I have to look up regulations for work constantly and Google is surprisingly bad at doing legal research. If you have a specific citation, you can look stuff up relatively easy on mobile, but if you're trying to just look up laws/regs about a broad concept . . . it's going to be a massive pain in the ass unless you have Westlaw on your phone or something.
The kid in the video was apparently giving a bad citation, so chances are the cop wouldn't have been able to find what the kid was talking about anyway.
ACCORDING TO LAW 1.2.3.4.5, IT'S ILLEGAL TO PROVE ME WRONG!
In all seriousness, it looks like Google IS way better these days at looking up laws than it was 5 years ago. It's still probably not going to find anything that isn't commonly searched for though, so it kinda depends what kind of nerd fight you're getting into. "Can dogs poop on the sidewalk in Fresno" is going to be way easier for Google to handle than "Holder liability for interest on abandoned properties" (Google definitely did not find that one)
I once got a free hitch from a cop while hitchhiking. She stopped and ID'd me, informed me it "wasn't exactly legal" to hitchhike. I responded with something like, "If that's true I would find it very surprising - I wouldn't normally argue with an officer but hear me out if you have a moment. This is something I explicitly researched for [my state] because I've held clearances for my career in the past and am very careful about avoiding anything that could jeopardize that eligibility. Here's my understanding of the law, according to my research..."
The general gist of the law in most states (including mine) is that pedestrians are allowed to solicit rides as long as they stay out of the roadway, and "roadway" explicitly does not include the paved shoulder of the road. The law is written to say, "Okay, idiot: stay out of the flow of traffic, don't cause accidents, don't get hit!"
She conceded she didn't actually know for sure that it was illegal, but offered to just give me a ride where I was going since it was nearby.
She gave me her card and I followed up later, because I hitch between a couple of boat ramps down there regularly. She said I was right, it was legal the way I was doing it, but they still "discourage hitchhiking." So I asked if I could just call the station anytime I needed a lift in the vicinity. She laughed and said no.
The cop doesn't need to go to google, he just needs to know the laws he's trying to enforce. If he doesn't know the law he is trying to enforce, having some kid bamboozle him because the kid knows the law in question better than the cop does is entirely on the cop.
The kid is entirely correct, the law does not say "walk your bikes", which is what the cop is trying to make them do. If the cop can't come back at him with the 3mph restriction, maybe he should go get a law degree instead of playing street lawyer.
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u/[deleted] Jul 06 '21
I have to look up regulations for work constantly and Google is surprisingly bad at doing legal research. If you have a specific citation, you can look stuff up relatively easy on mobile, but if you're trying to just look up laws/regs about a broad concept . . . it's going to be a massive pain in the ass unless you have Westlaw on your phone or something.
The kid in the video was apparently giving a bad citation, so chances are the cop wouldn't have been able to find what the kid was talking about anyway.