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When riding the bike at night it is a matter of your own safety to use the bike's light. That's pretty obvious. It is also mandatory to do so by the traffic rules. Still, bicycle light like to break and thus many people ride their bikes without the light on. While personally I feel safer with my light on, many people don't seem to mind too much and in the well-lit streets of a town it probably isn't too much of a problem.
Yet, particularly in these boring days – with no violent student protest to be seen anywhere – the police are known to enjoy actually fining people when they are not having a light (or crossing red traffic lights or riding against one way streets in the middle of the night). While they might be legally empowered to do so, this is annoying and seems pretty pointless in many situations.
Now what would you do in the following situation: You ride your bike without the light on. A police car comes and overtakes you. They seem to be cool about it and don't stop you or anything. As they have wait at the next traffic lights, you catch up with them and stand right behind them. What should you do? Ride on, because you saw they don't care or get off your bike and push it onto the sidewalk.
The guy riding the bike in front of my chose the latter – after fumbling at the light for a while and not getting it to work (he didn't seem to be familiar with that bike). I thought that was pretty uncool.