Cannings Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 So a mate who runs the coffee shop on the business park I work at said someone who works closer to the business park management were trying to get in contact with the person who rides the unicycle. I asked him what for and he sent me this that they sent him: "If you could, the police want to have a friendly chat about him riding it on the public realm/highway. It is illegal and they want to warn him before catching him – if they catch him they will have to take it off him, but please keep it in confidence." What a bunch of dickheads Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scatcat Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 18 minutes ago, Cannings said: So a mate who runs the coffee shop on the business park I work at said someone who works closer to the business park management were trying to get in contact with the person who rides the unicycle. I asked him what for and he sent me this that they sent him: "If you could, the police want to have a friendly chat about him riding it on the public realm/highway. It is illegal and they want to warn him before catching him – if they catch him they will have to take it off him, but please keep it in confidence." What a bunch of dickheads The situation in the UK seems frustrating as h-ll. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WARPed1701D Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 Unless you plan to quit riding and sell the wheel in advance then I'd not offer myself up to them to receive the "warning" voluntarily. At that point you have no excuse of ignorance if they do catch you. Maybe, they would choose not to confiscate if there was no record of an warning being issued. Plausible deniability. Either way you risk your wheel being taken. I guess you've got to ask if you are willing to lose the investment. At the very least I'd try to vary my route to work. Did the Business Park Management report you or have the police already been sniffing around and asking questions and this was a friendly heads-up through the grapevine? You have to ask the question "Don't they have anything better to do". Sux. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannings Posted May 24, 2018 Author Share Posted May 24, 2018 Luckily my heads up was from a friend who has played dumb so as far as that goes i'm okay and yeah while I agree with varying my route its not that easy with the way to work being basically straight down one road. I'm thinking about anonymously sending an email to the local paper to see if they'd do an article about how the police are spending their time to protect the public from the menace on the bypass cycle path twice a day on weekdays but that does have a chance to backfire Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
novazeus Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 in one of my nightly chats with @Flora Yuan i was telling her that these bureaucrats were the biggest threat to their industry. i think if they(all the ewheels manufacturers) don't get out in front with their lobbying efforts, eventually their market will dry up. it's not like we can enjoy these in skateboard parks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RayRay Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 Wear a Guy Fawkes mask and don't let 'em catch you! ✊ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannings Posted May 24, 2018 Author Share Posted May 24, 2018 34 minutes ago, RayRay said: Wear a Guy Fawkes mask and don't let 'em catch you! ✊ full face helmet achieves this too lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nute Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 How depressing... Its a wonder they take the time to do this when you would think they might have more important things to do. Where abouts in the UK are you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannings Posted May 24, 2018 Author Share Posted May 24, 2018 In cheshire Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchet Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 How many tens of thousands of dollars did taxpayers spend to train these cops and they spend their time harassing a guy on an electric unicycle going to work. Thank god for the state's brownshirt thugs. I'm lucky the police haven't harassed me in a long time and I ride by them all the time. It's the motorcycle cops that you need to look out for here. Thinks: "Great job officer, you're really making the world a safer place. So glad we have you here to enact your jack-booted Marxist agenda. Oh I get it, you have a gun and the power of the state behind you. What a big man you are!" Says: "Golly gee officer, we wasn't hurtin' nobody nohow!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Esper Posted May 24, 2018 Share Posted May 24, 2018 Catch me if you can? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mezzanine Posted May 25, 2018 Share Posted May 25, 2018 59 minutes ago, Esper said: Catch me if you can? That's going to be my stance when the time comes. Thought I might be tested tonight, but decided not to tempt fate and avoided the cops that were on the trail I was riding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannings Posted May 25, 2018 Author Share Posted May 25, 2018 4 hours ago, mezzanine said: That's going to be my stance when the time comes. Thought I might be tested tonight, but decided not to tempt fate and avoided the cops that were on the trail I was riding. Thing is i've gone passed police before, waved nodded they've smiled back 0 issues, I don't know what has caused them to try find me currently it looks like all they know is I go down the main road and work on the big business park, but i've had 0 accidents, 0 even close calls, slowed down around any pedestrians, stayed on the road in the business park it just seems to have come out of left field Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mezzanine Posted May 25, 2018 Share Posted May 25, 2018 14 minutes ago, Cannings said: Thing is i've gone passed police before, waved nodded they've smiled back 0 issues, I don't know what has caused them to try find me currently it looks like all they know is I go down the main road and work on the big business park, but i've had 0 accidents, 0 even close calls, slowed down around any pedestrians, stayed on the road in the business park it just seems to have come out of left field I got hit by a bus, not bad, but it happened. Sprained my shoulders. I made the mistake of reporting it to the police. The cop was such a massive douchebag that if there was any way he could have impounded or otherwise messed with my ability to ride, he'd have jumped on it. In retrospect, I regret going to the police. I should have known better, too. I'm just waiting to hear about some kid getting hit in the paper and I'm going to name-drop this guy and tell my story about how he claimed "it never happened" and basically laughed at me. This guy actually pointed out to me that I was still bleeding when I was filing the report and made me get patched up before he continued to take my statement. Sherlock fucking Holmes, this guy. I can get myself upset just thinking about it. Now I have to be careful because I don't fully trust myself not to get confrontational if they do try to stop me. It's why I avoided them tonight, even though my instinct was to dare them to try to stop me. Don't talk to the cops! Not even if they seem friendly. Maybe half of them are decent human beings, let's say. The problem is the third of them that are closet fascists drunk on authority. I was doing the same mental calculations it sounds you are, in terms of preventing them from being able to locate me as a worst-case-scenario. I won't make it easy and they'll find they're up against a worthy adversary, legally, if it comes to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannings Posted May 25, 2018 Author Share Posted May 25, 2018 Unfortunately I don't think I have an option, my boss just spoke to me this morning, he's also had the email from the Park they sent it to every business, LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scatcat Posted May 25, 2018 Share Posted May 25, 2018 This is ridiculous. Here we have a few new modes of personal transportation that consumes no oil to run, and the primary reaction from the authorities is banning them. Not researching safety considerations, not setting limits on how fast you can go where, not discussing courses or licences to use them - just trying to put the chick back into the egg. Bikes are all well and OK, but they are not a "last mile" solution. You can't take them on the bus, or commuter train, so their use is binary. Either you use them from door to door or not at all. I wonder how the western world big cities would look if most of them were closed to all non-professional traffic, and electrical personal transportation were adopted to fill the gap? The raw inventiveness that would spring would be awesome. We would see plenty of new solutions, some with transport capabilities for goods as well as the driver. And overall they would take less of the road-space, and leave more space for pedestrians. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mezzanine Posted May 25, 2018 Share Posted May 25, 2018 25 minutes ago, Cannings said: Unfortunately I don't think I have an option, my boss just spoke to me this morning, he's also had the email from the Park they sent it to every business, LOL I feel for you. It's good that they're devoting resources to you, and not to catching rapists or any of the other actual criminals that laugh at their incompetence. Just a matter of time before they come for me. I'm the only person in my city that I've seen with a wheel. I guess that's not true; I saw some lady with a airwheel X3! I seriously wonder whether I should try to recover my money before they drop the ax on me. The one thing stopping me is that I know this cop would have done anything possible to try to screw me. The implication is that he must have tried and failed, which at least makes me think that I should get through this summer. Speedyfeet should have been more active before now trying to get some form of legislation through. This is going to kill his business. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jerome Posted May 25, 2018 Share Posted May 25, 2018 It's not a police problem. Most will looked the other way, some will not. All, however, will not looked the other way if there is a single complaint. The law is the law. Ducking police will take the joy out of riding fairly quickly. Changing the law is the only solution. In Pennsylvania e-scooter and e-bikes were banned over 15 years ago. Segway came along and lobbied for a new vehicle category called a Electric Personal Mobility Device" which was adopted by PA and most of the other states in some form or another Then a coalition of e-bikers lobbied and got them classified the same as a regular bikes with some performance restrictions. There is no lobby for e-scooters yet, so they remained outlawed even though e-bikes with throttles are allowed. Segway was a small startup and the e-bike coalition was not massive. You just have to make some organised noise. California is probably the best model, but it boils down to one argument. There should be no difference in operating rules/regulations between human powered vehicles and electric powered vehicles as along as the performance parameters are the same. Since joggers run on sidewalks at about 12.5 mph or less EPMD should be allowed with the same restrictions. Human powered bikes go typically 15-25 mph in bikes lanes and trails, therefore so should e-bikes-e-scooters. EUCs have the ability to be EPMD or e-scooters in terms of performance and classification. Take what classification you can get. Once legal EUCs like cars can be speeders, or not. Even California has speed/Hp restrictions, but there are few instances of police chasing down high powered e-scooters/bikes/E-Boards/EUCs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wehey Posted May 25, 2018 Share Posted May 25, 2018 1 hour ago, Cannings said: Thing is i've gone passed police before, waved nodded they've smiled back 0 issues, I don't know what has caused them to try find me currently it looks like all they know is I go down the main road and work on the big business park, but i've had 0 accidents, 0 even close calls, slowed down around any pedestrians, stayed on the road in the business park it just seems to have come out of left field You will probably find that some do-gooder has complained to the police and now they have to follow it up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Posted May 25, 2018 Share Posted May 25, 2018 57 minutes ago, wehey said: You will probably find that some do-gooder has complained to the police and now they have to follow it up I don’t see why? When a car alarm went off all night for two weekends in a row, preventing an entire street - probably several hundred people - getting any sleep all night, the police didn’t have the resources to do anything about that at all. They only attended when one of our neighbours snapped and took a hammer to the car. Even then they tried to leave without doing anything about the alarm until the entire street descended on them looking like the nearest thing to a lynch mob that leafy suburbia could drum up! (Actually, in the early hours of the morning with everyone in night attire suffering serious sleep deprivation it looked more like a scene from “The Night of the Living Dead”.) Interestingly when they found the notes dozens of people had left on the car torn up on and thrown on the back seat by the driver they let the neighbour off without charge. The stupid cow who phoned the police when he attacked the car (everyone else was cheering from their windows) sold up and left the area shortly afterwards. Somehow riding an EUC seemed way below their radar for a long while after that - trouble is low hanging fruit and 6 points on your licence is a heady combination to a stretched Force looking to get easy results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannings Posted May 25, 2018 Author Share Posted May 25, 2018 1 hour ago, wehey said: You will probably find that some do-gooder has complained to the police and now they have to follow it up This is what I'm thinking too, I'm gonna have a careful think of a list of questions to ask them during this "friendly chat" one of them will be why is this suddenly and issue Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alcatraz Posted May 25, 2018 Share Posted May 25, 2018 As long as you aren't speeding (for an unregistered vehicle is it 25km/h?) and stay in the bicycle lane I think the paperwork is too unappealing to them. /a Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WARPed1701D Posted May 25, 2018 Share Posted May 25, 2018 This is bullshit. Before the chat I strongly suggest you do some homework. Arm yourself with facts. Search the local paper for recent reports of burglaries, anti-social behaviour, attacks, etc and make a note of them. Also search for anything that suggests the local force has in any way complained that they are understaffed or underfunded. In the chat, like you've already said, ask why this has come up. Did someone complain? If the answer is no then it's time to ask why a force with so many real issues (list them off) is investigating this in such a manner. Stopping you if they happen to come across you while riding is one thing but to actively investigate you and hunt you down to the point of emailing a load of businesses is a complete waste of valuable resources. Honestly, even if someone did complain, investigating you should be way down the list of things to do unless you are terrorizing people or being a public menace. If they insist on issuing you a warning then accept it and leave. Get used to the fact that you can't use your wheel for a bit while you take other action. Next step. More research. There have been loads of articles lately about how Britain is being fined by the EU for poor air quality, about poor public health in London as a result of particulates, about the desire to move away from diesel, and the lofty goal of all cars being electric by 2040. Take this data, your wheel, and the warning to your MP. Tell him/her that they need to be concerned about the waste of police resources on this matter when all you want to do is be part of the solution, not the problem, of air pollution. You are trying to be a responsible person by taking a car off the road. Push them to take the matter of common sense EPAMD legislation to Parliament. The UK's current rules are next to pointless and do nothing to encourage people out of cars. Only eBikes are allowed but they are limited to 15mph and must be pedal driven. That is archaic and lags behind much of Europe and the US. Those restrictions do not make low cost, small footprint, low/no emission electric vehicles a viable alternative for current car drivers. Explain that they need to start thinking out the box and make non-restrictive legislation that acts more as a catch all than describing specific devices which will require regular updating as new tech comes out. Set common-sense educated rules based on what matters to your safety or the safety of others or is practical based on the riding environment...speed, weight and size... not motor power or number/configuration of wheels as is so often used. A Lamborghini and a Mini have equal chance of killing someone at 30 mph regardless of engine power. A 3 wheel Reliant Robin will kill as well as a conventional 4 wheel car. Legislation needs to be simple. Specify a maximum weight and width for allowed sidewalk/bike path usage and then set a sensible max speed for each environment....sidewalk (12.5mph), bike path (20mph), and road (posted limit or 30mph whichever is lower). Couple this with sensible use rules such as reckless riding and public endangerment that will catch the idiot trying to do 12.5mph in a crowded town centre and the leave it at that. eBikes, hoverboards, EUC's, mobility scooters, the next thing we can't even imagine (real hoverboards!!!) now all fall under it as it casts a wide net to cover multiple devices. If the MP is not interested then it is time to go to the papers and shame both the police force and the government. Make yourself the do-gooder victim. "I'm trying to help save the world for all our children and the government aren't interested and police waste their time chasing me". Tabloids like the Current Bun, Daily Fail, etc will lap it up. Maybe, just maybe you can shame the lazy bastards into action and some good can come from this. Most importantly....keep your cool. Getting angry with the cops or the MP will weaken your side. As annoying as it is you need to be the better person to maintain the strength of your argument. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roo Williams Posted May 25, 2018 Share Posted May 25, 2018 When does investigation become harassment? By emailing local businesses (or causing an email to be sent) they have swayed an uneducated, public opinion on this and suddenly singled you out amongst a community of people who now are going to label you as a bad guy. They've also embarrassed you in front of your boss. Livid! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Lee Posted May 25, 2018 Share Posted May 25, 2018 12 minutes ago, WARPed1701D said: This is bullshit. Before the chat I strongly suggest you do some homework. Arm yourself with facts. Search the local paper for recent reports of burglaries, anti-social behaviour, attacks, etc and make a note of them. Also search for anything that suggests the local force has in any way complained that they are understaffed or underfunded. In the chat, like you've already said, ask why this has come up. Did someone complain? If the answer is no then it's time to ask why a force with so many real issues (list them off) is investigating this in such a manner. Stopping you if they happen to come across you while riding is one thing but to actively investigate you and hunt you down to the point of emailing a load of businesses is a complete waste of valuable resources. Honestly, even if someone did complain, investigating you should be way down the list of things to do unless you are terrorizing people or being a public menace. If they insist on issuing you a warning then accept it an leave. Get used to the fact hat you can't use your wheel for a bit. Next step. More research. There have been loads of articles lately about how Britain is being fined by the EU for poor air quality, about poor public health in London as a result of particulates, about the desire to move away from diesel, and the lofty goal of all cars being electric by 2040. Take this data, your wheel, and the warning to your MP. Tell him/her that they need to be concerned about the waste of police resources on this matter when all you want to do is be part of the solution, not the problem, of air pollution. You are trying to be a responsible person by taking a car off the road. Push them to take the matter of common sense EPAMD legislation to Parliament. The UK's current rules are next to pointless and do nothing to encourage people out of cars. Only eBikes are allowed but they are limited to 15mph and must be pedal driven. That is archaic and lags behind much of Europe and the US. Those restrictions do not make low cost, small footprint, low/no emission electric vehicles a viable alternative for current car drivers. Explain that they need to start thinking out the box and make non-restrictive legislation that acts more as a catch all than describing specific devices which will require regular updating as new tech comes out. Set rules based on what matters in an accident or is practical based on the riding environment...speed, weight and size... not motor power or number/configuration of wheels as is so often used. A Lamborghini and a Mini have equal chance of killing someone at 30 mph regardless of engine power. A 3 wheel Reliant Robin will kill as well as a conventional 4 wheel car. Legistaltion needs to be simple. Specify a maximum weight and width for allowed sidewalk/bike path usage and then set a sensible max speed for each environment....sidewalk (12.5mph), bike path (20mph), and road (posted limit or 30mph whichever is lower). Couple this with sensible use rules such as reckless riding and public endangerment that will catch the idiot trying to do 12.5mph in a crowded town centre and the leave it at that. If the MP is not interested then it is time to go to the papers and shame both the police force and the government. Make yourself the do-gooder victim. "I'm trying to help save the world for all our children and the government aren't interested and police waste their time chasing me". Tabloids like the Current Bun, Daily Fail, etc will lap it up. Maybe, just maybe you can shame the lazy bastards into action and some good can come from this. Most importantly....keep your cool. Getting angry with the cops or the MP will weaken your side. As annoying as it is you need to be the better person to maintain the strength of your argument. Great suggestions, spoken like great American... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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