Street Riding Etiquette for Bike Riders

Video Transcript

It's getting so that riding street in most places in this country is becoming a crime or in a lot of places a criminal act. At the same time, if you're going to go out and ride street, which I can completely sympathize with I do it on a regular basis myself, there's a couple different things you can do to ensure that you're not going to have the police call on you. A lot of the time if you're nice to people you'll find that, especially business owners will tell you that it's OK to come back just don't come back while their hours of business going. The first thing, and I can't stress this enough, if you're going to go grinding ledges and what not, it makes a lot of noise and people notice. So if you can, try to avoid doing it in very crowded areas, it tends to frighten people, people traveling around on non-motorized vehicles at high rates of speed especially around kids, it does tend to scare people. So if you can avoid doing that and you can try to avoid riding places that have posted no trespassing signs, you'll find that automatically you're eliminating the vast majority of people who will call the police or make a big issue out of you're riding somewhere. A lot of the time what you'll find is that if you go riding in between the hours of the work day after about five o'clock of so and before people are trying to get to sleep, before nine o'clock or so, that generally you're not going to be bothering nearly as many people. So you want to make sure also, that you?re not destroying any body's private property and if somebody asks you to leave, just leave. It's really not worth sticking around and trying to be a tough guy about it or making a big deal about it because a lot of the time what I've found is that even if I get kicked out by a security guard or a police officer or something, often times they'll say OK well thank you for being respectful about this, you can come back if you want but come back on the weekend, or come back in the morning. A lot of the time they'll give you some advice about the times that you can go and ride those spots without bothering people. It may be a little bit more of a hassle for you because sometimes you can't ride some of the same spots at your convenience, but at the same time I would think it's generally worth creating a good positive relationship with the people who live in the area where you might be riding because the less time that you get the police called on you and the less angry neighbors that you have yelling at you and making a scene, the less of a headache it's going to be for everybody involved.