Right, it’s a humans role to tell other humans how to behave in society. Especially when our lives are at risk.
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I don’t see how the biker is an asshole. Distracted driving is more dangerous than drunk driving. The cop should be ticked for distracted driving (he can only talk on a cell phone when in an emergency vehicle) and for road rage.
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Why? Distracted driving is worse than drunk driving.
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Neither would I. It would mostly be bewildering. I had someone honking at me once because my license plate was dangling. The guy was trying to be helpful, but up until I stopped and he pulled up alongside me, I was wondering what the fuck his problem was. I have no hard feelings towards him at this point and think he was being a good guy, but if it were me in his position, I wouldn’t honk at someone to get their attention like that. It’s too easy to interpret it in other ways, especially at an intersection. It’s also the case that there are a lot of states where talking on a handheld isn’t illegal. Whether it should be legal or illegal is a different topic worthy of discussion, however it looks like it’s Colorado, and unless the laws have changed since the information I posted was relevant (possible), then the biker is really not in a position to be honking at someone for it.
To be clear, I’m not saying the only time you can honk at someone is when they’re doing something that is technically against traffic laws, but honking at people for doing things that are legal but not to your liking is a questionable activity at best. Honking is most often used to alert people to imminent situations. This wasn’t one.
They appear to be in Colorado where talking on the phone the phone while driving is still legal.
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Why is the biker an asshole? Because he admits he was standing on his bike both distracting himself and being a distraction prior to the video.
I see someone on the phone and I just stay behind them so they can’t be a danger to me, I don’t act like the phone mom and tell them to hang up. I drive defensively around them instead the same way I would treat an obvious drunk driver.
Look, they’re both assholes, let’s just leave it at that.
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If only police had access to some sort of technology that would allow them to use a phone without holding it.
Some sort of… “speaker-phone”.
Or maybe a wireless way for the phone to communicate with a microphone. A “bluetooth”. You know, for the mouths of the boys in blue.
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What if instead of a green light it’s a yield sign and someone is just sitting there? Or an entrance ramp where the left lane is occupied but the merging lane is clearly empty? (That latter case is what we’re seeing in the video, I believe.)
I generally don’t honk, even at green lights, because I figure that if someone isn’t going they probably have a good reason. BUT, when I’m holding up traffic and someone honks at me my reaction is generally “You’re right, I’m sorry.” Not “How dare you!” Of course, I don’t carry a gun, so maybe I just can’t understand where that cop is coming from.
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They don’t like to use the radios because us dirty proles can listen in. That said, it’s been a while since I’ve seen a police officer not talking on their cell while driving. Distracted driving is no safer when a cop does it - put your fuken phones down. Everybody.
I was trying to decipher if there was any marking on the license plate giving away the vehicles secret police identity. In Michigan, all municipal cars have a small x in the middle of the number string, sheriffs have a star in the middle of the number string and state cars have their shield on the left of the numbers.
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The cop definitely seemed to be suffering from the “road rage” he accused the driver of experiencing…
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I honk at people when they turn/change lanes without signaling. Is that wrong?
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It really doesn’t matter whether the driver is an asshole or not. The cop’s job includes not being an asshole. As the denver police department’s mission statement states, it “strives to operate a police agency focused on preventing crime in a respectful manner…”. The cop failed at this. So the cop failed at his job. End of story.
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If I tried that around these parts, I would spend all my time honking and none of it driving. 
I believe it’s actually against the rules of the road, but for me, honking is like disciplining a cat. Often I don’t have time to get to the squirt bottle before the cat stops doing what it’s doing and is no longer capable of connecting the behavior to the squirt bottle. So there’s no point. I apply the same attitude to honking: Is the person going to know what I’m honking about? No? Why bother? At that point it’s about feeling better within yourself, I don’t need to honk for that.
If I had a nickel for how often I’ve heard a completely meaningless mission statement… Seriously though, they’re hard to take seriously no matter who is using them.
Still, the cop is absolutely wrong, I don’t think there’s any doubt here. I think the discussion is centering on the motorcyclist because some people don’t see that he did anything wrong, and some people do. But I don’t think anyone is on the cop’s side either.
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Driving while on a cell phone can be as impairing as driving while drunk: http://www.distraction.gov/downloads/pdfs/a-comparison-of-the-cell-phone-driver-and-the-drunk-driver.pdf
As a bicyclist, I’ve had too many instances to count of people swerving into me while on their damn cell phones.
It looked to me like the near lane of the rotary was clear, which means that the intersection was free to turn into. But I can see some drivers being cautious, as I guess rotaries aren’t that familiar to people in the US. (Edit to add: but the whole question is irrelevant, because he’s honking because the guy is on his cell phone.)
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Oh no, he was so far over the line I doubt you could have seen it in the rear view mirror with a telescope. At least he didn’t get violent, but this was a clear case of “I’m a cop, so what I did is by definition okay, and I’m going to waste ten minutes of your and the taxpayer’s time arguing with you about it instead of just apologizing.” The irony is that if he’d subpoena’d the video, it would have gotten him a reprimand.
I had a cop do something like this to me when I was on a bicycle–he lectured me for five or ten minutes about how I should have been further to the right while his partner stood by looking uncomfortable, then he wrote me a ticket for something I did that wasn’t illegal, and then he never actually filed the ticket because, presumably, his partner tore him a new asshole once he was in the car.
The kid’s voice was cracking–he was really upset by this, and not in an angry way, more in a wow, I had no idea that was going to happen and why is this happening to me kind of way. Very unprofessional behavior on the part of the cop.
On the plus side, neither I nor the kid got shot. Knowing what I know now, I would never argue with a cop. But it’s hard to resist when the cop is being so utterly and transparently un-self-aware.
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It depends on where you’re going. I’ve been in plenty of situations where the near lane has been clear but the next lane wasn’t clear enough for me to execute the lane change I would need in short enough order. In general though, he hardly waited. I’ve waited longer for someone at a green light.
Regardless, he was honking at the driver for using the cell phone, not for waiting at the intersection.
Or, put it this way: he sees the driver is on the cell phone, he sees the driver waits a beat longer than needed at the intersection, he concludes (fairly or not) that the driver is currently distracted by the cell phone, and gets angry, because drivers shouldn’t get distracted by the cell phones.
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Thanks, @DarkFrog! I did not know phoning while driving was legal in Colorado. I’d say their state legislative body has some legislating to do.
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I rarely honk at a stop or yield sign, because odds are the see something I don’t or maybe the just don’t feel comfortable pulling out when I would.
The only other time I honk it to alert someone to my presence when they appear to be getting too close.
But in the video I saw, the guy wasn’t holding up traffic. He just got the yield sign and was yielding. There were cars coming, including a giant truck in front of him right when the first honks happen. No I don’t make turns into the inside lane when someone is in the outside lane. That is how I got into my first and only wreck that was my fault. It looks like a funky intersection to me. Not sure why it isn’t a STOP sign if there is cross traffic.
But as the guy said, he honked because of the phone. Phone or no phone, he wasn’t holding up traffic at that point. It wasn’t safe to proceed.
OH is this a round about? I hate those things. No, I don’t trust people to stay in the lane they are in when I make a turn. I would let them pass through first.
