Its a terrible thing to think but I distinctly remember being grateful for the particulary large amount of light my skin happens to reflect that night.
If 'fine' means not hassled or delayed in any way, then it already didn't work out 'fine'. If you're willing to add on another hour or two waiting, perhaps the night, waiting at the police station as 'fine', then you're still good.
I'm not sure if you're concerned that you would have been beaten or harmed? I'm sure it's not out of the question, it never is, but so long as you remained peacable as you explained it to the officer, I'm guessing it wasn't likely.
Every district / cop / municipality is of course different though.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be inconvenient, but fear of inconvenience isn't necessarily a great reason to lay down your civil rights.
That said, I don't mean to imply any judgement, I'm just curious as to "what would have happened". I've been in a number of scenarios similar to this one and have never been beaten, attacked, or in court spending a great deal to defend myself. Not to say it couldn't easily have happened, every encounter is different.
I had a job where I walked to work .7 miles and people would ask me almost every day if I need a ride home.
Someone told me that the few remaining buses in the town should be eliminated because they only service the scum and losers of society.
I've had 4 cars attempt to hit me on my bicycle because they felt and yelled that I should be riding on the sidewalk.
Of course, here in Colorado, it's not uncommon at all to find people walking or biking even way out in the suburbs. So I suppose attitudes vary greatly by region.
Walk through an old city. Even in the victorian era, where families were packed in single rooms with no running water, they were just a 5-10 minute walk from stately townhouses of the well-to-do.
Now, we feel the need to separate ourselves with berms and fences.
Aside from things like 18th-century manor houses - a tiny proportion of any country's population, and absolutely stuffed with working-class servants - the lack of motorized transit meant that upper-class neighbourhoods were usually right in the centre of the city, within walking distance of the poorer areas. You really just have to look at NYC or London to see that. 19th century mansions are not that far from the historically poor areas. And even those people who did own manor houses usually had a townhouse. It wasn't until trains, subways, and automobiles arrived in the mid-20th century that commuting between the business centre and exclusive suburbs became possible.
After one country took this attitude to unfortunate extremes a couple of generations ago - we have tried to all get along a bit better.
http://mikejmoran.typepad.com/files/pedestrian-by-bradbury-1...