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Stories like this really upset me

And the problem is that the ticket, if it stands, would have barred any sort of damages from the driver.

Cyclists are The Other. Even, often, to bike cops.

Good, upstanding regular normal people drive GMC Yukon Denalis. What is WRONG with us?

The Other must be demonized and persecuted.

The north side of the capitol building is a place where many of my fellow cyclists go way too fast in my opinion. There are lots of peds and cars, but it so tempting to stay off the brakes as you fly downhill!

This cyclist ended up going over the hood, that likely means she was riding in the blind spot of a driver who was looking for parking. Not a good riding position.

That's some serious dedication by the officer. Serious, effed up dedication.

Do police officers normally travel to the hospital to give citations to offending drivers? If so, I take that statement back.

Truth is, cyclists bomb down that hill, on the north side of the Capitol, next to Constitution.

If you try to bike slowly down, cyclists will ride your ass or pass you at high speeds and without much room.

Just goes to show all humans act stupid when they have the opportunity to go fast, in a car or on a bike.

I like how when cyclists tell an officer that a driver did something wrong and should get a ticket the officer says, "Can't. Didn't see it." But officers are too often willing to do exactly that to a cyclist in a hospital. All of a sudden they're Perry Mason accident reconstructors.

Beware of parallel parking vehicles. They never look back to the roadway to see if other vehicles/cyclists/etc may be impeded by their sudden and often unindicated (ie, no blinker) movements.

Of course the cop followed her to the hospital. What could a Capitol Hill police officer have to do otherwise, leave his gun in the bathroom? Oh, yah, they do that too.

16 police agencies in DC and this is what the city gets.

I think that the city should disband all of those police agencies and keep the MPD since all of the rest of the agencies serve as glorified security guards or those who stand in the middle of the road to guide traffic. Police work appears to be way down the list for these so called 'Police.'

Assuming she was in a parking lot/parking area, not on the public street, it's not a matter of exceeding the speed limit, but going too fast for conditions. Parking lots generally don't have speed limits. You go as slow as necessary for safety. I don't know if there's a posted speed limit there or a regulation limiting speed, but I doubt it. So it's quite possible she was guilty of just what the officer cited her for.

Also, cops sometimes go to the hospital to give motorists tickets too.

Yes, cops can get the law wrong when it comes to cycling, or even be jerks about it. But we cyclists sometimes just assume a cop is wrong or vindictive whenever they blame a cyclist. It sounds to me like the cop was right.

What makes you believe the cop was right? All we're told is that a car turned into a parking space and both collided. The cop made his decision based on testimony from the cyclist that was given under what I might call "challenging circumstances", i.e. she'd just been hit by a car and was so badly injured she needed to go to the hospital. If such a person were a witness to a crash you were involved in, how much would you want police to rely on their testimony? Based on what we're told, the best I can say is that I don't know who was at fault.

Yes, the car that was turning into the spot might have done so without yielding to the oncoming cyclist. What I meant was the cop was right about the interpretation that a cyclist could be going too fast, even if not exceeding the speed limit.

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