About my day.
I was driving a friend to do some errands when while driving through Abington Massachusetts I was lit up and pulled over by a local cop. Puzzled about the why of it I prepared by running the window down and putting both hands on the steering wheel in plain sight.
The cop, who was very pleasant throughout the stop, immediately explained that the reason he had stopped me was that my bike carrier was obscuring my license plate. Know what I have is a Thule towbar mounted carrier. I’m sure that everyone knows what that is and what it looks like.
The officer said that because I didn’t have a bike mounted on the carrier he stopped me.
To make sure I understood I repeated what I heard, “You stopped me because I have a bike carrier but no bike?” He confirmed that. He continued to say that anything that obscured the license plate was illegal in Massachusetts. He offered an example that the dealer license plate holders that advertise the dealerships name were also considered illegal. So the one inch black, steel square bar that rises up from the hitch connection is illegal… in Massachusetts.
I looked at him and nodded. “This is of course related to the expansion of license plate readers on the turnpike and bridges to collect tolls.”, I said. He replied, “Oh yes, the State wants to get it’s money.”
He assured me that they are not issuing citations for this … at this time… went unsaid by both of us.

A couple of points I should mention, yes I ride a bike, I have spinal stenosis, walking is a problem but I can ride a bike since there is an angle on my spine. And I do still ride in November. But I keep the bike rack on now all year because I find it painful to walk down my very, very long driveway to put the town trash barrels out on Tuesday mornings. The handles hook nicely onto the bike rack and I can drive them down the driveway. The rack is connected with two large bolts and I have to use a half inch ratchet wrench to connect/disconnect it. Takes a while and isn’t easy for me these days. So I’m leaving the rack on the car.

“A comment I got when I wrote about this online last night was that policy is a violation of the Federal ADA law. You have a medical reason for that bike rack.”

“Another comment was simple, What? Someone stole my bike?”

I wonder if this ‘push’ to harass citizens into removing anything ‘obscuring’ the license plate is related to the thousands of license plate readers installed on all State roads in the last few years. Right now all they do is track the passage of individual cars and calculate the speed of traffic and predict the time to get to exits further down the highway. But most of the citizens in Massachusetts are unaware that a law enabling the state to convert any state road into a toll road passed mostly unnoticed years ago. With license plate scanners there is no need to install toll booths and the bill for driving on a NEW state toll road can be mailed to your home, with a surcharge added for ‘processing’.

Another item on the ledger on the side of “Time to get out of Massachusetts”.

A police state that Himmler and Stalin could only dream of.