08-11-2016, 07:31 AM
(08-10-2016, 05:24 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: That being said, I disagree that the officer must be on the bike. If an officer is following a vehicle that overtakes a bicycle, the officer should be in an acceptable position to know if it is too close. Obviously, it would have to be *way* too close, i.e., there is some margin of error, but it isn't unreasonable to expect officers to make this judgement.
Officers make other judgements, how close is too close to qualify as tailgating for example.
Yes, exactly. I think it’s a direct analogy to the technique tomh009 described above for speeding, in which a police officer is following a car, notices the driver is speeding, and matches his speed at a distance to come up with an estimate of how much he is speeding.
Similarly, I have to imagine that, for the number of instances that motorists likely pass people on bicycles too closely, a police officer in a vehicle must be following behind, and in a position to estimate the distance, and with the time to issue a ticket…at least some of the time.