Oil Drippings: Some Laws Are Just Idiotic

By Bud Wilkinson

Scanning the globe (or, at least, websites around the world) to bring you a constant variety of motorcycle news:

We all do it when riding. That is, occasionally lift a leg off of the foot peg and stretch it. For a rider in Queensland, Australia doing just that resulted in a $146 ticket. Jake Sloman was fined for “fail to keep both feet on footrest” while he commuted to work on Jan. 6.

The ticket, posted on the  “The Courier-Mail” website here, listed the date of the offense as Monday, 06/01/13, which suggests the police officer  wasn’t exactly perfect himself; failing to recall that the year had switched to 2014.

The fine has predictably caused outrage on social media.

There are other quirky laws Down Under, too. Queensland police also recently fined a man $44 for leaving a window on his parked car cracked three to four centimeters to let hot air escape on a scorching summer day. Under the law, there’s a limit to how far a window may be left; the purpose being to prevent cars from being stolen.

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From Sin City, ground was broken yesterday for the new Las Vegas Harley-Davidson at 5191 S. Las Vegas Blvd, just steps from the famous “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign.

A 50,000-square foot building is planned on a high-profile, five-acre site. Besides selling motorcycles, the dealership will offer rentals for tourists and a retail store.

Dealership owner Don Andress told KLAS-TV that he’d had his eye on the property for some time. “There’s 1,500 people a day (that) come to the sign. That’s really gonna be an opportunity for us to being in people and learn about our product,” he said.

The new store on the Strip will supplant an existing one and is expected to open Oct. 31.