Got pulled over by the Police 2ND TIME IN A WEEK

Try this some time. Ride a "grown-up" bike breaking all of those "violations" and see if you get pulled over.

Time for glow in the dark frames and reflective FAFs

I rode a set of glow in the dark Oddy twisteds for a long time..... wonder if they still make those.....
The barspin comment is kind of funny, apparently riding with no hands falls under stunting as well as hopping and manualing.
Then add in helmet laws,sidewalks, oh and fakies on a street are also illegal according to our local police.
Glad they dont enforce it here.... much.

Cant imagine being caught on the sidewalk hopping off the curb into manual, to 180 bar, fakie, halfcab out all with no helmet or reflectors at night. Haha!

Do you guys live in Canada or Nazi Germany? Lol. Do the cops start with "Papers please!"

Chuck8273 wrote:

Do you guys live in Canada or Nazi Germany? Lol. Do the cops start with "Papers please!"

Sometimes even I question that. Haha

Wow, you guys are so quiet and nice, and your cops enforce every law ever. Huh.

Look up your local cycling laws (print them out and carry them with you) so you know exactly what they are.

I have had local cops tell me no bikes on sidewalks, to be yelled at an hour later for riding in the streets.

If reflectors are ONLY required at night, then you can shut those cops down until dark with that law (get statute number too, so they can look it up).

After doing that, any cop that tells me to ride on the sidewalk is met with "Actually, statute 169.22 of the St. Cloud MN Cycling laws states that Bikes must be in the road at all times."

Usually they are dumbfounded, sometimes they look it up, sometimes they say something like "I am not familiar with that one" and take off.

But here in MN, lights and reflectors are only required at night.

Do you have to have reflectors? In my town, it's either reflectors OR a white light on the front and a red on the rear of your bike. I use these:


They only weigh a couple ounces, and can be carried in a pocket, etc., when not being used. They only take a few seconds to twist onto your bars and post. They were less than $10 at Wal Mart.

Madtown608 wrote:

Do you have to have reflectors? In my town, it's either reflectors OR a white light on the front and a red on the rear of your bike. I use these:


They only weigh a couple ounces, and can be carried in a pocket, etc., when not being used. They only take a few seconds to twist onto your bars and post. They were less than $10 at Wal Mart.

fuck 10 buck, id just role in with a hoodie and lift that shit, fuck the law... although under that same thinking, ill just brake the stupid biking laws

This is my problem with BMX being not so mainstream, NO ONE understands what we are doing.

Those laws are for a ROAD or MOUNTAIN bike, not a BMX bike. It is meant for tricks and not just transportation or exercise. BMX needs to be exempt from the laws of ROAD biking. They should make up a new set for them. Like being allowed on sidewalks when there are fewer than 10 people and each person is notified of the rider riding. Reflectors or no reflectors, i dont think a bit of reflective plastic is gonna make a person stop. You need to watch for yourself and only ride on lit streets. I know exactly your pain, trust me, i complained for weeks on here about how shitty my town has become due to the money hungry assholes running everything. I HATE MY TOWN. I used to literally ride 5 hours a day no matter what, doing all kinds of stuff, but now, i can only ride about an hour before i get bored and go home. We have two spots. Our manual pad sidewalk corner place that is by a bar with a guy that is an ass and calls the cops if he sees us there. Then we have a little, probably 10 foot grind ledge thing, that is barely any fun.. The last brick part is falling off and the crack is hard to smith over and its annoying. What you need to do is go, get those reflectors, get a helmet, when the cops are cruising by, already have a nice spot to hide and if they come over say you were just stopping for a second and you were on your way to your friend's house. Best of luck man, i have recently been pretty ticked about the whole thing, but as a BMXer, you owe it to yourself to keep doing what you do. Be cool to the cops, even tho 80% can be real assholes. Try to explain to them that you arent really harming anything and that the people dont care you are there (if they dont)

MaximusBikes wrote:

This is my problem with BMX being not so mainstream, NO ONE understands what we are doing.

Those laws are for a ROAD or MOUNTAIN bike, not a BMX bike. It is meant for tricks and not just transportation or exercise. BMX needs to be exempt from the laws of ROAD biking. They should make up a new set for them. Like being allowed on sidewalks when there are fewer than 10 people and each person is notified of the rider riding. Reflectors or no reflectors, i dont think a bit of reflective plastic is gonna make a person stop. You need to watch for yourself and only ride on lit streets. I know exactly your pain, trust me, i complained for weeks on here about how shitty my town has become due to the money hungry assholes running everything. I HATE MY TOWN. I used to literally ride 5 hours a day no matter what, doing all kinds of stuff, but now, i can only ride about an hour before i get bored and go home. We have two spots. Our manual pad sidewalk corner place that is by a bar with a guy that is an ass and calls the cops if he sees us there. Then we have a little, probably 10 foot grind ledge thing, that is barely any fun.. The last brick part is falling off and the crack is hard to smith over and its annoying. What you need to do is go, get those reflectors, get a helmet, when the cops are cruising by, already have a nice spot to hide and if they come over say you were just stopping for a second and you were on your way to your friend's house. Best of luck man, i have recently been pretty ticked about the whole thing, but as a BMXer, you owe it to yourself to keep doing what you do. Be cool to the cops, even tho 80% can be real assholes. Try to explain to them that you arent really harming anything and that the people dont care you are there (if they dont)

Honestly I disagree with almost all of this.

I do agree that reflectors are silly during the day, but I can honestly say that there are at least a dozen times that I saw nothing more that reflectors moving, and that alone prevented me from running over cyclists in the dark who don't have lights (bmx kids included-pedal reflectors). They aren't to make people stop, just to make you visible in the dark, and they work if you have headlights or any lights period aimed at them.

The sidewalk thing is because you move a hell of a lot faster than walkers. Also, would you want to be hauling ass down a sidewalk and have a store's door fly open for you to plow into? Doubt it.

Also just to add to the thought of new bike laws for BMX bikes: brakes are almost ALWAYS required by law on ANY bike.

Road bike and Mountain bike laws are one and the same. Bicycle safety laws. They have one set for everyone because it is easier. If you separate by type of bike, then there would be a LOT of unecessary work to be done, and car enthusiasts might complain, so you might have to take it that far and have different laws for different types of cars.

There are too many styles of bikes to make separate laws. Road, Cyclocross, Mountain, Downhill, Slopestyle, BMX, Cruisers, Comfort bikes, the list goes on. It would be too much unecessary work.

To the OP, research the local laws to be armed correctly with them. I feel like the reflector thing might be only for night time riding, and if that is the case, you are not in the wrong during daylight, and they can say nothing about it.

How big is your city? If it's big enough, I'd just say fuck 'em. Or buy some glow in the dark paint and go to work on your spokes.

Thanks for all the responses everyone!

I am going to look into those cool lights posted above, and am also researching all of the laws.

The issue is that I work 50 hr weeks and go to University so I can only ever really ride at night, plus street spots are only open at night.

Apparently, from info I have received, the police are actually pushed for about a month a year to crack down on cycling laws such as these, apparently the precincts have a time they push it on all their officers etc... And then they lay off. But whatever, have never had this problem in my whole life but suddenly got two warnings in a week. Will put the smallest reflectors I can find on and take them off if I need to film something.

Really bummed out about it tbh, but whatever.