Have you ever been pulled over while on a bicycle? Well, this Velomobile is a type of bicycle, and that’s what happened to Doug Grosjean.
See, the Dearborn resident uses his human-powered Velomobile to commute to work, sometimes down Evergreen.
He’s hard to miss if you’ve been to biking events and it’s not like he’s not a known quantity with being included in an HOUR Magazine profile and all.
What is a Velomobile? Imagine a bike or tricycle (human-powered, no engine) with an aerodynamic shell that’s set up so you can go say, 30 miles per hour. It’s set up like a recumbent bicycle, so you’re leaning back and low to the ground.
Here’s the thing. Police apparently regularly stop Grosjean, so often to the point that he carries a copy of the Michigan Vehicle Code on him. You can see it in the video. He’s also posted a previous incident.
In that most recent video posted to Youtube, embedded above, you can see how the police stop plays out between him and not one but two patrol cars of the Detroit Police Department on the morning of April 8.
We’ll let his comments take the story from there:
“Stopped on my way to work around 8:45 AM.
Officer claimed that a bicycle must be far to the right.
I showed him the section of Michigan Vehicle Code, which states the a bicycle traveling at less than prevailing speed of existing traffic must be far right.
But the “far right” only applies to a bicycle traveling at less than the prevailing speed of traffic.
The aggressive cop on my right repeats over and over that I must be far right, while his partner points out that I was doing 35 MPH in a 30 MPH speed zone.
Eventually the less aggressive partner is suggesting they should just leave this one alone and get out of there.
The aggressive officer is also insisting that I should be in a bike lane, yet no bike lane exists anywhere along my commuting route (Evergreen). I take Evergreen because I can frequently maintain the 30 MPH speed limit, and the road is wide so cars pass if the want to speed.
The officers eventually gave up arguing with me, jumped in their car and took off.”
Watch the video and judge for yourself. One has to ask… is this the best use of Detroit Police resources?
