All
Great ride today led by Jim and Chuck, my trip odometer showed 491 miles and spent 10 hours 33 minutes on the bike, yes my butt is tired. OK, on to the bad, illegal spiders we all have. So, I'm heading home around Shakopee with both my headlights and fog lights on as it's dark in that area around 9:00 PM, BTW, no flashing from oncoming cars. I get lit up by one of the state of MN's finest. Seems he's all bent out of shape over the fact that you can see white light from my bumpskid (lit with LED's courtesy of Spiderpops.) reflecting down when you look at the spyder from the rear at night. I'm thinking yes, OK, this is a good thing as being seen in the dark usually keeps you alive. He then proceeds to walk around the front of my bike and tell me that under MN statutes 169.49 to be specific, I'm only allowed a maximum of "4 headlights" on a motorcycle and he counted 9. Seems he thinks the fender marker lights and the small marker LED's by the headlights are per MN law, "headlights" and that I'll have to have them removed. I mentioned that the bike, with the exception of the bumpskid is stock from the factory and that all the lighting complies with DOT regulations as designed by Can Am and in compliance in the USA, quite sure they researched the applicable laws as well. He begged to differ and told me the "Statute don't lie, look it up, better yet, I'll print you a copy" He then proceeded to tell me that my spyder is "terrifying" from the front and "just plain scary, because of the illegal lights."
So I'm standing there with this clown and mentioned that perhaps he is not interpreting the correct meaning of what the statute means by "headlights" versus "marker lights." This apparently does not make him feel good about himself and he tells me he should just shut the vehicle down and make me tow it home. At that point, I'd had enough and mentioned I look forward to the opportunity to discuss the whole safe lighting situation with him in court and we could just see what the judge thought of this. Seems this kinda cooled his anticipation at getting the illegal bike off the road, he ended up giving me a warning with the wrong statute 169.18 quoted and took off.
I'm torn between thinking how can a cop be that stupid or perhaps the lighting was just a way to pull me over and hope I looked like the typical biker thug he imagined and had dreams of a big drug or alcohol bust. Either way, that kind of behavior does make one think we do have a problem with LEO's in this country. The kicker was he told me he was a fellow biker too, I'm thinking "really, you don't think a little illumination at night is a good thing for a biker?"
