Yesterday, I was biking down a hill on a small residential-access slip-road that runs parallel to a large, busy road. Coming to a very small intersection, I slowed down significantly, clearly checking to make sure that there was no cars coming from the right.
There weren't. I accelerated and continued on my merry way.
That is, until a policeman jumped out of police van directly in front of me and flagged me down.
He seemed to take a lot of pleasure in informing me that because I didn't come to a complete stop and put my foot on the ground that I have to pay a €10 fine. My protests that I clearly looked and there were no other vehicles anywhere nearby fell on deaf ears.
Since I refused to pay on the spot (after the €100 debacle I learned never to hand cash to a policeman), I had to wait for fifteen minutes as he ponderously rambled around his van, speaking to his two colleagues who stopped two other cyclists while I was there.
Found it incredibly difficult to resist the temptation to ask him why he has nothing better to do that stop cyclists on a tiny road where there is no traffic and no pedestrians.
When chatting to a student later, he told me that a friend of his was breathalised while cycling drunk, was brought to trial, fined €3000 and banned from driving for a year. She can still cycle whenever she wants though.
Now I know there are a few bloggers here who have, shall we say, no love lost for cyclists - from what I have seen on the islands that seems quite justified. 
Here, however, there is a relationship of mutual respect between road users, and although I cycle aggressively, I cycle safely, as do the majority of the other cyclists I share the road with on a daily basis.
This makes it even more incomprehensible that the police would park in the remote suburbs and send three officers specifically to catch cyclists on a downhill slope at a rarely-used intersection, and also punish someone who made the conscious decision not to drive a car while drunk.
Rant over.
