One time I was upset about something, and really wasn't paying attention to how fast I was going. Cop asks me, "Do you realize how fast you were going?" I said, "No, to tell you the truth I wasn't paying attention, I was just following the car in front of me." Cop: "He was going even faster than you." Pause. "Well, I appreciate your honesty, and I'm not going to give you a ticket."

My best story:

I was driving my friend home from folkdancing, and I notice a cop following me down the block. As I turn the corner, he turned also, and turned on his flashers. At first, I thought he wanted to go past me, but then I realized he was pulling me over. I pulled over and stopped, and he calls out over his loudspeaker, "Get out of the car and walk toward me." My friend starts to get out of the car, too, and he tells her, "You stay in the car."
As I am walking toward his car, I realized, "My G-d, he's pulling me over for DUI!" Sure enough, when I got over to his driver side window, he said to me, "Well, I can see you're not drunk." I said, "I haven't even been drinking. I've been folkdancing." The folkdancing instructor thought this story was hilarious - drunk on folkdancing.

**Ela**

I was pulled over MY FIRST TIME DRIVING EVER.

EVER.

I reiterate: EVER.

Now, I had practiced a little in my driveway and the surrounding development...but that's not real practice.

My mom, sister, and friend all piled in the car with me to drive to my place of employment at the time (a local ice cream parlor) and i was going to drive there (4 miles, tops) and my mother was going to take the car back.

Things were not as cut-and-dry as i had hoped. I had to drive on an actual highway, which wasn't horrible, since it was a highway leading out of a really small town -- but still, pretty nerve-wracking.

It was a doomed car-ride from the beginning, because as I pulled onto the highway, I started to go for the farthest lane from me, the left lane, insanely thinking that that was the correct lane. IT WASN'T. I see a car come careening towards me -- my mother, sister and friend were all screaming hysterically. I immediately realized what i was doing and swerved into the right lane. I'm so stupid sometimes.

So I kind of got the feel for the road, and adjusted to the cars around me, and we get out of the small town and it's fields on either side, a church, some cows -- pretty unintimidating. And not really many cars. I'm not used to feeling my way around curves yet, though, so I swerve a little every now and then trying to stay in the lane. But i'm doing pretty well, and I'm feelin' pretty calm and collected.

That is, until I realize that I'm being followed by a police car. No lights, and he's a good distance behind, but still -- MY FIRST TIME OUT AND I'M BEING FOLLOWED BY A COP! So i get nervous, immediately, and am constantly checking in the rear-view mirror to make sure he hasn't turned his lights on. My mom kept telling me that he had no reason to, i was going under the speed limit...i was "doing fine"

But then -- you guessed it -- the lights went on. I was mortified!! What could I possibly have done? I pulled over nice and easy and made my friend hand me my purse in the backseat so I could get my learner's permit out. My hands were absolutely shaking.

The cop ambles up to the car and I roll down the window. He's maybe mid-20's. And, it seemed, on a power trip. My mom decides to take over from the passenger's seat, treating it all very nonchalantly: "She's just got her learner's permit, everthing's fine...she's just a little shaky."

The cop doesn't seem to want to hear any excuses -- he immediately says: "When a cop pulls you over, you are NOT to hide your hands." He's very ambiguous and i suddenly realize he's talking about me reaching for my purse. I stutter and stammer about how i was just getting out my learner's permit. he goes: "It doesn't matter. You could be reaching for a gun. I don't know." My mom actually LAUGHS at him (mom!) and says "What made you pull us over?"

The cop says: "All I see is four girls in a car, maybe joy riding, the driver checking the rear view mirror every five seconds, and swerving all over the road. You looked like you were drunk"

My mom laughs AGAIN and says "I'm not a 'girl.' And she's not drunk" And the cop obviously realizes by this point that he's got no leg to stand on, because he starts going on about how he couldn't "tell [she] wasn't a teenaged girl" and how I should "keep [my] hands in view when [I'm] pulled over." With one final warning about hiding my hands, he lets me go with no apology.

So basically I got pulled over and yelled at for something i did AFTER I got pulled over.

*sighs* my first time out...

I decided that, no matter what else happened, I was never going to abase myself for a cop that way again. I would treat them with respect, but I would maintain respect for myself as well.

I've been pulled over a few times since then, but never given another ticket. I am always polite and respectful, and apologetic if I've done something wrong, but I never grovel. This attitude of respecting them and respecting myself seems to be well-received by police officers.

Often, they are so relieved to see a normal citizen who is actually cooperative that they'll give you a stern warning and call it even.

I have received three citations for moving violations in my 28 years of driving:

1) Made a U-turn in downtown Westwood right in front of a cop. CA does not allow U-Turns unless the intersection is marked with permissive signage (which almost none are). But I was afraid of getting lost, so I did the turn to get back to the road I knew. Dumb.

2) I was squeezed out of the right hand lane on the NJ Turnpike and there was middle-lane construction. This meant I could not get over legally to get to my exit. Those of you from NJ no doubt know that taking the wrong exit off the turnpike is a MAJOR problem involving unfamiliar surface streets in some very dicey neighborhoods. So...I crossed through the cones and exited. Right in front of a cop...again.

3) I was speeding on I-10 outside of Tallahassee. The trooper actually apologized in a way. He said I was going so fast he couldn't let me slide. Oh well. My only excuse was that the rental car I was driving was so smooth and powerful compared to my usual car at the time that I had no idea how fast I was going. It could've been anything... Of course, I should've been monitoring my speed.

Actually, when I hired off-duty cops, they used to enjoy pulling me over to say hello, lights and sirens and all. They thought it was terribly funny.

Other than that, Miss Goody-Two Shoes has never been pulled over.

I'm disappointed in all of you.

So the cop flashes lights and Wes stops. The cop gets out and Wes says, "What?"

Cop: "You're speeding."

Wes: "I was not."

Cop: "Well, you've got a taillight out."

Wes: "I do not!"

My favourite getting-pulled-over story:

I was driving down Brighton Highway, chatting away to two very talkative friends who were with me, and RAN A RED! Just as I look up and notice that I am doing so, I also notice a cop car in the lane next to me. I'm screwed, I know it, and I don't want to be chased down the road, so I pull over the left to wait for him. After a moment, he leisurely pulls out and drives over to park behind me.

"So you realise you ran the red light, right?" he asks.
"Yes, I know. I'm really sorry about that. My friend was saying something to me and I didn't notice it had changed from green."
He pauses.
"So why didn't you keep going?"
I look at him in surprise. "But then you might think I did it on purpose!"
He pauses again.
"Okay, off you go, and be more careful."

Then he leans into the car and addresses my two friends. "And stop distracting her."

I was also once pulled over for speeding, and the cop was SO polite and pleasant about it that I rang the station to compliment him to his superior officer...in spite of the fact that I did receive the ticket! I was not at all surprised when the same guy won a service award a year or so later. I have no doubt he earned it.

When he came up to my window, he made some smart remark about how fast I had been going. Well, I was tired and I was pissed off by then, and I flat told him, "You scared the crap out of me. I thought you were a gang-banger or something." (Well, I didn't say "crap", but this is a family site after all.) He seemed to think that I should have just kept to the speed limit until they shot at me or something, if it had been gang members. Fortunately, he got a call and had to go, or I would have gotten a ticket. It would have been my first. So far, I still haven't gotten one; hope to keep it that way.

My first time to be pulled over was after leaving a friend's house one night. A few of us had gathered at this friend's house to watch videos on a Friday night while his family was out of town. His father just happened to be a local sherrif officer. Before midnight three of us piled into my car and pulled out to head home, and less than 2 blocks from his house a car appeared behind me, and started flashing me with a spotlight. Now, I was young -- just 17 -- and had never been pulled over. I had never seen how an unmarked vehicle pulls someone over. And at first he was just flashing me with a white-light spotlight. Then he flashed me with the red-light spotlight. The first had startled and confused me, as well as my passengers who were new to the area and had originated from large urban areas. One friend was afraid that a car spotlighting us was some local hoodlum up to no good, out to take advantage of a car full of young teen aged girls. At the red spot light, I stated to my passengers that I thought I was being pulled over, but of course there ensued some disccussion of the matter. I did pull over, after only a few seconds of hesitation. The officer had literally no reason for having pulled me over, either. After further scaring my friends and I by spending 15 mintutes grilling us and shining flashlights in our eyes and around the car interior, he let us go without ever giving us a single reason for having pulled us over in the first place. It wasn't until later that it finally hit me that they were keeping an eye on the house where we'd been visiting precisely because my friend's father was a sherrif, and that they were checking up on who had been visiting this man's son on a Friday night while he was out of town.

While I lived in SLC, my dad sometimes would be working in Richfield (not quite 2 hours south-ish) for a week or few. If my schedule allowed, I would drive down there to have dinner with him while he was there. One night we'd sat around the local diner quite late talking, and it was after midnight when I started back towards home. As I was pulling onto I-70, I got pulled over. I had literally not cleared the ramp yet, and in fact stopped near the top of the ramp getting onto the interstate. The cop, as most cops did to me in those days, spent a lot of time peeking around the inside of my vehicle looking for some reason to search it. (This seriously was a problem for me for many years. I did not have a lot of money, and was driving some old clunkers in those days: a '69 Dodge Dart, really really freakin' turquoise; a '70 VW Beetle, the same shade of blue as Alice's dress in the Disney Alice in Wonderland; a '74 Beetle, dull orange nearly indistinguishable from the rust rotting out the bottom half of the car. But getting pulled over continued even after I had the much more respectable grey Subaru wagon or the beige Nissan Sentra. VERY few of these incidents resulted in me getting a ticket. Most were for some extremely minor reasons that were clearly in the hope of being able to spot something in the car that would allow a search.) So here I am, at 12:something am on like a Thursday or something, sitting in my car while this cop grills me about where I've been, and why I'm on the road at this hour, all the while not even looking at me, but training his light all around the inside of my car, disappointed at finding nothing more incriminating than a lot of dog hair, and far more leashes and boxes of dog treats than is strictly normal. (This was in my pet-sitting days.) After 5 or 10 minutes of this, tired and knowing I had a long dull drive ahead of me and had to be up early in the morning, I asked why he had pulled me over. His reply? "You were rapidly approaching the speed limit." No joke. Rapidly approaching the speed limit. On an on-ramp. Imagine that. He did let me go without even a warning.

One of the funniest, though, was the day I moved to SLC. We left Cedar early on an August day. My parents were in my dad's truck, with half of my belongings. I was in my Dart, with the other half of my belongings. Less than 20 miles from home my dad's truck broke down. He futzed with it on the side of the road, and managed to get it moving, but it wouldn't go more than 30 or 40 miles an hour, and was backfiring about twice a minute. We stopped in Beaver, Filmore, Scipio, Nephi, and Provo for repair attempts. Did I mention it was August? It was HOT. Over 100. The Dart, of course, had no a/c. Hell, neither did the truck. We had to stop quite a few times on the side of the road, as well. I would sit in my car parked behind the truck, watching my dad working under the hood. He was pissed. He was beyond pissed. And you've got to understand that my dad does NOT lose his temper often. In fact, that was exactly the second time in my life I'd seen him actually angry. He was angry enough that he was swearing. A lot. Slamming around under the hood of that ghastly beast of a truck, cursing up a blue streak. Neither my mother in the passenger seat of the truck, nor myself in the Dart, dared to even so much as take out a book to read while we sat, sweating, on the side of the interstate. We each just sat, staring silently ahead, until he'd get it moving again and we continued, limping along and backfiring, lurching far below the speed limit, back up the road. We finally found our way into Salt Lake, and to my new apartment, arriving over ten hours after we'd left Cedar (normally a 3-1/2 hour drive). We parked the truck there, unloaded only enough of the Dart to get my parents into it, and wearily drove off to find their motel and some place to eat. I found their motel near down town. We checked them in, and walked to food, ate, then walked back. I said I'd see them the next morning, climbed back into the Dart, and turned it towards my new home.

Now, those of you who know SLC will understand why this is funny. The motel we found them was the one down on, is it State, or Main (?), and 500 South. This motel does not have a very good reputation. In fact, I clearly recall in later years seeing it mentioned in the local news more than once, the location of busted drug rings, prostitution rings, and murders. Additionally, 500 South is a one-way street. Actually, it's basically one huge on-ramp for I-15. Everyone who lives there knows this. 500 S. is one-way west-bound, 600 S. is one-way east-bound. But I didn't know ANY of this that evening. All I knew is that when I pulled up to the exit from the parking lot, I had to get south-bound on I think it's State. I looked left and right, saw that the cars coming from the left were stopped at a light, and that there were no cars between myself and what I took to be the far right-hand east-bound lane of the road I was facing. So I could dart across this road in a left hand turn, then make my right turn onto State. This is what I did. Imagine my surprise when, just seconds later, a cop who'd been at that west-bound light whipped around the corner with his lights on, pulling me over. It was at that precise moment that I realized that my license was in my wallet, which I'd tossed on top of the laundry basket full of books that had been in the seat next to me earlier, which I'd carried into my apartment to make room for my parents. All I had on me was the scrap of paper with directions to my apartment. So here's this very nice, young police officer. What he sees is a young girl, sweaty and more than slightly unkept looking, in a turquoise '69 Dart, leaving the parking lot of a known bad motel and wrecklessly cutting the wrong way on a one way street. (I will say that the distance I traveled the wrong way on this street was about 15 feet or so...I more or less had driven straight across it from the parking lot exit which was very near the corner of the lot.)

"May I see your license and registration please?"

"Here's my registration, but I'm afraid I don't have my license. I accidentally left it at my apartment."

"Do you know why I pulled you over."

The cop looks around my vehicle, seeing hampers with clothes, and what appears to be random junk, crammed into the back seat. (All the boxed up, well-packed items were in the back of the truck.)

"No, I'm sorry, I have no idea."

The officer gently snorted, understandably not believing me. "You traveled the wrong way on a one-way street."

"I did? Where?" I looked over my shoulder, and could now clearly see the large ONE-WAY arrow signs. "Oh. I'm sorry," I stammered, rapidly losing what was left of my composure.

"You didn't know that 500 South is a one-way street?"

"No, I didn't know."

"How long have you lived here? This is the on-ramp to I-15."

At this point I burst into tears. I really did. I was exhausted, and the day had been so stressful, and to be honest, my main fear was that my parents would see me from their motel room, having been pulled over, having broken the law. I was supposed to be an adult now, about to start college, moving out on my own for the first time, and less than 2 minutes after dropping off my parents I was going to get arrested for wreckless driving and not having my license. I fumbled for my scrap of paper as I stuttered and stammered and sniffled. "About 45 minutes."

The officer stared at me a minute, I can only assume trying to decide if I was being truthful or was feeding him the world's worst line. Was this girl really some young college kid, confused and tired, or was she a hooker, or a dealer, trying to work him? And having broken down, I just kept bawling, tripping over my own toungue trying to explain about parents, broken truck, 10 hours, hot, dad swearing and throwing wrenches, hamper, apartment.

Well, bless his heart, he sided on the side of believing me. "Ma'am, where is your apartment?" he asked, gently taking the scrap of damp paper from my hand. He did give me a ticket for not having my license on me, but carefully explained that it carried no points and there wouldn't even be a fee for that if I showed up at the court and proved that I had one. He explained about 5th and 6th South, and told me the best (least confusing, bless him) way to get back to my apartment. He even gently and tactfully said that if my parents were going to be in town very long that we should probably find them another motel to stay at, and gave me the name of one that was affordable and nearby. (He did this last without even scaring me about where I'd just abandoned my parents with no transportation, merely stating that it wasn't the "safest" place around.) He actually gave me a tissue, and made sure I was calmed down before sending me on my way with a smiling verbal warning not to be going the wrong way on streets any more.

It wasn't until a year or so later that I'd seen that motel in the news a few times and fully realized just what that poor officer must have been thinking when he first pulled me over. I'm lucky I didn't end up in jail on my first night on my own. *G*

~~~Lead

I was at work and taking a Nigerian guy out with me to show him some of my water-sampling sites. I'm going about 65 in a 55 on a country road, which most people do in the area. The guy and I are trying to find some thread of conversation to keep going and he starts talking about how he always speeds and has never gotten a ticket. He was telling me that he once told an officer that he was on his way to the hospital and got out of a ticket!

My natural insecurity at this point causes me to speed up a bit. There's no one else on the road and I'm cruising along chatting.

All the sudden I look up and passing me in the opposite direction is a cop. I blush bright red and immediately pull off to the side of the road knowing the cop isn't going to let this one slide. Sure enough, the cop spins around and pulls up behind me to give me a ticket. I was honest, apologetic and I figured that he was just going to give me a warning, especially since I pulled over before he even spun around. He tells me that he'll do me the favor of writing me a ticket for going 73 in a 55 instead of 75. I was so mortified!

Mostly, polite cooperation is the key. Policemen are human. Few are cruel or sadistic, and they don't stay in traffic long. Its too boring.

Here are my top 4 traffic ticket stories, mainly because I'm bored today.

1) Never speed in a working construction zone. Police there are protecting other peoples lives, so they do care if you go 5 miles over the speed limit or 25. (Yes, you must slow down to 55 on that highway you usually do 70 on.)

2)There are some towns that are speed traps. Anyone in St. Louis stay out of the south county village of St. George. They give you a speeding ticket for doing 35 in a 35 because the local sherriff thinks you were really doing 35.5, and the judge backs up the police. Its the towns major source of income.

3) Highway I55 is a major route for illegal drugs from Mexico to Chicago. One of the main ways it is transported is in the back of a U-Haul trailer. I know this because I was stopped by a rookie highway patrolman while hauling a U-Haul trailer on Hwy 55 between St. Louis and Chicago. He checked out the car and trailer, found nothing illegal, then proceded to tell us about the sneakier ways to transport drugs. He realized that we were friendly, cooperative people and we were not mad at him for disturbing our trip. So he decided to chat for a while. He was trying to explain why he had to stop us, and brag about how good of a job the police were doing. But what he told us came out entirely different. He told us where they had found it in other peoples cars, how to hide it from the drug sniffing dogs, and what the best routes were to run the drugs. If I had ever considered getting into the drug running business I would have taken notes.

4) My father owns the best story though. He was pulled over--by the Fire Department.

He had turned an old school bus into a homemade camper. It had all the conviences, from TV to Microwave Oven to Airconditioning and wall to wall carpeting. It was nice. On its test run he was headding out of the small town where he lives to the nearby highway. The local volunteer fire department was returning from a call with their new fire truck. They passed each other, and my dad's friends in the department waved. He waved back. Suddenly the firetruck spun around, the lights went on and they pulled up behind him. My dad pulled over to let them pass. They pulled over behind him.

My dad was confused.

Then the firemen jumped off the truck and proceeded to start hosing down the back of the bus. The emergency brake on the converted bus had stuck. A shower of sparks had followed my dad for a couple miles, finally setting the engine compartment (in the back of the bus) on fire. My father hadn't noticed.

He and his friends get together on Fridays to watch Anime (but they watch dubbed crap, so I don't participate), and it usually lasts until late into the night. He had worked late and then been out late the night before, and he also has a sleeping disorder (RBD), so he was intensely tired. He decided to pull over until he was fit to drive, so he did. A few people stopped by and asked if he was OK, because he was pulled over on a back street in the middle of the night, alone. He said he was fine, but I guess he sounded pretty spacey to them, because they called the cops on him.

quote:

---

I drove 66 the rest of the way through the state.

---

We used to drive from Ohio to Chicago every year with my mother to see our grandparents (when they still lived part-time in Chicago, that is). Anyway, we had a VW Hatchback. It was this horrible oatmeal color. Anyway, living right off the lake, and lake effect snow and all, there was a lot of salt down all the time which did incredible amounts of damage to cars. This particular car had a ton of damage done to the right front fender (I have no idea why that section was so badly damaged, but it rusted a hole right through it, and although there were other sections that were bad, this was the worst and the most easily replaceable). So, my dad went to a junkyard and got a replacement fender. Unfortunately, the only one they had was from what I can only describe as "tangerine" color hatchback.

So, not only do we have a horrible color (oatmeal) car, but the car has a tangerine fender. So, we (mom, brother, sister and me, ages about 4, 12 and 8, respectively for the kids) pile in the car and head out to grandma's! Somewhere along the way (Indiana or Illinois) we get pulled over. Mom is upset because she wasn't doing anything wrong and, quite frankly, wouldn't you be upset if you had to drive from slightly east of Cleveland to Chicago with three brats?

So, the cop comes up to the car and starts asking her where she's been, where she's going and then asks where she was on some specific past date. (Like "Where were you last Saturday night.) His partner, this whole time, has been writing down the license plate and then looking at the front end of the car. After a while, the cop talking to my mother goes back to his car (presumably to run a check on the driver's license and car plates) and the partner plants himself in front of the car. After about a half an hour, the cop comes walking back up to the car, passes the window and talks to his partner for a few more minutes.

Finally, he comes back to the window, hands my mom back her license and explains that a few days ago, an oatmeal colored VW hatchback with an orange fender had been involved in a fatal hit and run!!

The horrifying thing wasn't that he thought that my mother could have been the driver. The really shocking thing was the thought that there two oatmeal colored VW hatchbacks with orange fenders!!!

quote:

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The lesson here is that girls can get out of tickets MUCH more easily than guys can.

---

That's cause we're so much better looking than you guys, Tom.

I listen to my tape of the 2001 soundtrack and play it as cool as possible but I get tagged anyway. My first ticket, and it was deeply irritating to realize that I hadn't done anything outrageous to get it. I'd just been speeding on a quiet Mountain Highway with UFO's being more frequent concerns than other cars, and been caught in the act. Just seemed like a real weak way to get it.

No less than two weeks later when making another run, this time to the bay area, I got tagged for speeding when I got boxed in by two or three semi-s and decided to speed around them on an overpass (there was a small opening if I slowed down and whipped around to the left of them). Stupidly forgot that overpasses usually come with merging connectors, and sure enough a cop was coming on the free way just as I was accellerating 10mph to 75 to jet around three semi's via the fastlane (switching across three lanes and speeding up by 10mph apparently is attention getting ). Didn't get out of that one either. He was very nice about it, but I knew I had no excuse and so did he. Major bummer.

Didn't get another ticket for three years until August of 2001. Then one thursday evening I drove home after a tough day teaching only to realize I needed green onions and garlic which I had forgotten to purchase. The simpsons was about to be on in a few minutes and I needed the humor so I raced to my car. Hopped in, and raced the two blocks to the grocery store. The problem? I did a Texas roller and a cop nailed me for it. Yet another weak way to get a ticket, and this time I got it when I was driving to a grocery store litterally three blocks from my house. A 10 minute walk!! God did I feel stupid. Such an idiotic way to get a ticket, but again, I had no excuse. He was very nice too, and I ended up only having to pay a minimum fine (he decided to get me for not wearing a seat belt instead of for the Texas roller)but I still look back at that as the penultimately stupid way to pick up a ticket.

All that being said, I can't imagine being Leonide. That must have been absolutely awful. Must have really screwed with your confidence. You definitely have my sympathies. Then again, the day I got my license, I was driving home with my mom and hit a four way intersection, lanes going north and south had two lanes apiece, lanes going east and west had one lane apiece. So I wait until its my turn from the left side of the Northbound lane to turn left and head west a half mile to our house. Sure enough its my turn, I slowly pull out and begin making the turn when this car jets into the intersection from the south bound lane, without really analyzing it, I whipped the steering wheel right to avoid it, pumped the gas so the turn would come be fast and sharp and miss hitting the car that went through the stop sign without even slowing down by half a foot at most, then right after whipping the wheel full to the right, I whip it again full left to sweep my car into an arc so I can avoid crashing into the car stopped in the southbound lane. The turning radius of the car I was driving was terrific, and the whip right, whip left manuever saves me from a collision with the non-stopper, and a collision with the one who did stop by about a foot apiece, I head home with mom chest heaving up and down and looking at me like I drive like 007.

To this day I have no idea why I decided such an unorthodox manuever, I suppose it was because I figured a crash was inevitable if I used the breaks alone, and I didn't want that in my first day with the car, so I tried something radical, but I don't know how I thought that could work. Maybe from playing that video game Off Road back in the eighties when I was a kid. Whatever the reason the maneuver prevented an accident but scared the bejesus out of my mom, and the poor car heading southbound that had actually stopped at the stop sign. I can only imagine what they thought as they saw a car whip to the left (from their vantage point) and acclerate, than whip right, heading towards them with a spurt of great speed before turning just in time and heading west.

The first was for rolling through a stop sign in the middle of a deserted parking lot. It was especially bad because I was following a friend who jetted through the stop sign and because I was going slower and was the one in the rear I got pulled over.

The second was for going 76 in a 65 zone on Highway 101 in Calabasas, California. Anyone not familiar with that region should know that the average motorist drives about 85 there, and on that day it was no different. I would have been better able to appreciate the ticket if it had been for driving too slow or obstructing traffic or some such, but it was a speeding ticket and I wasn't speeding nearly as much as a bunch of others.

The third was the really frustrating one, although it wasn't a moving violation so at least I didn't have to go to traffic school. I had recently gotten a new car which happened to have tint on the front windows, but the dealer assured me that it was within the legal limits. I'm leaving work one day and a block after I leave the parking lot there's a driver's license checkpoint. Not a sobriety checkpoint. A driver's license checkpoint. I was confused because I'd never heard of such a thing, but I figured I was fine because I had my license and registration. When I rolled up to the checkpoint the officer yelled at me for having tint on my windows in such an accusatory way that you would have thought he caught me smoking crack with his mother. What really gets me is that the purpose of a driver's license checkpoint, unlike a sobriety checkpoint, can't be safety, but can really only be to give out tickets. And not 2 blocks away was a street where everyone drives about 15 over the limit every day.

yep, really stinks. I was pretty close to the 65/55 change so he may have read it different but the HWP around that section in the Cali/nevada border tend to be a bit too cowboyish at times. But considering all the b.s. people pull around there I can understand it.

One word of advice, never ever speed around Minden. Good lord, they have a four lane situation in the middle of town, where anyone in the bay area would be driving a minimum of 35-40, but they ticketed anyone and everyone that went an inch over thirty on that four laner for the first five years my parents lived there. On my brothers first visit to the new family home there he immediately got pulled over. He got out of it because my mother explained that he was from the bay area and had never been in town and assumed the limit in a four laner was 35. The cop was nice about it and let him out of it, but since that day five years ago I've seen inumerable guys get nailed for going 5 mph over the absurd limit. I finally found a way out of it, during visits a year later when I found this country rode that had a forty limit, but was a little bit of a long cut. The scenery and ability to drive 45 instead of thirty made the long cut worthwhile, plus its perfectly designed to avoid getting tagged by cops. You can see for miles in both directions, so you have plenty of warning before a cop is coming up on you from the east or the west. So now I always take that route, and happily avoid the annoyance of puttering around a retirement community with leadfoots terrified of yellow lights and cops ready to ticket anyone going above thirty (and sometimes even below thirty, the limit is 25) on a four laner.

Now, I learned to drive when I was 9. Where I'm from, you drive when you can reach the pedals. There are a lot of long, empty country roads in Georgia and very few of us can resist the temptation to tear up the road. I've always been kind of a speed demon, but never reckless.

So, I was doing about 80 in a 55 mph zone and I get pulled over. I knew to put my hands on the wheel. The officer asks for my license and registration and Jen was having a hard time finding it in the huge packet of papers that her parents put in the glove department for us. We're all waiting as patiently as we can when she burst into tears. I mean she really started bawling. Mark and I and the officer just stared at her for a minute in stunned silence. Then my survival instincts kicked in.

Kira (to officer w/ charming smile): She's just upset b/c I'm moving back to Georgia.

Kira (to Jen in whisper): Shut up!

Mark (also whispering to Jen): Seriously, shut up, he's going to arrest Kira.

Officer: Would you mind stepping out of the car, miss?

So I got out of the car, silently cursing Jen. It was really windy, so the officer asked if I would mind sitting in his car while he called in the license to make sure the car wasn't stolen. I, of course, agreed. Once in the car, I notice that the officer is pretty young and very cute. We're waiting for the station to call him back and he ever so casually says to me, "Your friend is pretty upset. You wouldn't happen to have any drugs in the car, would you? Because we would just confiscate them and let you go on your way with a small fine."

Now, I didn't have any drugs in the car and I'm not an idiot. I told him that of course we do not use drugs and there are none in the car. To which he replied, "That's cool. You wouldn't happen to have any weapons in the car? Because there's not even a fine for those." Luckily, all of my competition rifles were still in NYC and my other gun was in GA, so I was able to assure him that there were no weapons in the car.

I guess we must have looked pretty seedy to him b/c he asked me if he could search the car! Maybe it was the shoes. I said that he could and it seemed to satisfy him. I couldn't believe he thought I would buy his line about fines and confiscation for drugs and weapons. Anyway, he gave me the smallest ticket possible (only 10 miles over), which was really nice of him.

Anyway.

"Why do you always get to drive? Is it because you're the guy? Because you're the macho man?"

"No. I was just never sure your little feet could reach the pedals."

Let me tell you. Being male sucks.

*quickly whips out lisence and points it at him*

"Here's my lisence!"

quote:

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"Why do you always get to drive? Is it because you're the guy? Because you're the macho man?"

"No. I was just never sure your little feet could reach the pedals."

I know who can place that quotation immediately.

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Sure, fine, whatever.