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There is a high price to pay in the city of Los Angeles for the
feeling of wind rushing through your hair — $526, or 68 community
service hours, to be exact. I know, because it happened to me. Twice.
When
I graduated high school, I didn't buy a Honda. I bought a used, jet
black, four-stroke 150cc Bajaj Chetak scooter off Craigslist. It's a
low-maintenance motor scooter made in India, a lot cheaper than a Vespa —
perfect for lazy beginners like me. My 2006 model gets 95 mpg, and I am
about to hit 14,000 accident-free miles on it.
The problem comes
at night, or very early in the morning. Driving in these hours should be
a breezy reprieve from L.A. traffic. But in a Chetak, the open road can
be a ticket to, well, tickets.
In one such instance, I was at the
corner of Figueroa and Second, at a signalized, protected
left-turn-arrowed intersection, waiting patiently on a wind-chilled
morning for the light to turn green. At 1:46 a.m., I was the only
vehicle on the whole block.
But the red-light sensors in this city
are not built to be triggered by anything smaller than a full-size car.
I waited nine minutes and it skipped my turn three times over.
I
looked around; no cars were in sight, in any direction. I pressed my
clutch, twisted my idling throttle and took the red light.
I've
done it innumerable times before. This time, though, there was a police
car in stealth mode nearby; it pounced on me immediately. The officer
wouldn't look me in the eye as he handed me the ticket. (He didn't look
at my scooter, either, apparently; after he got its color wrong, he had
to send a detail correction slip in the mail.) He knew, as much as I
did, that the ticket was given unfairly.
I'd fought tickets twice
before. I knew the outcome: They find you guilty anyway — but at that
point, the judge is eager to give you the max. I pleaded guilty and was
sentenced to 68 hours of community service.
Ask any rider in this
city about this problem and they will answer the same way: “I back up,
put it in neutral and roll my bike back and forth over the sensor pads,
but this only works if you have a big motorcycle. It doesn't work for
smaller bikes.” Luis Sandoval, who got his motorcycle license in 1976
and currently rides a 2006 Softail Deluxe Harley-Davidson, confirms that
this disregard for riders has existed for at least three decades.
Some
riders take to toggling their high beams on and off. (It's an urban
myth that this somehow helps the situation.) Others lug around a
“rare-earth” neodymium magnet. It's supposed to alter the
electromagnetic field and trigger the sensor. I've never tried it.
Officer
John Padilla of the Los Angeles Police Department tells me officers are
supposed to honor the spirit of the law: “If the violator is causing a
safety hazard, we do cite. But if we think the traffic offender is
telling the truth, then we give a verbal warning.”
That doesn't always work; look what happened to me.
I
suppose the 123,669 registered motorcyclists in this city who face this
problem daily could back up, make a right and then pull a U-turn. But
according to the latest edition of the City of Los Angeles Traffic Profile,
L.A. has 1,800 signalized intersections with left-turn arrows. That's
quite a few riled riders cutting you off in the street to get over to
the right-turn lane, just to make a series of turns they shouldn't have
to make anyway.
As for me, I did my 68 hours of community service
at Garfield High School in East Los Angeles. But I wouldn't say it was a
lesson learned.
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