Police pick on cyclist

David Hansen wrote:
On Wed, 03 Dec 2008 23:48:14 +0000 someone who may be Danny Colyer
wrote this:-

It's been demonstrated that in Scotland (which is where
the incident occurred) there is legislation requiring individuals to
provide their name and address to the police if the police have grounds
to believe that an offence has been committed.

They had no grounds. The cyclist demonstrated to them that he had
working lights.

Did he "demonstrate" that they had been switched on whilst cycling during the
hours of darkness?

If so, how, and where is it repoorted?

The chances of a cyclist having working lights with
them but not attaching them being, I would suggest, as close to zero
as makes no difference.

Does that mean that a cyclist merely has to have the lights with him (maybe
in a bag), and that it makes no difference if he does not either attach or
use them?

David Hansen wrote:
On Thu, 04 Dec 2008 08:54:56 +0000 someone who may be Tony Dragon
wrote this:-

Aa you are the fount of all knowledge,

Nice try.

would you be able to tell us all
when a light is so dim as to no longer be a light?

I don't think the law specifies that. However, I doubt that a
battery powered light would recover too much of its brightness in a
few minutes. We are told that the cyclist checked his light were
working before he set off and one of them was bright enough to shine
in the police officers eyes after he had removed it from the bike.
Therefore it seems fairly certain that no crime was committed by the
cyclist and the police had no grounds for demanding his details.

Where is it reported that he was using the lights whilst cycling?

Doug wrote:

JNugent wrote:

Why is it that the motorists who dominate these newsgroups are always
trying to dictate to others what should or should not be posted
there?

I think it's you who is doing that, Doug - read on.
I brought in the first post in this thread to uk.transport by transplanting
it from uk.rec.cycling, on the basis that I wanted to make a single point
about a single poster who is - or was - well-known here (ukt).

That's no excuse for tampering with a thread.

The ukt thread was not tampered with (you can't "tamper" with the first post
in a thread). My OP did not even appear in ukrc (because it was not relevant
there).

But I did not cross-post it. I trimmed ukrc out of the newsgroup line and
have not amended that since, though I note that someone (I wonder who?) has
added ukrc back to the NG line (I don't know why).

In order to restore the original thread, obviously.

My thread in ukt was irrelevant to ukrc. D. Hansen is known in ukt in his own
right. What is so difficult for you to understand about that?

Why would you want
to exclude other posters from the thread? That's a rhetorical question
by the way, the answer is obvious.

Let's treat it as a proper question:

(a) ukt posters were not excluded from the thread I started there;

(b) ukrc posters were not excluded from the original thread there;

(c) my post in ukt was not a cross-posting of the thread.

What's the problem? Well, you seem unable to grasp the fact that despite
their having the same title, these were two different threads in two
different places, for two different audiences with two different points being
made in the OPs (only one of which was mine, of course).

The reference to uk.legal and alt.usage.english was not made seriously and I
am not surprised that it flew past you several feet above your head.

It didn't.

I doubt that. And of course, it was made in a later post.

On 4 Dec, 08:38, David Hansen wrote:

They had no grounds. The cyclist demonstrated to them that he had
working lights.

Really? If someone shines a light in your face do you
think you could tell if the lens was marked with the
BS kitemark and BS6102/3?
There are a lot of perfectly good cycle lights out there
that are not technically legal because they are not
BS approved. Even the ones that say 'conforms to
BS6102/3' are not necessarily legal.

The chances of a cyclist having working lights with
them but not attaching them being, I would suggest, as close to zero
as makes no difference.

I once cycled without lights. As a hub dynamo user before
the days of front standlights I must have subconsiously
switched them off when I stopped at the supermarket,
it was only when I turned into an unlit road I realised
my mistake.

On Thu, 4 Dec 2008 02:34:57 -0800 (PST) someone who may be francis
wrote this:-

Do you think it was a good idea to shine the light in his eyes, he
could have demonstrated that it worked without doing that.

Whether I think it wise or not (or indeed whether I would have done
the same thing) doesn't really add anything useful to the
discussion. The important point is that, the cyclist having
demonstrated that the light was working, the police officers had no
grounds for demanding his details. They appear to be the only
criminals in this event.



--
David Hansen, Edinburgh
I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents me
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--e.htm#54

On Thu, 4 Dec 2008 03:09:01 -0800 (PST) someone who may be calum
wrote this:-

The report only mentions that he demonstrated his (dim) front light.

I suggest that if it was dim then shining it into the police
officers eyes would have not had much effect.

It may well have been dimmer than when the cyclist set off, but that
is not the same thing as being dim.


--
David Hansen, Edinburgh
I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents me
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--e.htm#54

On Thu, 4 Dec 2008 03:51:38 -0800 (PST) someone who may be
wrote this:-

They had no grounds. The cyclist demonstrated to them that he had
working lights.

Really? If someone shines a light in your face do you
think you could tell if the lens was marked with the
BS kitemark and BS6102/3?
There are a lot of perfectly good cycle lights out there
that are not technically legal because they are not
BS approved. Even the ones that say 'conforms to
BS6102/3' are not necessarily legal.

There are plenty of bike lights which are not approved to the (not
particularly good) British Standard. They are legal. The Mad Woman
of Finchley was responsible for the Single European Act in 1986.

http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=4071 is a
reasonable summary.

I once cycled without lights. As a hub dynamo user before
the days of front standlights I must have subconsiously
switched them off when I stopped at the supermarket,
it was only when I turned into an unlit road I realised
my mistake.

Had the police spotted you then I would have no objection to them
stopping you to ask about the crime. Once you had shown them that
you had working lights I would have expected them to advise you to
be more careful in the future, mind how you go and preferably salute
you as you left. Had you not had working lights, or to be precise a
working front light, then I would have had no objection to them
taking further action.



--
David Hansen, Edinburgh
I will *always* explain revoked encryption keys, unless RIP prevents me
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00023--e.htm#54

On 4 Dec, 08:54, Tony Dragon wrote:

when a light is so dim as to no longer be a light?


Perhaps when the output falls below the minimum
luminous intensity as specified in BS6102/3, or
the colour falls outside the chromaticity limits.

On 4 Dec, 12:44, David Hansen wrote:

There are plenty of bike lights which are not approved to the (not
particularly good) British Standard. They are legal.

Only if they comply with an equivalent EU standard, not all do.
The point is simply switching it on to show it emits lights
isn't sufficient.


Had the police spotted you then I would have no objection to them
stopping you to ask about the crime. Once you had shown them that
you had working lights I would have expected them to advise you to
be more careful in the future, mind how you go and preferably salute
you as you left. Had you not had working lights, or to be precise a
working front light, then I would have had no objection to them
taking further action.

What if I hadn't noticed the error and was locking the bike
up when the police approached. What if I then refused to
accept that I had been cycling without lights and demonstrated
that they were in working order. Would the police not
be justified in taking my details if I refused to accept
their warning? Is it not possible something like this
happened here?

In message you wrote:

On 4 Dec, 12:44, David Hansen wrote:

There are plenty of bike lights which are not approved to the (not
particularly good) British Standard. They are legal.

Only if they comply with an equivalent EU standard, not all do.
The point is simply switching it on to show it emits lights
isn't sufficient.


The more practical and pragmatic point is to ask when was the last time
you heard of a cyclist prosecuted for using a commercially sold cycle
lamp on their bike, but which did not have the appropriate certification
to a defined standard?

The bike shops in Cambridge stock large numbers of lights that don't
appear to bear the appropriate markings but which never-the-less are
sold to customers as fit for purpose. Whilst the pedantic view pervades
newsgroups such as this, my personal observations in Cambridge are that
the police tend to focus their occasional attention on cyclists who do
not have any lights, but that they do not stop cyclists with lights and
then seek to check whether they are standards compliant.

As for the argument that standards compliance may come into play should
you have an injury and the insurers seek to show contributory
negligence, again I think the pragmatic question is to ask how it would
be proved in court that your lights were not compliant? How is the
evidence likely to be collected and verified? Do the police routinely
make very detailed notes on the particular components on the bikes
involved in accidents or do they simply list whether or not they had
lights (if they bother to list anything at all)? I suggest that in such
a circumstance the most important thing is to have a witness to the fact
that your bike was displaying lights at the time, which simply means
they should have been obvious enough to the observer. I pick my
bike lights based on my own observations on how easy they are to see, to
fit, and to see by. Whether or not they are BS or CE compliant is not a
major part of the consideration, although if it comes down to a
selection between one or two short listed lights then it may become a
deciding factor.

Mike
--
o/ \\ // |\ ,_ o Mike Clark
\__,\\ // __o | \ / /\, "A mountain climbing, cycling, skiing,
" || _`\,_ |__\ \ | reader in immunology, antibody engineer and
` || (_)/ (_) | \corn computer user"