The Man bikes to work every day – yes, every day also includes the -20°C windy days in the winter. He likes to bike fast (sometimes helped by the urge of not freezing his fingers, toes, or any other extremity of his body he might consider useful).
However, on that April day, the weather was quite nice when he got fined for passing a red light. His version to the court (we’ll get there later) is that he did stop, but started pedaling again once he could see the light was about to turn green.
Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt on that one.
As soon as I heard about the hefty $325 (!) ticket, I started browsing the internet to see if we could fight this.
Besides checking about the fine, I also quickly looked for the World Bank website statistics to find out if Canada was so desperate for money it counts on bikers to fund the country.
We could fight the ticket (a real democracy), and I ended up going to court as the family council. The Man and the Dwarves had unilaterally decided I would be a better negotiator.
My theory is that they fully realized there was less risk of me ending up in jail for giving my opinion about the charming policeman whose encounter was about to cost us over $300.
Apart from the lack of ridiculous wigs (I have to say I was quite disappointed), the hearing went well. The Judge lowered the fine to $85 after I had explained the Man was guilty, but he had stopped, there was little traffic at 6.45 in the morning and he had not endangered anybody.
Moreover, he was on call and was speeding to the hospital in order to save somebody’s life.
Do I feel ashamed? Not even. I was invited to eat out that night.
Maple syrup and chocolate 