For my penultimate Traffic Week blog post, I give you these:
1) Transit musings: Try this transportation blog: Human Transit
2) Traffic law sometimes surprises: If you ever were in doubt about the truth of this statement, “if you read only what is written in the statutes and the constitutions you will be absolutely wrong about what the law is,” let the following be a wake-up call:
Traffic, by Tom Vanderbilt: “…An alternate title for the book might be “Idiots” (from the NYT review of Traffic).
See also this recent news story:
Use turn signal? Why?: $75 TICKET: It’s an all-too-common attitude, and it can cost you, cops say,” Chicago Sun-Times (online), August 11, 2008, by Mary Wisniewski.
Jerry Boone‘s column today (Oct 24th) in the Oregonian is on photo radar in Beaverton: “Who’s the boss of photo radar?”
I’m sure we’re not the only library in the state that sees its fair share of people wanting to know how to fight a photo radar ticket. One way is here, but there are others, most of which begin with reading the law.
Now, am I not just the Queen of Understatement ….
See this Oregon Court of Appeals case, State v Rowe, Docket no. A128400. From the OJD Media Release page (use drop-down menu to get to the Ct of App):
“Defendant appeals his convictions for impeding traffic, ORS 811.130, and failure to obey a police officer, ORS 811.535. Defendant was standing next to his bicycle on a sidewalk in Portland when he refused a police officer’s order to “move along.” Held: To be convicted of impeding traffic, defendant had to have been “riding a bicycle.” To be convicted of failure to obey, the officer’s order had to have been lawful. On appeal, the state concedes that it failed to prove that defendant was riding a bicycle. Further, the state concedes that no other lawful basis existed for the officer to have ordered defendant to move. Reversed.”
Oregon Legal Research Blog