# Ticket Happy Park Police - Marin Headlands - Monday Apr-28



## slow.climber (Nov 25, 2010)

Officer Friendly is all grins and giggles today.

He's sitting up on Simmons Road and watching the intersection at Field and Bunker (just below the Visitors Center).

When he sees a bike roll through the stop sign, he jumps in his SUV and meets you down at the intersection of Simmons and Bunker with a $250 citation just for you.

The nice man also wants to tell you how big a moron you are and how he's there to protect you.

Go ahead and ask him about what he's doing about directing traffic in the hazard zone on Conzelman.


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## chickenfried (Sep 5, 2007)

what a waste of resources.


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## ericm979 (Jun 26, 2005)

It's easy revenue and makes it appear that they're doing something about bike safety.

Of course the easy way to avoid the ticket is to stop....


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## slow.climber (Nov 25, 2010)

Some people might say that rolling a stop sign on quite park roads, in the middle of the day, with an unobstructed view of the totally nonexistent cross traffic, is safer that coming to a stop and maybe getting creamed from behind by that good soul who 'just never saw you'.

I tend to assume that motor traffic doesn't see me. So when I come to an intersection, I believe that I have more control over the risk of getting creamed when I'm managing my integration in to cross flow as opposed to assuming the that traffic behind me isn't going to turn me in to chunky salsa.

Yeah, I can hear motor traffic behind me but not always, and a bike? Maybe not at all.

Ever get slammed by an idiot tourist at an intersection or choke point because you slowed down and they didn't?

Maybe more to the point, Officer Friendly kept insisting that he was protecting me.

Really.

So how is it that cyclists are getting hurt in the Headlands?

Yeah, they're crashing on the descents from Hawk Hill.

They're crashing going west because it's a bit technical and people regularly underestimate that descent. And they're crashing going the opposite direction because the Park Service did a lousy job of managing the road rework. But the road is remarkably blood free at the intersection of Field and Bunker.

Maybe Officer Friendly would be contributing to safety by controlling traffic flow through the farked up sections of Conzelman where people are actually crashing largely due to the Park Service's failure to do their job.


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## Bostic (Nov 17, 2008)

It's been a long time since I have ridden over there. When was the layout of Field road changed? It used to fork, left lane led to a Stop sign if you wanted to turn left on to Bunker and head to the Lagoon or the Sanctuay, the right lane was a yield sign. Google street view shows this layout but satellite view shows a single stop sign.


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## The Human G-Nome (Aug 26, 2002)

I normally just do hill repeats on Hawk and rarely go further into the Headlands unless I'm doing the trails on my CX bike. Thanks for the heads up though because I would have been one to blow this stop sign. I usually blow a stop sign when I know cross traffic is next to impossible and you can see in every direction. 

No matter how many new bike paths we get in NorCal, there will always be a contingent of law enforcement out there trying "save us" from ourselves. There are a lot of legitimate tickets to be given (see: every red light run), but the nonsense tickets are annoying. I once called pulled over and warned for speeding in GGP. The speed limit was 25, and the cop told me I was doing 30. He didn't ticket me and let me off with a warning.


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## singlespeed.org (Feb 14, 2006)

Bostic said:


> It's been a long time since I have ridden over there. When was the layout of Field road changed? It used to fork, left lane led to a Stop sign if you wanted to turn left on to Bunker and head to the Lagoon or the Sanctuay, the right lane was a yield sign. Google street view shows this layout but satellite view shows a single stop sign.


Last year, they did a bunch of work to a variety of the roads in the Headlands. Some was pretty bike friendly improvements. Looks like they now want us to pay for it with tickets.


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## centurionomega (Jan 12, 2005)

Thanks for the warning. I was just getting ready to go do the Headlands in a few minutes.

That is a very sneaky stake out position that you describe.

If you can, you should try to go to court. I got a stop sign ticket in San Mateo County last year. I was looking at $239 fine plus a point on my license. The judge halved the fine and did not give me a point. Well worth the 3 hours or so it took to go down to Redwood City.


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## HIPCHIP (Apr 23, 2009)

Normally, when there is selected enforcement like this, it is because someone filed a citizens complaint about people on bikes, etc. running the stop sign, and/or because there have been too many accidents there and they need to start enforcement to try and lower the amount of accidents.


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