Your best speeding ticket story? - Page 2

LOL. I would have been half way to the train station that's for sure! I figured my best chance for leniancy was to admit I was wrong as quickly as possible. Turns out I was right. The cop helped reduce my ticket because I was so "helpful"

Funny thing that ticket was over 10 years ago and I remember exactly what that cop looked like.

This didn't happen to me, but to my boss. He told me the story just a couple weeks ago, when we were discussing those moments when you *know* that you're going to get in trouble for saying something, but once you think of it you're too amused by your own wit to refrain.

So he was roaring through Georgia, in a rented little sports car with New Jersey plates, with a friend of his on their way to Atlanta. They're passing through some rural hamlet whose name he's since forgotten, and he hears sirens behind him. He pulls over, and the cop that approaches his car, to hear him tell it, looks exactly like his Yankee stereotypes prep him to expect. Overweight, chewing either gum or tobacco, both his thumbs hooked in his belt, and walking very slowly. Once he reaches the car, after glancing at the plates, he drawls, "Boy, don't you know no one speeds through Georgia?"

This is where my boss says he saw his life flash before his eyes, but he simply could not help himself. He looked the officer straight in the eyes and said, "Well, Sherman sure did."

Fortunately, he got away with nothing more than a ticket.

I was coming home from work early, actually to go get jeans hemmed at a tailor before they closed. I was on this highway extension about 5 minutes from my house that I normally travel on. This extension turns into a turnpike which has more lights and which you typically slow your speed down to around 60-65. The extension I am not sure if it has a posted limit of 65 or 55 but the highway before it is 65. Anyways I am going my usual 75 or so, keeping with traffic. There is a slow car on the left and he pulls to the right and I speed up to pass him to get in the right lane. We pass by a bridge and bam the cop is right after the bridge hidden. I couldn't tell how fast I was going, didn't seem fast, but fast relative to the slow cars. The cop didn't move at first. Coming up a few thousand feet away is the turnpike where I do a legal U-Turn to go home. I then see the cop pull out from the bridge in my rearview mirror. He doesn't have his lights on so I continue. Then he zooms up super fast, had to be around 110+ mph to catch me that fast and he puts his lights on while literally a couple feet from my bumper and while swerving. I was going to pull to the right lane but this exact spot is notorious for fatalities while people are pulled over so I go to the left lane to pull into a parking lot where I know it is safe. When I take the turn he proceeds to box me in while another cop car comes from the other lane and boxes my other side as we pull to the parking lot. He screams for me to get out of the car and proceed to do the hands on the car, illegal weapons, drug search, etc etc. He was a young guy, pretty rude the whole time and I think my calmness he saw as an act of arrogance because he kept saying "what is your attitude". I don't know if he expected me to be yelling at him or whatnot. Anyways I think it was obvious I wasn't a criminal with my overcoat, briefcase, overall appearance, etc. I calmly explained to him that this spot was safer and empty and the other spot was dangerous, and the second cop also mentioned the numerous fatalities there. He let me off with improper lane change and evading instead of speeding which was 77mph he said. Ended up $170 instead of $350, regardless he got his quota and the city got my money. I understand that you should always pull to the right, (my father is a cop), but I used a judgement call in this situation which I thought was safer and still feel that I did the right thing. As for the speeding thing, I personally think it was silly, I actually think speeding tickets in general are silly up to a point. I can understand speeding in a certain situation like school zones, city streets, but on highways when the flow of traffic is regularly 80+ I think it is just laughable.

Here's a pair of stories from last year:

#1: I'm driving out to get some food; for whatever reason I decided to bring my dog along. It's a rainy day and I'm approaching a suburban stop light intersection. The light's yellow, so I speed up a little and barely make it. Of course the minute I get through I see a cop car with lights on come out of nowhere (or at least so it seemed since the rain was so heavy). The officer pulled me over, says I ran a red light, and writes me a ticket, while the whole time my dog is going crazy and barking and growling, with me having to keep wrestling it away from my window. To his credit, the cop was calm and ignored the dog, but the ticket was kinda BS since it was a yellow light judgement call, and nothing close to a blatant run. I signed up for traffic school since it was my first ticket, and I figure it was over with.

#2: Two weeks later I'm driving about a half hour out of town to check out the Last Call at the local outlet mall, which is in its own little suburban city. The usual freeway exit is closed, so I have to go to the next exit and do some roundabout on a rural highway I've never been to get back on track. All the cars are doing about 50, and there's no speed limit, so I stay at the same pace. Suddenly, a cop comes up behind me, pulls me over, and tells me I was going ~55 in a 30. I told him I wasn't from that part of town and didn't see any speed limit signs, and as he goes back to his car to write the info down, I start panicking like hell to myself since the proximity of incidents could compound any fees/insurance BS, but when the cop comes back he just hands me a warning slip and tells me to be on my way. That certainly made my day.

Have to say I'm in the middle on some of these cases. I've always thought speeding tickets were silly revenue generators and that the limits should be raised or abolished, but I can't feel too sorry for people who get busted doing 100+ in a standard ~60 mph freeway zone. I mean, I can understand doing that on an empty freeway in the early morning or so, but my observation is that most of the people who habitually go that fast tend to be the assholes who will run up and tailgate normal people going 75-85 with the flow of traffic and proceed to do obnoxious and dangerous swerving and cut-off's to get their way. I hope nobody here is "that guy," because I have to say that's the one time I actually enjoy seeing people get pulled over and fined out the ass.

I have a bunch of cop stories, and I recently got a speeding ticket in a very boring manner, but I'll tell the best one for now.

Back when I lived with my parents while going to school, I was coming home to Bellevue on a mostly empty I-90 from Seattle at about 1am, driving my stepdad's 1981 280E Euro version, which is pretty nondescript but built for high speed cruising. This jackass in a new Prelude came flying up on me and I got over so he could pass, and then caught up with him, passed him, etc. He was being an idiot about it (not signalling, etc), while I was just driving fast and carefully. So I kind of pushed him to go about 105 or so while we were getting to Mercer Island, where I know there are always State Patrol cars hiding to ticket people. I timed our little race so that he would pass me and feel cool and keep going fast just at the proper moment to get around that curve, and as soon as he passed me I stabbed the brakes down to 65. Sure enough, he wasn't watching me, flew around that corner, and as I approached the corner I could already see blue lights. He must have passed the cop going top speed because he didn't pull it over for another 1/8-1/4 mile from where the cops usually sit.

I know I'm evil, but once you "win", bring it back to a normal speed. There is no victory lap in a street race. Also, watch what other cars are doing. If you are heading toward a semi-blind corner and you see everyone hitting their brakes where there isn't a jam up ahead, there's a good chance of a cop sitting there. If that guy had been watching me suddenly bring my speed from 100 to 60, and reacted properly, he probably wouldn't have gotten pulled over.

Speaking of tickets and Georgia, I need to go to court in two weeks to fight my first-ever speeding ticket. (Athens Clarke County) What should I wear? I'm afraid that most of my suits would set me in a bad light, as they all fit me well, have a fair amount of visible handwork (pick stitching and the like), and are obviously not from any of the men's clothiers around here. (The men's stores around here only carry sack suit type dross.) Should I go thrifting for a fused, suit or make do with what I have? I figure I can wear a burgundy Charvet tie without attracting too much notice to it, especially if I do something I would not ordinarily do and wear it with a buttondown collar shirt. (A spread collar would make me look like a carpetbagger, I suspect.) I also assume I'll have to shine the black Ferragamo cap-toes that I haven't worn since Christmas mass, as brown shoes might look uppity when combined with my (slight) accent. The situation is, briefly, there was an SUV attempting to pass me on the right, from a turn lane, but that presumably saw the motorcycle cop he was shading me away from and slammed on his brakes, ending up behind me. I was speeding, but it was about 37-40 in a 30 and not the 46 at which I was allegedly clocked. Legally it is entirely a he-said he-said situation, with the other "he" being an officer of the law so I'm not expecting much beyond the waste of a day and maybe a slight reduction in my penalty.

Saucemaster, good story but probably apocryphal. I know a dozen guys (not even all from Jersey) who claim to have said the same thing to the same hick cop.

Lessee, Veteran's Day 2002 (before my first deployment but after commissioning), on my way to visit my grandmother down the shore. The cop didn't give a flying hoot about the military ID, but the judge sure did. 90 in a 65, $30 fine.

Tom

Totally possible, which is why I prefaced it by noting that I heard this from my boss. I figured it was amusing enough to post one way or the other. I'm still relatively new to the Northeast, so I haven't heard all the "this happened to my buddy" stories yet.

Speaking of flying through Georgia, I once read one on a BMW forum about a guy who took delivery of a new M5 and was having fun at 170MPH+ through Georgia when he got pulled over by a helicopter. I doubt they let him off with a warning...

My brother's friend once got pulled over for speeding and a middle aged cop walked over to her car. He asked for license and registration etc. etc. She wanted to get out of the ticket. So she asks,"If I show you my t!ts will you let me off?" Cop looks at her and says, "No... But you can still show me your t!ts." She didn't.

Speeding pisses me off like none other. My little sister was killed by a speeding cop going 85 in a 45, and I've hated anyone who speeds excessively ever since, especially when they're in nice cars and they're even more when they're headed to the mall.

Anyway my friend's dad was going about 80 on the 15, the rest of the traffic was going 90+ mph, and he got pulled over by a CHP officer. CHP officer says, "Do you know why I pulled you over?" and my friend's dad says "Yea, because I was the only one going slow enough for you to catch."

He got off with a warning.

Sorry to hear that, Brian. What happened to the cop?

He's a cop. Nothing, of course.

Sorry to hear about that Brian.

A.

My condolences as well.

My maternal grandfather was also killed in a traffic accident.

Jon.