The Life-Sized City Blog

It's something we read regularly in the Danish press. The police had out traffic fines in order to make their statistics look good and to reach certain goals set for each police district. The article, above, is from November, 2011, but there are articles about it every year. The photo in the article is police handing out fines to bicycle users in Copenhagen. Cyclists are often the easiest target. You park your police car or police bicycle ( illegally ) on a busy street and starting writing fines. It is often near the end of the year that police - if it looks like they're lagging behind in reaching the goal - will hit the streets to hand out of flurry of fines. The article highlights the irony that in many police districts they become so focused on traffic fines that they use less time on crime. Jørgen Jensen, a policeman from the western suburbs, is quoted in the article as saying, "Based on the bare figures, we go after certain areas in order to reach the targets...

This year I decided to ride my bicycle to christmas. The kids were already with their mum down at grandma's house in Roskilde, west of Copenhagen, so I just needed to show up on the 24th, which is christmas in Denmark. Lovely sunshine that day, so I hopped on my Velorbis, wearing my respectable christmas clothes of course, and carrying a bag of presents on the front rack. I had just downloaded the Endomondo app for the smartphone , too. I don't normally have a clue how far I ride around the city - and don't know anyone in Copenhagen who does. I know how long it takes to get to places, not how many kilometres. But this app sounded like fun so I tracked the journey to Roskilde and the journey back again . The Endomondo app has an option for 'Cycling - Transport' which is great, even though they still call everything you do a 'workout'. I figured that riding 30 kilometres and averaging 20 km/h would get me there in about an hour and a half. It takes an h...