One-Armed Cyclist Fined For Having Just One Handbrake

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A German bicyclist with one arm modified his bike to remove the brake he can’t operate from the handlebar and replace it with one for his foot.

But when Bogdan Ionescu was riding through Cologne, he was stopped by a cop who wouldn’t cut him a break.

“Your bike is unsafe, you have no brake on the right of your handlebar,” Ionescu quoted the officer as saying, according to The Local.

“I know,” he said. “But I have one on the left and I have a back pedal brake so that I can stop the back wheel.”

The cop wasn’t buying it and Ionescu was fined about $34. As it turns out, however, the bike is perfectly legal — and the police department was forced to issue a refund, the Independent reports.

The story doesn’t end there. The police tried to refund just $7, claiming his bike had a broken light. When that turned out to be equally fictitious, the cops finally offered him the rest of his money back.

“We only hope something like this never happens again,” the department said according to the Daily Edge. In addition, Cologne police chief Wolfgang Albers plans to personally apologize to Ionescu.

“It’s great news, I’m really happy,” Ionescu told the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper.