People of Toronto can rest easy tonight knowing this wheelie-popping bicycle badass has finally been identified and politely ordered to appear in court for his hijinks and tomfoolery. But seriously, turns out you can be charged with careless driving on a bicycle.
On June 30, the Toronto Police reposted this Instagram video of a dude pedaling his way down Yonge Street sticking his front wheel in the air and his tongue out like a real rough street tough.
Toronto PD was clear to call out “evidence of careless driving... as well as several by-law offenses” in its solicitation of snitches.
That same day our biker buddy responded with another Instagram post of his own, from the account of what appears to represent his little bike shop, called, @mylittlebikeshop: “It’s kind of heartbreaking to see my little poppa wheelie clip being posted on the Toronto Police Instagram account (20k followers to see “my crime”). I say heartbreaking because my video is surrounded by surveillance videos of murders, stabbings, shootings, robberies and sexual assaults. I never crashed, I never hit anyone, and didn’t commit any sort of hit & run.”
I’m inclined to agree with our mean-mugging motor– sorry, bicyclist here, even though I would definitely be saying “what the fuck, man” if he pedaled as closely to my car as he’s doing in the clip. Doesn’t look like anything worth more than a shaken-fist to me. But the cops must have kept after it, because as of this week CBC is reporting that the rider has indeed been found and charged with “careless driving.”
I guess between the Instagram’d evidence of the transgression in question and subsequent Instagram’d confession here, Toronto PD has an airtight case to fine the biker and we can consider justice duly served.
As a side note, the bicycle business must be booming in Canada. That’s quite a car to get pulled over in. Ironic to imagine driving an AMG V8 and ending up going to court over bad bicycling. You know, as opposed to, like, doing windowpane-shattering burnouts or triple digit speeds.
This is, of course, the type of story that snowballs for its own sake. Some of you will come to the biker’s defense, others will say he needed to get popped, everyone will probably agree he was being a bit of an asshole in the video. But that means it’s your turn to rant now!
Update: I figured out what “Regrann” is!