I had a friend that I worked with that stated “you’re not goinq to like this, but they were having a contest about who could write the most tickets.”
His son works for the local police department, and they were doing a sweep one night trying to catch people. Now in this case, it was a good catch, and in this circumstance, they were doing the right thing as they caught a bunch of people that didn’t even have a license. I wish that all tickets were written this way. However, the majority of ticket that are written is for the local budget, and recently, I was asked to chip in for this collection of revenue. In tough times, somebody has to pay into the kitty.
If you look at this picture, you can see that I am in my car, holding my ticket.
In my particular circumstance, I was driving to work through my neighborhood, and I came up to a four-way intersection. I stopped and I went through. After driving for almost a mile, a cop caught up to me. Red-lights were on, so I pulled over.
The officer got out of his car, and he came up to the passenger side of the car. When I was a young kid, I was either in a car (or I was driving a car), where I got pulled over, and I remember always having the cop go to the driver side.
He asked me if I knew why he pulled me over. I was sure-even though didn’t tell him this-that he thought that I was talking on my cell phone without a headset. However, I had on my Bluetooth headset, so I was in the clear. I told him, “No, I don’t.”
“You ran the stop sign,” he said.
I was incredulious.
“You mean that I just didn’t stop at all?” I said.
“No, you went through it at 5 MPH,” he answered.
“Okay, you mean that I didn’t come to a complete stop,” I restated.
Now, this was not an admission of guilt. I never said that I did or did not do it. However, 24 years ago, I had one police officer pull me over, and in this circumstance I told him “yes, I was going over the speed limit.” He said “Wow, somebody that tells the truth,” and he only gave me a warning. My philosophy is that denighing something doesn’t help when somebody else obviously believes you did something, but if you did something wrong, there is no sense in trying to tell the accuser that they are wrong. In fact, you always have the chance that a bunch of denial will start a war.
The psychology of this is rather interesting. Most of the testing says the following
• People accused are thought of as guilty.
• Even if a retraction happens later, most of the people that hear the first accusation will continue to believe the accusation even with the retraction
This basically says that if you are ever accused, you have a very deep hole to get out of.
Back to my story, he had asked me the last time that I had gotten a ticket, and I told him “20 years ago.” He asked what for, “Doing 65 in a 55.” It was in Washington State, where they really enforce speeding.
The cop handed me my ticket, and said “There’s worse things than getting a ticket,” as he could tell that I was flustered getting all my insurance and title information.
Still convinced that the cop was making this up because of my headset, I stopped and I took a picture of myself with the headset. However, the more I thought about this, the less sense it made. The cop stopped me 3/4 of a mile after the 4-way stop. This is a long way. He must have been a long way from the stop sign to take so long to get to me.
I talked to my kids about this, and I stated that I was unfairly accused. My problem is that I was on auto-pilot. I couldn’t remember exactly the stop. However, I knew that I wasn’t going 5 MPH through the stop sign, as this is not my habit.
“I’m surprised,” said my wife. “I think you normally stop. If you got pulled over for something, it wouldn’t be this.”
Now, she was hinting that speeding might be a vice that I could not deny. On this point, I will take the fifth.
My oldest daughter (she kids and states “Yes, I plan to be a high powered lawyer one day”) and my son (I told him he could be the expert witness) drove to the scene of the crime. There was only one place that he could have been because the other sight line were blocked. What was interesting is where one would needs to sit to see the stop line. You would need to be on the left side of the stop sign on the road that joins from the west. The road that I was on has a crown so if you are close to the intersection, one cannot see the stop line. This can be solved by driving back farther on the road that is on the west junction because this road slopes upward. The farther you get from the intersection the more of the stop line you can see.
Now it made sense. He must have been back on the hill watching the intersection. He was so far back that this is why it took him 3/4 to catch up with me.
My kids and I were sitting up on the hill watching the intersection. Car after car went through the intersection. Virtully all on them rolled through ithout a complete stop.
“Wow, he could have pulled over 80% of the cars,” said my boy. My daughter agreed.
I can’t believe that I went through at 5 MPH. My guess is that the cop lost track of cars and pulled me over. He was a long way away from the intersection.
Makes me wonder why all cop cars and tickets don’t have video with them. If you get a ticket, you get a video. This would make bad call, and fights of the call, a moot point.
I’ll let you draw the conclusion why video isn’t on every cop car.
I need to put a video camera on my car.
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