A female bicyclist on the Bud Ride Saturday (5/17/14) made the same mistake I once made with the Iowa City Police Department. She was threatened by an SUV driver ("buzzed," which means the SUV drove close enough to her to threaten her, possibly on purpose) and called the Johnson County Sheriff's Department.
Two sheriff's deputies showed up and arrested a number of bicyclists for public intoxication in or near Tiffin.
As my husband and Tom Hammer, another MelonHead, passed the group, Tom muttered, "We're not stopping."
I'm so glad I didn't go (not ready for that many hills yet) this year. I might have criticized the deputies' response to a bicyclist's call for help. Questioning a police officer who has an overt, stated anti-bicyclist bias in Iowa City for his version of an incident he didn't see is called "disorderly conduct." I just showed up to drop off my husband, pick him up, and hear the story.
Trust me, neither the Johnson County Sheriff's Department nor the Iowa City Police Department will take your side in any sort of confrontation between a bicyclist and a motorist. Don't call for help unless you've been run over and are still alive. In that case, call 911 and hope the fire department or the ambulance shows up first.
I'm not aware of a single bicyclist fatality in the state of Iowa, even on a bright, sunny day, where a motorist got more than a $35 ticket. If you know of anyone who got a significant penalty for running over and killing a bicyclist in Iowa, please let me know.
I do know of a possible case of vigilante justice. I once described a dangerous buzzing instance in Ely when a local business with a bright red pickup truck and a long red enclosed trailer with the name of the business emblazoned on the sides buzzed a long line of bicyclists leaving Ely, and someone wrote and asked me the name of the business.
The pickup truck driver never buzzed this ride out of Ely again and the business removed its name from its place of business.
Maybe that's what happens when law enforcement consistently ignores the rights of a class of people.
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