Germany - esk8 apprehension

I was going like 5 km/h with my dog on my side :slight_smile:

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Thing is, you never know who will handle the case once you get caught. So the question rather is how to adapt or which plan to execute once you are faced with this mess and therefore whether the suggestions made for example by @Chricious should be applied or not?

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wow… that is really weird… Cops that enforce the LAW in such a way… man…

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If I am not mistaken this rather is the time that your lawyer will be given insight into the file, and you have 4 weeks to respond to the case.

Out of curiousity: Are you willing to go a long road or do you prefer to be done with it quickly?

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Talking about the speed definitely. Not handing out the board on the other side feels like could cause problems too because you are not actively “helping” in that matter. Maybe the judge judges depending on how cooperative you were. So always carry a metr and limit the speed once caught :smiley:

It is definitely a difficult call and perhaps there is no such thing as a most advantageous response for us riders, since the number of unknown parameters is large. I am no lawyer so I don’t know. However, it would be very good to know how to deal with such a situation before it happens, since it will probably happen to most of us in Germany sooner or later (may be eletricempire has some advice?). I am actually quite surprised how many people on this forum have already faced and reported this situation on this forum!

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I would like to have my board back and not being ruined with a heavy fine. If that means a long road, I guess I have no other choice.

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Do you know or did they actually tell you what happens if you get caught for a second time? Will the fine be higher? Will the board definitely be taken away from you?

Cool. I am always wondering how far I would go if I get caught and whether it will be worth it?

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That was exactly my thinking, I was afraid of more severe consequences and tried to cooperate. But I guess a lawyer would advise in general not to accept anything, I learned…

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both is possible. Your first time gets noted as a “mistake” you did. The second time can already be the full price of up to 2.700€ (90 “tagessätze” daily rates each 30€)

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Thats what i was thinking too. They probably get the board anyway if they get some sort of paper, so why not cooperate and make it less complicated.

But what if they don’t? May be you do not have to give them your board? May be you do not have to cooperate?

I understand your reasoning, of course, but I don’t know whether it is reasonable and/or required by law? @pmg May be you could ask that your lawyer too?

yeah i have no clue what the requirements for them are to get my board if i don’t cooperate. Maybe its easily possible for them, maybe they don’t need to. I think that if you don’t cooperate and they don’t get your board, the chance of getting a fine instantly instead of a warning is higher. Just a thought.

Asking a lawyer is a good idea

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A lawyer would always advise you to disagree with the police as their tactic is mostly to convince you to give up things by yourself even if you have no legal obligation to do so.
They make it seem sometime that something is a legal fact while in reality you don’t have to do certain things.

If they really want to take my board I would state “I don’t agree to you having my board” and so that they will have to take it from me - which in a court later would be better for you if they did something that was not lawful.

But in any way it’s hard because it’s still pretty much a grey zone - also in Austria I never feel comfortable on streets.

I had the police see me with the board two times and went into “Normal Longboarder Mode” and just pushed it like a normal longboard and hid the remote.

Also like mentioned earlier I setup a Metr App Profile for both boards to go slower than 23 km/h in case they will test them so that it could be argued that it is slower than an E-Bike…

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To work with profiles is a good idea, I think. One “legal/police profile” (you may wanna name that differently though) should be set to 6 km/h maximum. A workflow that allows to switch to this profile with a single klick on the remote should be implemented.

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Yeah, it could have avoided this whole situation for me. I added a 5 km/h profile afterwards to the VESC Tool and named it “default” :slight_smile:

That would be just brilliant.

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I am not sure if such a profile could have avoided your whole situation, since they may still have stopped you - judging from the official report they appear to work quite thoroughly; or they were simply bored or interested or both?

However, with such a profile in place with a flick of a button you could have just told them: “look that personal electric vehicle is legal, since it is confined to maximum speed of 6 km/h. Wanna try?”

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They would have stopped me for sure but would probably let me go if I assertively said the speed was under 6 km/h and could demonstrate it to them.

At the time I though it was like the ebikes and under 25 km/h was ok.

The button would be definitely great but had I been prepared, I had the time to switch profiles with my smartphone.

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Yes, that would be my hope too. However, like @xsynatic mentioned in the end it all boils down with whom you are dealing with and your own behaviour, of course. There are stories out there on boards getting confiscated plus large fines and others when police officers instead went for a ride themselves and congratulated riders for such a fantastic build! No easy solution here. I just hope things will become legal one day in Germany too. However, this may be a very distant future and one that will perhaps never emerge without riders taking a stand and rising up for their cause.

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