve brought a burrito from home wrapped in foil, no less. Just don’t bring a beverage or a Go-gurt.)

Which brings us to the final Autocomplete suggestion, “are you allowed to go to Antarctica.” As with so many of these inquiries, I’m reminded of the question, “Which is a bigger problem—ignorance or apathy?” and its answer, “I don’t know and I don’t care.” That is, I’m tempted to conclude that people are strange, and not give the matter another thought. But it’s now too easy to chase this kind of thing down, and I’ve discovered that there was a famous Internet influencer (over a million followers) who last year, at age 19, landed a little plane illegally in Antarctica and was detained there for two months while they performed various experiments on him and eventually stole his kidneys. Okay, I drifted off into fantasy for  a moment there but most of the story is true and—should you care—you can read it here. But actually, what does this have to do with the legality of traveling to Antarctica (which has been serviced by tour groups for sixty years)? Is anybody actually thinking of going? Why aren’t people googling “are you allowed to plagiarize albertnet”? (By the way, you’re not.)

Tune in next week…

As you have doubtless noticed, this post went on a bit longer than I expected, so I’ll cut it off here for now and post Part II next week. Check back because I’ll be covering a number of other Autocomplete categories: Who, what, where, why, how, and the future.

Other Autocomplete Zeitgeist posts

• Autocomplete Zeitgeist Revisited - 2026 - Part II
• Autocomplete Zeitgeist Revisited - Part II
• Autocomplete Zeitgeist Revisited
• The Autocomplete Zeitgeist

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Old Yarn - The Police Raid

Vlog

I gather people prefer videos and podcasts to reading these days, and several readers (or would-be readers) have suggested a vlog format. They usually say it should be massively abridged, maybe even refashioned as a TikTok dance video featuring somebody far more attractive than I. As compelling as that idea may be, honestly I prefer to stay as far from TikTok as possible. In terms of a more straightforward vlog version, in the past I’ve recorded myself reading a blog post, but I’m not sure how entertaining that really is. And so, as an experiment, today I used AI to create a voiceover version of this story, with some pictures, kind of like a slide show. This video runs about 11 minutes. Give it a try if you like, and let me know what you think. (And if you’re an old-school reader, scroll down as the text version awaits.)

Introduction

This is the eighth “old yarn” on albertnet (following in the footsteps of “The Cinelli Jumpsuit,” “Bike Crash on Golden Gate Bridge,” “The Enemy Coach,” “The Brash Newb,” “The Day I Learned Bicycle Gear Shifting,”, “The In-Flight Voyeur,” and most recently “The Dark Alley Incident”). This is the kind of true story that would normally be a “From the Archives” item, except I’ve never before written it down.

The Drug Bust – early 1994

I was living in an apartment on Webster Street in San Francisco’s Western Addition, aka Lower Haight. At the time I felt like it was a fairly safe neighborhood, but (as detailed here) I’ve discovered more recently that, at that time, it was actually pretty rough. I’d found the place through A—, a buddy at the Berkeley bike shop where I’d worked until I graduated from college. Our other roommate, R—, was the one who had the lease, and I didn’t know much about him except that he was about ten years older than us, and made his living buying broken down cars from the police auction and then fixing and selling them. He had a lot of spare time, which he spent entertaining friends, cooking, watching TV, and smoking weed.

I wasn’t too wild about R—’s lifestyle, especially the weed part, but he was a nice guy. Noting my predilection for making burritos, he’d buy chips and really good salsa from some local taqueria or Mexican grocery and exhort me to help myself to them. He was generally in pretty good spirits, laughing at all kinds of stuff. He had a great tabby cat whose official name was Pogo but whom A— and I called Toonces. Toonces took a shine to me and would sleep in my bed, a queen-size futon that took up almost my entire bedroom. My racing bike hung right above the futon, and I hung my dress shirts and neckties from its front wheel.

R—’s main visitors, for most of the time I lived there, were his girlfriend, his mistress, and another female friend who was a stripper. I don’t even remember his girlfriend’s name and other than her looks, I don’t know what R— saw in her. She had this dog named Dakota she’d always bring with her and about 90% of her verbal output was bawling out the dog—“Dakota, no!” 

The mistress, M—, wasn’t nearly as pretty but was a totally cool chick, we all liked her a lot. I don’t remember the stripper’s name either. She was nice, but pretty quiet and mostly just watched TV. I think R— only had her over to give her a place to relax and recharge; I gather she had a hard life.

Over time things started to go downhill. A— moved out, and R— rented the room out to some random guy who was stressed out all the time because he managed a restaurant. This guy had a female cat, Chloe, who was in heat and always coming on to Toonces, apparently unaware that she was also female.  Chloe would always stick her hind end in Toonces’ face and Toonces would stalk away, disgusted. Eventually Chloe got herself knocked up from some offscreen neighborhood tomcat, and had a litter of kittens that our roommate couldn’t manage to unload on anyone so they just pissed everywhere until it became untenable and R— kicked the guy out, kittens and all. Then we got some freshly minted journalism grad from Oklahoma who didn’t seem to have a job and just hung around, mainly watching R—’s giant TV, always with this kind of awkward trying-to-be-friendly smile plastered to his face. Meanwhile, R—’s weed use appeared to go from a special treat to a routine indulgence to a lifestyle. M— started to get a bit grumpy, chafing at her ongoing role of mistress vs. her hope of pushing out the girlfriend. Worst of all, R— got in the habit of having friends over and smoking them out, and this collection of friends seemed to grow over time to where there always seemed to be some stranger in my living room. It became kind of a menagerie of dirtbags.

I tolerated all of this because the rent was dirt cheap and I was saving up as much money as possible for a 9-month bicycle tour I was planning with my then-girlfriend, E—. I was spending a lot of my time at E—’s place anyway, and as our story begins I was in my last week living at the Webster place and had already started moving my stuff into storage.

On the night in question my dad was in town with his then-wife, and had offered to take E— and me out to dinner. I got home a bit early from work, just after sunset, so I’d have time to change out of my suit and tie and shake off the workday before my dad picked me up. The apartment was an upstairs unit, so just past the front door was a steep flight of stairs. As I came through the door, R— stuck his head out over the stairwell and yelled, “Don’t come in!”

I was gobsmacked. On what grounds could or would my roommate say this? I mean, I live here! I pay rent! As I stood there paralyzed with confusion, another head popped out, that of a complete stranger, who yelled, “Freeze! Police! Are you armed?!”

I guess you could say I’d lived a charmed life up to that moment, because it didn’t occur to me that this could actually be a cop. I mean, it didn’t even cross my mind. It felt like these two must have been having me on. So I replied, “Are you kidding?!” At this the cop—for it was in fact a plainclothes cop—came running down the stairs toward me. And yes, he was packing heat—but at least it was holstered. I put my hands up and said something like, “I’m really sorry, officer—but can you tell me what’s going on?” He didn’t answer but gestured up the steps. “Get up there,” he commanded.

I was marched up to the living room. R— was sitting on one end of the sofa, looking really pissed off and a bit freaked out. Our Okie roommate was seated at the other end of the sofa looking absolutely petrified. There were five plainclothes cops tearing the place apart. I gathered this was a drug bust—I mean, what else could it be? Dumb luck that I happened to come home that evening. The energy off these cops was intense and kind of terrifying. They were dressed to blend in with the urban environment—jeans and dark windbreakers—and they were moving at a speed that didn’t seem necessary, shoving things off bookcases, turning things over, yanking open drawers. They seemed pissed, like whatever they were looking for they weren’t coming up with. The first cop demanded some ID. I very slowly drew my driver’s license from my wallet and handed it over. He gave it to someone to run it.

“What room is yours?” another cop asked. I pointed down the hall. He said, “Show me.” I led him down there. When carrying my futon frame out a few days before, I’d lost my grip and it busted the light switch so I couldn’t turn on the light. For that reason, I still had my big Maglite in there. It was the big 4-D-cell version I’d bought for the upcoming bike tour and I suddenly realized it wasn’t where I’d left it. In fact, the cop at my shoulder was wielding a Maglite and I reckoned it was probably mine, like in all the excitement he didn’t realize this wasn’t his cop-issued one. I decided not to bring it up. “Where’s all your stuff?!” the guy demanded. I told him, “I’m moving out.” He asked, “Why?!”

This was a bit of a tough one to answer. I’m sure he didn’t want to hear a Doogie Howser response like, “I’m putting all my things in storage because I’m going to do a cross-country bike tour! It’s going to be so much fun!” But I also didn’t want to sound like a smartass. I decided to take the risk and said, with a head-nod toward my roommate in the living room, “Why do you think?” He asked why the light switch was broken. I explained. He marched me back into the living room.

Just as I got there, the phone in the kitchen rang. I was like, oh crap, that’s probably my dad. I turned to the guy who’d come down the stairs for me, whom I took to be the head cop, and said, “Hey, that’s probably my dad calling. He’s supposed to come over. Can I please answer, just to tell him not to come?” The cop stared at me for a couple seconds, as the phone continued to ring, and finally said, “Okay … but no funny stuff.”

I almost burst out laughing. Where did this guy get his script? From watching cop shows on TV? “No funny stuff,” seriously? What was I gonna say … “The bird has flown – execute Plan Bravo”? But I kept a straight face and picked up the phone. It was E— asking, “Hey, are we still on for tonight?” I paused. What counted as funny stuff? Does mentioning the police raid violate some law enforcement taboo? I decided to be as vague as possible. “I’m not sure,” I said carefully. “Things have gotten a bit complicated. Just stay put and … I’ll be in touch.” I rang off and the cop seemed okay with what I’d said. Handing me back my driver’s license, he sent me back into the living room where a cop had finally found something at the back of a bookcase: a little baggie of mushrooms. R— said, “Oh my god, there those are, I wondered where I’d stashed them!” The head cop wheeled around to face him and yelled, “Oh, you think this is funny?!” Now R— looked properly terrified. I guess he’d been shooting for levity but obviously that didn’t work out.

All this time, Toonces was sitting up on top of the giant TV, looking down across the scene. This was her favorite perch, since TVs still had tubes back then so it was always nice and warm. One of the cops must have followed my gaze because he yelled at me, “What’s the cat doing up there?!” I couldn’t believe he’d actually asked that. I mean, what a pointless question, right? I guess he was so hopped up on adrenaline he just needed to yell something. I meekly replied, “Um … she likes it up there.” He fired back, “ Does she always sit up there?!” The very first thing that popped into my head as a response was, “No, only when she’s stoned!” But obviously after R—’s experiment I didn’t even consider it. I just said, “Uh, yeah … most of the time.”

The doorbell rang. Oh crap … my dad. Before I could do anything the head cop ran down the stairs and threw open the door: “Freeze, police! Are you armed?!”

I peered down the stairs to see my dad standing in the doorway, looking dumbfounded. At least he didn’t look threatening, with his tidy grey beard, ‘90s-era Bill Gates eyeglasses, and tweed blazer. But he also didn’t answer right away. He just stood there, and I could sense the cop’s blood starting to boil. Finally my dad said, in a very quiet, timid voice, “Is Dana here?”

“I said, are you armed?!” the cop yelled. My dad assured him he was not. I took a gamble and came down the stairs. “This is my dad,” I told the cop. “And here’s the thing: you’ve run my license already and you can see I have zero criminal record. I have nothing to do with any of this and my roommate probably already told you that. You guys have been through my room and there’s nothing there. Can I please, please just leave with my dad?” The cop thought it over and decided to let me go. (This was a very lucky break. I found out later my two roommates spent the night  on that sofa, handcuffed together while the cops finished tearing the place apart.) 

Before I left, I approached the cop who’d been in my room and politely asked if that was my Maglite he was carrying. He acknowledged that it was. “Would you be willing to leave it in my room before you go?” I timidly asked. Looking back, this was probably pushing my luck.

For some reason, my stepmother had parked a block or two away. As my dad and I walked to the car, I pondered what he must be thinking. This was not a “cool dad” with a wild past who had ever encountered anything like a drug bust. I mean, he was such a goody-two-shoes, he didn’t even touch alcohol or use swear words. As for firearms, he’d never even let my brothers and me have toy guns. Famously, when he found a toy gun in our house, belonging to one of our friends, he snatched it up, took it out to the street in front of our house, and ran it over with his VW bus. My dad was a principled man, a gentleman, a gentle man, and a prig. Plainclothes cops were not part of his world.

Not sure what to say, I remained quiet as we strolled down the sidewalk toward the car. My dad finally broke the silence. “Well,” he said, “that was interesting.”

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From the Archives - My Day in Court!

Introduction

I recently described in these pages, in another “From the Archives” post, how I was busted by a cop for a bicycle infraction back in 1990. (If you missed it, you can catch up here.) Here’s the rest of the story: how I fought the ticket in court.

My day in Traffic Court — September 21, 1990

I used to be a morning person, back when I had a paper route. Not anymore, man … now 6 a.m. feels really harsh. I struggle to keep my eyes open as my roommate, a do-it-all grad student, chats merrily away. His words reach me through a thick haze. I’d still be blissfully asleep, except a dickhead cop gave me a ticket for a bicycle infraction last month and I have to go to court. The slip he handed me had a court date on it, but he said I’d get something in the mail giving me the option to just pay it. He didn’t know how much the ticket was for, and I still don’t … I never got anything in the mail. I’d probably be fighting this anyway, though. That’s just how I am.

The problem is, I have to go to court out near where I broke the law, which means Walnut Creek. I’m not about to bike all the way out there in street clothes so I have to take Bart, which sucks because I don’t exactly have that system dialed. And since they won’t let me bring my bike on Bart (this being the commute hour), I have to walk all the way from the station to the courthouse. And since I have to be there at 8, my morning is starting ungodly early.

Once I get there, I’ll have to be pleasant and obsequious, so I’ve decided to dress presentably. I put on khakis and this short-sleeve striped button-down Oxford shirt. I’m not saying this is a fashionable or even sharp-looking shirt; I suspect it’s actually a bit nerdy.  I bought it at Eaker’s years ago, which was probably the last time I ever went clothes shopping with my mom. I was in ninth grade, and spied one of my teachers in there. I pretended not to see her, and she returned the favor. I’m not sure but I think I’ve seen people smirk at me when I wear this shirt. (Of course, there’s a hundred other reasons people might smirk at me.) 

Naturally, being polite and deferential will just be a pose. Inwardly, I’m bristling at this ticket and at the law in general. So, to get myself in the proper frame of mind (i.e., defiantly assertive), as I scarf a bowl of corn flakes I listen to “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” by Public Enemy:

I got a letter from the government
The other day
I opened and read it
It said they were suckers
They wanted me for their army or whatever
Picture me givin’ a damn, I said never
Here is a land that never gave a damn
About a brother like me and myself
Because they never did
I wasn’t wit’ it, but just that very minute it
Occurred to me
The suckers had authority

It’s a great song, but doesn’t actually fit my situation very well. The military never asked me to serve, and I have no reason to suspect the government doesn’t care about me. That’s the problem with rap music: as much as I love it, it always reminds me how privileged and square and white I am. In my button-down Oxford shirt.

I get to the courtroom just before they start working their way through the docket. At registration I learn why I never got anything in the mail: the dickhead cop got my address wrong. Oh well! The fine is a whopping $81. At this news, I’m not actually that upset about the address screw-up. It’s totally worth fighting a fine this large, even though I might be here awhile. Could be ten minutes, thirty, or all day … it’s all down to luck.

The judge seems a lot cooler than the cop was. A 16-year-old kid who was busted for speeding, driving without a driver’s license, not having insurance, and driving with a cracked windshield is sentenced to a $500 fine and no license for two years. The judge asks him how he’ll raise the money, and the kid looks over at his mom. “Don’t look at her!” the judge snaps. Everybody laughs.

Next up is a young man busted for “exhibition of speed.” His defense: “Your honor, I was in a Ford Pinto.” The judge is not amused and gives the guy a good tongue-lashing about every car being dangerous when driven aggressively, etc. The guy loses his license, straight-up. Then there’s a college kid who ran a stop sign on his bike. His argument, amazingly enough, is that he doesn’t think a biker should have to obey all the same rules as a motorist. What a dip. The judge holds firm and says, “Now look here. My daughter just got her learner’s permit. You be more careful out there on your bike!”

I’ve worked a bit harder on my own defense. This isn’t the first time I’ve fought a bike ticket. The first time, my brother and I got popped for running a stop sign, but it was turning right onto a street that was closed down and had been barricaded off, for a bike race. My argument was that the cop wrote us up for doing 25 mph during the maneuver. I planned to say, “If the severity of the fine was based on the speed at which we supposedly did this, I have to question the officer’s estimate. Have you even tried to turn right at 25 mph on a bicycle while threading the needle between two barricades?” But in the event, I only got as far as, “My brother and I were riding to the San Luis Obispo criterium, and—” before the judge interrupted me: “Were you riding there to watch, or to compete?” I told him the latter, he reduced my fine to $20 on the spot, and I was done.

So I think as long as you have something to say besides “the law doesn’t apply to me” or “I was in a Ford Pinto,” you have a chance of getting the fine reduced. Today my argument is that the sign telling me to exit Highway 24 (which I’d failed to notice, hence my infraction) was in the wrong place. It’s close to a mile before the exit, which is great if you’re in a car doing 60, but not so much if you’re pedaling up the hill on a bike at under 10 mph. When my turn comes, I take the stand and the judge says, “I like your shirt.” Caught off-guard, I reply, “Um, excuse me, your honor?” He repeats, “I like your shirt.” I shrug and smile. “How about we lower this to $20?” he asks. Done! I’m going to hang on to this shirt. It’s like gold!

Standing in line to pay, I get to talking with a guy who just lost his license for a year for “minor in possession of alcohol.” I’d say most teenagers drink; this guy happened to get caught. He’s not that bent out of shape, though; in fact, he’s pretty mellow about it. “Yeah, I was sitting by the pool at my apartment complex drinking some beers,” he says, “and some neighbor lady called the cops. So they came out and busted me.” I ask how many beers. “A bunch,” he confesses, “but I wasn’t making any noise or anything, just drinking my beers.” Pretty crazy, huh? Dude’s not even driving a car when he gets busted, but the penalty is losing his license.

On my way walking back to Bart, the guy catches up to me and we talk some more. He’d been pulled over several times, and with the exception of the time he’d tried to outrun the police, they’d usually let him go because he was a Marine. “Put up with fifteen minutes of the cop recalling his glory days in the Corps,” he tells me, “and you’re off the hook.” He had some other alcohol‑related busts, though, so he was relegated from the Marines to the Army.

I ask him if he’s worried about the Kuwait situation, and he replies, “No, not really.” I ask if he thinks they might send him over to Desert Storm. “Yeah, I’m going in a week and a half,” he says. “That’s why I don’t really care about losing my license.” He says it like he’s going off to be a counselor at a day camp or something. But I guess that’s how it goes; he’s in the Army and fighting overseas is his job. Of course I ponder the paradox: he’s too young to legally drink beer, and has been deemed too irresponsible to drive a car, but he’s considered plenty ready to go kill people.

Our school paper recently interviewed some student ROTC reserves who are outraged about actually being called up to serve. In light of that flap, this guy’s attitude seems kind of refreshing. I can’t tell if his willingness is out of respect for authority—which would be ironic for someone who’s been in so much trouble—or because his friends are already there (which he did mention).

He gets my address and tells me he’ll write me about what it’s like on the front. I kind of doubt he actually will—I mean, doesn’t he have more important people, like family members, to write to?—but imagine if he did! That would make this $20 seem like a real bargain…

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Busted for Jaywalking!

Introduction

During a recent business trip to Irvine, in southern California (motto: “The other, lesser California”), I was pulled over by a motorcycle cop—while walking. He gave me a long, brain-freezing lecture and a ticket for jaywalking. The fine is close to $200. I’m going to fight it via a written testimonial. This is my rough draft. Very rough.

Appeal to Citation #[———], Superior Court of California, County of Orange

I humbly request that my citation for Section Statute 21955 VC (Jaywalking) be dismissed, on the grounds that it’s complete nonsense.

First of all, $200 is really steep for a victimless crime. If I’m driving a car in an unsafe manner, I’m endangering others—I get that. I understand that driving a car is a privilege, and that by obtaining my Driver License I am agreeing in advance to follow the vehicle code. Walking, however, is not a privilege. It is a God-given right, pre-dating all laws and societies, and I never agreed to anything when I first put one foot in front of the other at age two. What right do you have to fine people for not walking how you’d like them to? When’s the last time a pedestrian hurt anybody?

Moreover, holding my Driver License or Vehicle Registration hostage if I skip out on this fine is totally baseless. How can you restrict my driving privilege on the grounds of any misbehavior I committed when not driving a motor vehicle? What’s next, suspending my license due to moral or intellectual turpitude? And if you actually make it impossible to register my car, which my wife shares, you are punishing her as well, along with our two kids. Why stop there? Why not go after my brothers, my cousins, nieces, nephews, and our parents? It’s insupportable and absurd.

The motorcycle cop who came after me—long after I committed my misdeed, which suggests you’re using video cameras to crack down on errant pedestrians, which is bizarrely inappropriate—has already subjected me to a long safety lecture which was, I feel it safe to say, humiliating to the cop and me both. So haven’t I suffered enough? The lecture insulted my intelligence because the cop said, “Safety is a two-way street. I can’t protect you if you don’t obey the law.” Protect me? When’s the last time a cop protected a pedestrian? There is nothing a cop can do to protect a pedestrian except perhaps block an intersection, which he would never do. Pedestrians are utterly defenseless in an era of increasingly distracted drivers.

Since when do cops protect anybody, for that matter? They only show up after an accident and occasionally assign penalties, and maybe call in the actual paramedics who try to mitigate the bodily damage. When’s the last time you saw a cop and thought, “Oh, thank goodness”? The vast majority of the time, seeing a cop approach you is a basic “Oh, shit!” moment. But this was not always the case. Cops used to be respected members of the community. They walked their beats, got to know the citizens, and built up some rapport and trust. That all changed when they started driving cars. Now they are just faceless badges, ensconced in vehicles, that go around busting people. (This is not just my own supposition. A college history course I took devoted a couple of weeks to the subject of law enforcement, and presented this as a widely accepted assessment.)

The other totally absurd thing about the cop’s safety lecture is that he delivered it while stopped on a six-lane thoroughfare that had no shoulder. I was up on the sidewalk at least, but he was right out there in the road, absolutely at the mercy of the cars whizzing by. Anybody drunk, texting, or otherwise distracted could have just wiped this guy out. As annoying as the cop was, I did not want to see him get run over, so I was cringing the whole time. And you wanna talk about reckless? This guy is riding around this congested megalopolis on a motorcycle forty hours a week! What, is he fricking crazy?! Who is he to lecture me about safety? I was tempted to ask him, “Does your mother know what you do for a living?” But of course I couldn’t, because you just can’t mouth off to cops.

And that’s the most degrading part of all. I had to try to be all contrite and docile, in the vain hope that he’d let me off the hook. I tried my best, but I’m sure he caught a whiff of contempt—even if he didn’t catch mine. I’m sure he didn’t feel this was his finest moment, pontificating to this hapless pedestrian, sensing the passing cars snickering at both of us. I’m sure when he dreamed of being a motorcycle cop—a dream based on watching CHiPs, needless to say—he was thinking he’d be catching bad guys, solving actual crimes, and being a hero. He’d watched Erik Estrada in that one CHiPs episode dancing onstage to “Celebration” and thought maybe he himself also had what it takes. I doubt he figured he’d one day find himself taking his life in his hands merely to slap the wrist of the only person stupid enough to try to walk somewhere in southern California.

By the way, the cop was apparently unaware of how egregious your fines are. I asked for an estimate and he said, “Well, the ticket itself is only like $20, but then you get all the local and state governments piling on, with all these extra fees, so it ends up being like $85.” He acted like this was a real shame, the result of a bloated government apparatus that was a hindrance to us both, when of course he had the option to let me go with just a warning. Maybe if he’d known it was $200 he’d have spared me the ticket, or at least the lecture.

Now, let’s get back to this safety-as-a-two-way street business. You, the so-called Superior Court, see fit to fine me for behavior that put my own safety at risk, but actually, you are going after the wrong party. If you really want justice, challenge a road and sidewalk layout that discourages walking, and seek out the city planners that make walking legally in your county a unreasonably inconvenient thing to do. The setup of your roads and sidewalks is actually putting pedestrians like me in far greater danger than we ourselves ever could.

Yes, I crossed a street in the middle, rather than at an intersection—I admit it. You know why I did it? Well, I was walking along the sidewalk, which was unpleasant enough because all your streets are like highways—nothing even slightly resembling a residential street seems to exist in Irvine—and suddenly the sidewalk just ended. I found myself walking along in the plants growing alongside the road, literally off in the weeds, with nothing between me and the cars. This is not only unpleasant, but unsafe. Why provide a sidewalk for like half of a long stretch of roadway and then suddenly end it? What city engineer masterminded that design? Or did the city or county just run over budget with the sidewalk half built? Or maybe the construction guys got sick of building it?

(Here is a photo of what I’m talking about. No, it’s not the scene of the crime, which location I’m not sure of because your cop pulled me over far away from where I committed my transgression. Meanwhile, I didn’t know I’d be ensnared in your legal imbroglio at the time so I didn’t photograph the civic inadequacy. I snapped the below photo later, in another location which was equally representative of what I’m talking about. One more thing: I jaywalked in broad daylight, not at night.)

So yeah, I could have turned around and walked a quarter mile back to the previous intersection, but to be honest, I just didn’t feel like it. I was not enjoying my walk whatsoever and just wanted to get it over with. I was like, “Okay, Irvine, you win! I won’t walk anymore! I didn’t understand before! I get that you hate pedestrians!” I had come to understand why I was almost the only pedestrian in the entire city, unless you count the quasi-homeless-looking woman I saw herding her small child the day before. But as it happened, an instance of amazing fortuity presented itself: in both directions, all the traffic was stuck behind red lights off in the distance, giving me ample time to cross the road to the other side where there was a sidewalk. I calculated that no believable rate of acceleration could bring either wall of cars in range of hitting me. I was in a position to manage my risk very effectively.

Crossing a road in this situation, I believed in the moment and continue to believe, is a safer scenario than crossing at an intersection, where motorists are allowed to turn right whenever they deem it safe. It’s up to them to look for pedestrians in the intersection, and in SoCal the motorists do a very poor job of this. Why? Because there are hardly ever pedestrians in your sprawling, poorly planned so-called community! We’re about as common as space aliens! In pretty much any intersection in your wretched county, I am putting myself at the mercy of people who have all but forgotten pedestrians exist. Your jaywalking law essentially mandates that I outsource my safety to complete strangers who routinely neglect to use their turn signals, fail to pay attention, and have been taught to believe cars are “the heartbeat of America” and that driving is some kind of game.

When I ponder the fact that you’re slapping me down for my measly infraction, in support of a civic engineering apparatus that demonstrates not just incompetence but practical contempt for safety, I almost throw up in my mouth. You know what’s dangerous? These labyrinths of asphalt, more than driveways but not quite roads, that connect the giant boulevards to the scattered buildings within the bloated office parks dotting your sprawling landscape. Even Google Maps can’t really make sense of these little connectors. Once you’ve parked your car, you have to cross first the giant parking lot, then these twisty quasi-roads, and this is far, far more dangerous than what I did, which was merely crossing a straight road at a perpendicular.  When drivers try to navigate these rats’ nests of tarmac, they get very confused, and end up paying more attention to their GPS screens than to what’s in front of their cars.

You want proof? I took three Ubers during my brief visit to Irvine. The first Uber driver had to crane her neck quite a bit, and stopped dead in the roadway at various intervals, but nonetheless managed to find her way around. But the next two Uber drivers, despite their navigation systems, managed to get very lost indeed. I submit to you Exhibits A and B.

In both cases I watched their groping progress on my phone. That first guy found himself navigating a loop to nowhere. The second guy missed a turn and ended up driving a long way in one direction, making a 90-degree left, driving another long distance—trapped by a little road to nowhere and having to make a U-turn at the end and backtrack both long stretches before getting back on track. Now consider that all these little roads are eclipsed by parked cars, and that you’ve got people walking diagonally across these vague unmarked spaces, without a sidewalk to be seen anywhere. It’s like Frogger on LSD! For you to pretend that you’ve figured out not just a safe way, but the safe way for a person on foot to navigate this automotive nightmare, and that anybody who strays from this safe scheme deserves to be heavily fined—well, it’s like something out of a darkly satirical work of dystopian fiction.

If real justice were to be served, it would involve evacuating your irreparably screwed up county, bulldozing everything in it, and then bringing in intelligent, learned city planners from a properly functioning city—I’m thinking perhaps San Francisco or Amsterdam—and just starting over. Then you could have a place where people aren’t driving fifteen minutes or more to every destination, putting up with constantly bad traffic, and voicelessly accepting an asphalt tyranny that leaves no room for responsible transit like walking and bicycling. By starting over from scratch, you might actually develop a community where people can enjoy getting around. But instead, what do you do? You put in surveillance cameras so you can punish pedestrians for not complying with your absurdist, half-baked, ultimately utterly benighted “safety” principles! You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Obviously there’s nothing practical for the Superior Court of California, County of Orange, to do about a massive civic problem that has been steadily building for decades. You could, however, admit the farcical error inherent in punishing me for your community’s sins, by dismissing my case and striking it from the record. Thank you for your consideration.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

From the Archives - Busted By a Cop on Highway 24!

Introduction

Recently, a particular stretch of California State Highway 24, which has always been legal for bicycles, has been marked illegal. This seems wrong, and has resulted in a lot of emails flying around among the members of my bike team. I wrote about this to a local bike advocacy group, who reached out to the DOT, who replied that the law hadn’t changed (i.e., the stretch is still legal) so they’re having the Traffic Office go check the signage. (Breaking update: as of September 25, Caltrans has confirmed the signs are wrong, and replacements will be installed in a few weeks. Until then, we are assured that it is okay to keeping riding this stretch of Highway 24.)

For the record, here’s a photo of the new sign posted on the on-ramp (recently snapped by a bike pal), and below that—to keep handy in case you get pulled over—the last photo of this ramp that Google shot for their Street View map:

There was a similar problem with the signs some years ago (after some construction), and I got caught out. Bikes are required to exit and rejoin the highway in certain places, such as Wilder Road, and I complied. Alas, when I tried to rejoin the highway I discovered a) a sign declaring Highway 24 to be illegal for bikes, and b) a cop parked right there on the shoulder. What could I do? I couldn’t go back the way I came, but I didn’t want to flout the law right in front of the cop. So I asked her for clarification, and she responded to the effect that she didn’t know if bikes were allowed and didn’t care. So boldly I rode and well, into the jaws of the on-ramp, right in front of the cop, half expecting to hear her siren start wailing. But it didn’t.

That episode ended well enough, but another time, almost thirty years ago, I got ticketed on my bike on that same highway, albeit in the westbound direction. I vaguely remembered writing about it at the time, and—lo and behold—here is that story, from my archives.

(I almost named this post “BSI Orinda: Bike Sign Investigation,” after a quip in a biking pal’s email.)

Busted by a Cop on Highway 24 – August 14, 1990

So one minute I’m just riding along, minding my own business, not a care in the world—well, actually, that’s not quite right. I’m not feeling particularly carefree because I’m riding my bike up Highway 24, westbound toward Fish Ranch Road, and there’s a lot of traffic whizzing by. Even though the shoulder is over eight feet wide, it’s an unpleasant section; I only ride it because it’s such a convenient shortcut. So anyway, one minute I’m making my not-so-merry way along 24 and then suddenly there’s this cop stopped ahead of me.

He’s got his big macho Mustang cruiser pulled over on the shoulder, his door open just enough for him to drop to one knee like T.J. Hooker in a prime time shootout.  Only he’s just putting out his arm, palm facing me, in the universal law enforcement signal for “STOP!”  Great, I’m thinking. What the hell am I doing wrong?

“You were supposed to exit back there,” he says sternly.  I have no idea what he’s talking about. I have this biking guidebook called Roads to Ride that says Highway 24 is legal from Orinda to Fish Ranch Road.  I tell the cop about the book, being very careful not to act smug, and I realize that I sound like I’m totally making it up. Meanwhile, I’m well aware how futile it is to argue with a cop, especially one in a big bad Mustang.

“No!” he says, clearly displeased at my insubordination. “You have to exit!  There’s a sign!” Trying not to shrug, I reply, “ I know there is, but it’s up there.” I point up the road toward the next exit, for Fish Ranch Road, where I’ve seen a “BICYCLES MUST EXIT” sign.  This seems to piss the cop off even more.  “NO!  There’s another one.  Back there.”  He points down the road.  All I see is a stampede of cars going eighty-five in a fifty-five zone.  I tell him I’ve taken that exit before but it doesn’t go anywhere.  “I know!” he snarls.  “You have to get off and get right back on again!  It’s for your own safety!”

He asks for my driver’s license. I don’t have it on me but I give him the number from memory. He writes it down in his little book, and I know my situation is futile.

There are two kinds of cops, and it doesn’t really matter which kind you get.  The first kind is the guy who, growing up, never expected to become a cop. If he is a generally disappointed person who wishes he’d become a doctor, maybe he gets some satisfaction out of giving doctors tickets. And if he wishes he’d had the opportunity to go to college, maybe he enjoys foisting citations on overprivileged college kids like me. (Or maybe he’s just doing the same thorough job at this as anybody would at anything, and I’m only imagining that what-ifs and woulda-coulda-shouldas ever enter the picture.)

The other kind of cop is the guy who, as a kid, always knew he’d be a cop one day, and loves being a cop. To him, being anything else—like a doctor or a college kid—would be unthinkable, as would letting me off the hook. In his worldview, those who break the law must be brought to justice, and giving me just a warning would be like throwing a wrench into the spinning wheels of his very raison-d’être.

                                                                                                                   

I don’t know which type this cop is. If he were really burly and had the standard-issue bushy mustache I’d assume he was the second kind, but that wouldn’t necessarily mean I was right. In any case this guy is oddly small and skinny for a cop, or at least for a highway patrolman with a souped-up Mustang.  His service revolver, in contrast, is definitely on the large side and I wonder whether it pokes him in the leg when he’s driving.  And does he have a nightstick in the car? Does he normally slip that through a loop in his belt as he exits the car, like the cops on TV? Or does he only bring it out at night?

I think some more about his gun. Do cops all get issued the same type of sidearm, or do they get to choose? I think about Dirty Harry explaining to a colleague his choice of a 44 Magnum: “A 357 Magnum is a good weapon, but I’ve seen 38s bounce off of windshields. No good in a city like this.” Suddenly I realize that this officer has caught me staring at his gun. Not a good thing for me to be doing. Does he think I’m contemplating making a grab for it? I quickly flick my eyes away, like when I’m caught gawking at a pretty girl. The cop stares at me for a second, and then turns his attention to my bike.

Oh, this is just great.  My bike totally looks stolen, because I spray-painted the frame with neon orange Krylon, and did a poor job at that, so there are little hardened drips all over the place.  “What make is this bike?” the cop asks, looking at the sticker on the head tube. The sticker has a skull and crossbones on it, only one of the bones is a big wrench. Above the graphic it says “HERCULON LOVE GODS” and below that, “DRUNK ROCK!”  I got it from a buddy of mine who’s in the band.  The cop looks up at me. “What make, and what year?”

I honestly don’t know; this bike sat in a warehouse for months, maybe years, because the English manufacturer got in a fight with the American distributor. Eventually the distributor got tired of storing all the frames—I think there were a couple hundred of them—and started selling them to the public for $40 apiece. That’s a great price for a handmade racing frame, so after discovering this great deal via a classified ad, I turned all my friends onto it and lots of us bought these as our backup bikes. The frames were unpainted so we all did them up with the same orange Krylon, like we’re part of a cult or something. I try to figure out how I could possibly explain all this to the cop without sounding like I’m deep into a highly criminal enterprise, but I can’t come up with anything.

“I don’t know what year,” I tell him. “Probably 1988 or ‘89.”  He asks again what the make is.  “Uh . . . Orbit?” I stammer, knowing I sound like I’m hiding something. Eyeing me very suspiciously, the cop says, “I’m gonna need to see the serial number.” 

I know where the serial number is: it’s stamped on the bottom bracket shell. Unfortunately, it’s obscured by the plastic cable guide that bolts on there. I remember thinking, when I built up the bike, that it was pretty lame of the framebuilder not to have foreseen this problem. Feeling like things are going from bad to worse, I lift up the front wheel and tilt the bike all the way back so the cop can see the BB shell. There’s a lot of black grime on there so he doesn’t immediately realize why the serial number is unreadable. He scrapes the grime away with his fingers, eagerly, like this is some thrilling forensic moment of truth.

“Oh, gosh,” I say, “I think that plastic thing is covering it up.  If I had an eight millimeter wrench, I could uncover it.  Hold on.”  I look through my seat bag, feeling very grateful that it’s far too small to conceal a firearm.  I know exactly what’s in there:  an inner tube, a patch kit, and some tire levers. I don’t need to look to know that I don’t have an 8 millimeter wrench, but I really want to seem helpful. The cop tells me to stay put and goes back to his car. He fetches the CB and starts talking on it, standing next to the car. I see him eyeing his reflection in the window. Does he like the way he looks when he talks on the CB? Or is my perspective all wrong and he’s actually keeping an eye on me? At least the driver’s license number I gave him is legit and will match up with my info—height, weight, etc.—in SCMODS (the State County Municipal Offender Data System). On top of that, I have a totally clean slate, in the eyes of the law, so chances are I’ll get away with nothing more than a citation.

Which he does, in the end, give me, for failing to exit the highway as required. Before he gets back in his cruiser, he fixes me with one last stare, like I’m damn lucky to be getting off so easy. And suddenly this whole episode seems completely absurd: a college kid who’s never done anything wrong before comes off as some kind of minor-league criminal, but the over-equipped and needlessly vigilant cop can’t make anything stick. It’s like a parody of a cop show.

Postscript

It was tempting, when I went back to edit this today, to add a little more commentary, acknowledging  the role that color—i.e., my being white—played in this ultimately harmless encounter. But the fact is, I’d only recently moved to the Bay Area, and it never occurred to me at that time that a young black man in the same situation—even on the outskirts of suburban Orinda, California—might have fared far worse than I did.

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For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here. 

Bike vs. Car - How I Broke My Femur

Introduction

I’m coming up on two years since I had a horrific bicycle accident and broke my femur.  Though I told part of the story on this blog, I didn’t describe exactly how it happened.  I was thinking of suing the motorist who caused the accident, and had a vague notion that anything I wrote about how it happened might give me trouble later, especially since I was so angry at the time.  Now that it’s essentially too late to file a lawsuit, I’m (mostly) free to tell the rest of the story.

In this post I tell what happened; explain why I have decided not to pursue a lawsuit; and examine some inappropriate attitudes towards cyclists.

The rest of the story

In late November, 2011, I did an early morning bike ride with my daughter.  Here’s a photo I snapped that morning during a rest stop. 

Afterward we had some hot cocoa at home and then at about 9:30 a.m. I set out again  for a more intense solo effort.  I rode up South Park Drive, down and back up Fish Ranch Rd, down and back up Claremont Ave, and then was ready to head home.  Normally I’d have ridden back down South Park Drive, but it was kind of a misty morning and, that road being closed to cars, it was strewn with a lot of debris (like eucalyptus bark that can get slippery in such conditions).  So instead I figured I’d ride down Grizzly Peak Blvd instead (northbound, toward Spruce St).  Normally I avoid this road because part of it is residential and you get a lot of drivers backing out of driveways.  On this day, I was descending it at a very mellow pace, and I can prove it.  Look at the speed/altitude/time profile of the last part of my ride:

I was doing under 30 mph in the non-residential part, and then slowed down to around 20 when I got to the residential section.  You can see an acceleration at around 1:21:45, which I reckon is after the stop sign after the intersection of Grizzly Peak Blvd with Golf Course Rd and Centennial Dr.  (Yes, I stopped at the stop sign.  My bike computer takes a sample of speed, altitude, heart rate, and other data every twenty seconds.  My stop evidently took place between these data samples.)  The fastest I went between this point and my crash was 23.5 mph, which is below the speed limit.  You can see it’s not a very steep downhill.

A car had been ahead of me and as it slowed down, I came up on it and also slowed down.  It slowed down some more and suddenly veered to the right.  What was this car doing?  The driver hadn’t signaled so this veer took me by surprise.  (I wasn’t that surprised, of course, because motorists often change direction without signaling.)  I decided the driver must have pulled off to the side to let me by, as drivers sometimes do, so I kept going.  Suddenly, the driver swerved to the left, across the road and directly in my path.  The driver was headed for her driveway, on the left side of the road.  I’ve looked at this driveway using Google Maps, and this was about a 135-degree hairpin turn.  That’s why she’d swung right first—to give herself the full road for executing this tricky maneuver.  It’s a pity it didn’t occur to her that there could be somebody behind her who might really benefit from a turn signal.

You could say I had a very brief window in which to make a snap decision:  do I just slam on the brakes, or slam on the brakes and try to steer around the back of the car so as to possibly miss it?  But actually, it’s not really a choice:  as any expert cyclist knows, it’s always better to avoid an impact with a car, even if this means sliding out and crashing on your side.  I’ve heard guys recount a conscious decision to “lay her down” rather than hit a car, though I’m not sure I quite believe anybody has that much nerve.  Suffice to say, when I slammed on the brakes while trying to steer to the right, I didn’t have enough traction to pull it off.  I laid her down and missed the car, in the process avoiding a probable head injury and also sparing the driver from having to get involved.

What’s that, you say?  You say the driver was already involved?  Yeah, no kidding!  Somebody should have told her that!  Because you know what she did?  She completed her parking maneuver, shut off her engine, and—ignoring my blood-curdling screams that her neighbors heard, even a block away—went into her house and stayed there.

This driver was clearly of the George Carlin “keep movin’” school of traffic accidents:  “I do not stop when I have a traffic accident, do you?  No, you can’t!  Hey, who has time?  Not me!  I hit somebody, I run somebody over, I keep moving!  Especially if I’ve injured someone.  I do not get involved in that….  Let’s be logical about it:  if you do stop at the scene of the accident, all you do is add to the confusion!  These people you ran over have enough troubles of their own, without you stopping and making things worse!  Leave these people alone!  They’ve just been in a major traffic accident!”

As the cowardly driver’s neighbors swarmed around me, stopping traffic and calling for help, she stayed in her house.  Perhaps she had a sudden hankering for some Sunday morning Metallica on her teenager-grade stereo system and thus couldn’t hear the sirens of the fire truck and then the ambulance that arrived.  Or maybe she heard them, but was more afraid of getting in trouble than she was curious about my injuries.  Carlin would understand:  “Well of course they’re hurt, look at all the blood!  You just ran over them with a ton and a half of steel!  Of course they’re hurt, leave these people alone!  Haven’t you done enough?  For once in your life, do the decent thing:  don’t get involved.”

I talked to the police officer at the scene, and pointed to the car that cut me off and the driveway it was parked in.  Then I was carted off in the ambulance (you can read the rest of my saga here, here, and here).  The officer subsequently interviewed the driver, and I’ve read the report, but each page is stamped with “Unlawful dissemination of this information is a misdemeanor.”  I don’t want to take any risks, so I won’t tell you what’s in that report.  But I’ll tell you what isn’t.

The officer did not make any notation to the effect that the driver was hard of hearing.  He did not write anything vaguely resembling this:  “Are you sure you used your turn signal?  It’s kind of hard to believe that you did, since you’d have had to put it on twice:  once when you started your maneuver, and again after your veer to the right caused it to automatically turn off.”  He didn’t say anything like the following, either:  “Are you sure you didn’t veer to the right?  Because it’d be awfully difficult—impossible, actually—to execute such a sharp turn otherwise.”  He also didn’t say anything that even approached this:  “Weren’t you at all curious about the screaming, and the sirens, right out in the road in front of your house right after you got home?”  He didn’t say, “When you say you didn’t see a cyclist behind you, is it because you don’t check your rearview mirror before doing a 135-degree turn, or because he was using some kind of cloaking device?”  The officer has written nothing to the effect that he asked her, “Don’t you feel kind of bad?  Not that you could have known that he broke his femur, and that if the broken bone had punctured his femoral artery he could have bled to death right in front of your house….”

Based on the paucity of detail in this report, and thus the evident brevity of his questioning, the police officer might not have been totally averse to the Carlin school of traffic accidents.  Carlin rants, “And I’ll give you a practical reason not to stop—you need a practical reason?  If you do stop, sooner or later the police are gonna show up!  Is that what you want?  Huh?  Waste even more of your time, standing around, filling out forms, answering a lot of foolish questions?  Lying to the authorities?  And by the way, who are you to be taking up the valuable time of the police department?  These men and women are professionals, they’re supposed to be out fighting crime—stop interfering with police!”

Why I’m letting it go

For awhile after this crash I was intending to sue the driver, and I even retained a lawyer.  But I didn’t actively pursue the matter—frankly, with physical therapy and just trying to heal up, I had bigger fish to fry—and when the months dragged on and I hadn’t heard anything from my lawyer, I didn’t pursue the matter.  I have a few reasons for this.

First, there’s the matter of how cyclists are generally viewed by the general public, and the even thornier matter of how I might be viewed when the insurance company’s defense trots out a freelance article I wrote called “Five Seconds on a Mountain Pass – On Being a Velocity Addict.”  That doesn’t look good, especially when cyclists in general are widely believed to be reckless speed demons who deserve what they get.  With this in mind, I considered that the lack of response from my lawyer may have indicated second thoughts on his part.

Then, there’s the matter of my mental and emotional health.  I was so angry, for so long after that crash, that I had trouble sleeping.  It took great force of will to not dwell on the driver’s behavior every night when I lay in bed trying to fall asleep through all that pain.  To open up a new can of worms, that would rekindle that rage, was not a pleasant prospect.

Finally, there’s something my lawyer said:  that in these “he-said, she-said” cases, often the outcome boils down to how the jury feels about the parties involved.  If they like you, he said, of course that’s not a bad thing.  But if they hate the defendant, that’s when you can get a very favorable result.  I’ve let on in this post that this driver was female (simply because I can’t be bothered to play the non-specific-pronoun game); she also had two other traits that are often connoted, unfairly, with being a bad driver.  I wouldn’t want to win big just because a jury let itself be influenced by (possibly subconscious) stereotypes.  And oddly enough, since I know this driver to be a complete coward, I figured putting her on the stand would cause her a lot of pain.  And though part of me would welcome such revenge, the bigger part of me doesn’t like to cause pain, especially when I don’t know the circumstances of that person’s life.

Let’s blame the victim!

There’s a good chance that if you’re reading this blog you’re a cyclist, and thus you understand things about our sport that the general populace doesn’t.  I have a hunch that if you’ve ridden with me, you didn’t read this report and think, “Well, it’s clear that a foolish daredevil like this—author of 'Velocity Addict,' for crissakes—got what he had comin’!”  But in case you really do think this is my fault, and that such accidents are often, generally, or always the cyclist’s fault, or in case you’d like to try to educate a benighted motorist of your acquaintance by forwarding this, I’m going to explore the idea that I could be innocent in this even though I like to ride my bike fast.

There are certainly cases where it would be hard to defend a cyclist, like the case of the guy who took a curve too wide, crashed into a car, and was killed while trying to set a new record descending South Park Drive.  There, the reckless behavior directly led to his death.  But there’s a temptation to connote the willingness to go fast—as in over 40 mph—with an overall risk profile that you label “daredevil” and which puts the blame on the cyclist whenever he gets into an accident.

The problem of risk assessment

When we evaluate risk, there’s an impulse to extrapolate from the specific to the general.  For example, if your brother-in-law is a gambling addict, you’re probably not going to loan him money.  After all, you can guess what will happen to it.  This is a highly reasonable judgment, I think, but mainly because money is fungible.  Loaning money to a gambler is just like gambling yourself.

But would you also naturally assume that a gambling addict is a reckless driver?  Well, possibly.  But what about other people who take risks on a regular basis?  Being a garbage man is a very dangerous profession.  Would you automatically assume that if a garbage man gets in a traffic accident that it’s his fault, because he tolerates a high level of risk in his daily life?  Of course not.

I realize this isn’t a perfect analogy; I’ll concede that a cyclist who gets injured while cycling is a lot different than a garbage man injured in a car crash.  But from the perspective of evaluating risk, it’s simplistic to say a cyclist who enjoys speed is generally to blame when things go wrong.  Suppose the layman thinks it’s crazy to descend Claremont Ave at 40 mph on a bicycle.  If that same person watched me descending Grizzly Peak Blvd on that November morning, and based his assessment of me on that alone, he probably wouldn’t decide I was a daredevil.  (Or to put it another way, most people would consider 40 mph on Claremont Ave to be way more dangerous than 23 mph on Grizzly.)

I do think it’s dangerous for a cyclist, even an expert cyclist, to descend the residential section of northbound Grizzly Peak Blvd.  But I don’t think it’s dangerous for an expert cyclist to hit 40 mph descending Claremont Ave.  Should this attitude get me branded as a daredevil, such that it’s my fault when I get hurt doing something the layman may think is reasonable?

In thirty years of competitive cycling, I’ve had three bad accidents.  Once, I crashed mountain biking and it was totally my fault and I’ll own that.  (In fact, I have, right here.)  Due to that crash I needed stitches.  With my other two bad accidents, a car was involved.  Once, I was riding in a business district when a driver failed to see me and turned right into me.  I was going under 20 mph, in the bike lane, wearing a bright orange jersey in broad daylight.  I suffered a separated shoulder and a cracked elbow.  (The driver accepted responsibility and his insurance company took care of me.)  The other time is what you just read about:  I was doing under 25 mph in a residential area.  Broken femur.  The total tally of my serious injuries from crashes on high-speed descents?  Zero.

I used to work in risk assessment.  When professionals evaluate risk and design safeguards, they do so in terms of two main factors:  severity and likelihood.  When we consider the severity of crashing at 40 mph on a bicycle, with just eighth-inch-thick Lycra and a Styrofoam helmet protecting us, we get a visceral sense that this is really, really bad.  And yeah, it would be.  But it can be less bad than a lower-speed collision with a car.  Meanwhile, setting severity aside for a moment, the likelihood of an expert cyclist crashing at 40 by himself on a mountain road is way, way lower than the likelihood of a bike commuter getting creamed by a car in Anytown, USA.  I don’t have a mountain of statistics at hand to support this but I’ll bet I could assemble one.

So is the “daredevil” road racing cyclist really more to blame, when he does get taken out by a car, than the responsible commuter?  Decide that for yourself, but I’ll guarantee you two things.  One, the racing cyclist who can handle a bike at 40 mph will be better equipped for evasive maneuvers at 20 mph and be much less likely to panic.  And two, the racing cyclist who can handle a bike at 40 will better appreciate risk, and pay a hell of a lot more attention, than most motorists in this country.

Of course, a jury in a bike accident case may not differentiate between a bike racer and a casual bike commuter.  There’s this widespread idea among Americans—that is, among American motorists, because virtually all adult Americans are both—that cycling is inherently dangerous, and that cyclists who get hurt have only themselves to blame.  But my experience tells me that opinion is pretty absurd.  The most dangerous thing about cycling is being around careless motorists! 

Are motorists careless?

When’s the last time you saw a motorist neglect to use his turn signal?  Earlier today?  I thought so.  In my experience, a typical motorist seems to consider it none of your business if he chooses to use his turn signal or not.  If a motorist does deign to use his signal, it’s usually just because he knows he’s supposed to.  In my experience, cyclists almost always signal their turns, because they want the cars to know what they’re doing.  They don’t want to get run over.

Here’s something to consider:  between in-car accelerometers, wireless communications, and GPS, the highway patrol could develop the capability to detect if a car turns without its turn signal being activated.  Imagine if this technology was used to police the turn-signal law.  It would be kind of like those cameras on traffic signals that automatically ticket you for running the red.  You think if it were put to a vote, people would choose this kind of new, high-tech enforcement?  And do you think they’d also warm to the idea of network connected cameras on highways automatically busting you for speeding?  Of course not.  The spotty enforcement of traffic laws is like a big game, and motorists like it that way.  In other words, they consider it their God-given right to flout traffic laws if they feel like taking the (relatively small) risk of getting caught.

According to a recent “New Yorker” article, “Of the ten million [car] accidents that Americans get in every year, nine and a half million are their own damn fault.”  So why are cyclists considered the big risk takers?  Well, probably it’s because cars do such a good job of protecting us most of the time. (That said, car crashes have been the leading cause of accidental death for most of the last thirty years.)  Careless motorists get in an awful lot of minor fender-benders that don’t do much to make driving seem dangerous.  The fact is, being in a car just doesn’t seem that dangerous, and that’s precisely what makes cars so dangerous to the non-armored among us.  Drivers feel so safe, ensconced in these giant vehicles that are loaded with safety features, that they discount the overall risk that driving presents.

If cycling, even among cars, were intrinsically, unavoidably dangerous, we’d see similar accident statistics all over the world.  But we don’t.  Many other places are much safer for cyclists.  For example, in Amsterdam, your chances of being killed on a bicycle are lower than your chances of being murdered in America.  (Click here for details.)

So what?

What is to be done?  Nothing, of course.  There’s no solution, because motorists so hugely outnumber cyclists in this country.  Majority opinion seldom shines brightly on minorities.

Though we can’t snap our fingers and make American drivers more careful, there are a couple of things I’d like to ask motorists to do.  Number one:  when you’re driving in your car, enjoying a little “me” time, your radio tuned to your favorite station, maybe driving down a remote road you know like the back of your hand, try to remember that you’re still in a public space, and try to be aware of who else is on the road, not just right in front of you but behind you.  And two:  when you do screw up and either hit a cyclist or cause him to crash, try to remember that George Carlin was being facetious.  Take responsibility.  Do not leave that poor maimed cyclist lying there in the road.  If you fess up, your insurance rates might go up, but the law will go easy on you, the motorist.  The law always does, where we daredevil cyclists are concerned.

Other chapters

2014 update:  it occurred to me to add links to all the chapters of this tale.  Here you go:

The Femur Report - Part I (posted Dec 11, 2011)

The Femur Report - Part II (posted Dec 19, 2011)

The Femur Report - Part III (posted Dec 28, 2011)

Physical Therapy (posted March 11, 2012)