So there you are, in your car on your to somewhere. The open road lies before you and you are cruising along at a comfortable 75 mph in a 60 mph zone. You aren’t worried. There are rules and then there are the “real” rules. Everyone speeds. The general rule of thumb is about 15 miles over the limit. Push it more than that, and someone might decide to ticket you, especially if it’s toward the end of the month and it’s time to fill up those books and hand them in.
You can usually get away with whatever you are doing — as long as everyone else in the lane is doing pretty much the same thing.
On this particular day, a car shot past me at what must have been supersonic speeds and cut me off and sped onward. It’s scary getting cut off at those speeds. It takes at least seven car lengths to nearly stop. To fully stop, add at least one more.
I breathe. I continue driving. There’s always some dickhead on the road who has something to prove.
About two, maybe three miles down the road, I see this same jackass pulled over by cops. He isn’t pulled over by one cop or even two. He sped right into a troop of police officers on their way to an event of some kind … and they ALL pulled him over. There are cop cars everywhere. Lights are spinning, sirens are wailing. This guy is doomed.
Everyone was writing a ticket. Dozens of cops. ALL writing tickets for different things. Dangerous driving. Speeding. Crossing lanes without a directional. Cutting off the police chief.
Whatever they could think of, he was getting a ticket for it. I figured it would be thousands of dollars before he found his way out of the storm into which he had driven.
He deserved it. I felt proud, yet somehow humble.
I looked at the police. I grinned at them. I popped up my thumb — and the cops popped up theirs. Karma.
Sometimes, the magic works.
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Categories: #Photography, highways, justice, Law, Traffic
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Cool!, so they finally pulled some dumb ass over who was actually doing something dangerous and not just keeping up with traffic flow. I love it when the law works like it’s supposed to.
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Ben, One 3 o’clock in the morning, I was burning rubber — 80 mph on a main drag, void of other traffic. Loud siren, I’m pulled over. Officer at car door looks at me and smiles. “So, you going to a fire?” I gave it the Jack Benny pause and replied, “Yes, Officer. It’s a suspicious general alarm blaze with multiple fatalities. I have a live shot deadline.”
Cop, “Sweet. Thought I made you. Gear up, Brother..I’ll give you an escort”. So damn cool. I arrived at the inferno in style. The other stations rolled video on me, thinking I was a special investigator arriving. Way cool.
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Position in life does have its advantages after all?….
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Rank hath its privilege 🙂
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perfect, perfect. Every now and then it evens out.
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Not often enough, but the few times it does, it feel SO good.
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I love it! I would have laughed so hard, I probably would have driven right off the side of the road.
I once had a NYS trooper as a client, and I asked him at what speed they start pulling people over. After looking at me a little strangely (I assured him I was merely asking for a friend), he said generally 12 mph over the speed limit is when they start paying attention, unless, of course, it’s bad weather or some other reason for slower traffic.
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It was a good moment, that RARE moment when Karma came through. What was so particularly amusing was that he had run into a literal TROOP of officers, all armed with books of tickets. And considering his driving, he deserved rather more than most.
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Now there’s divine justice in action.
Leslie
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But so rarely do you get to see it!
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I’ve seen it Marilyn and it’s never pretty…
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I fully believe in karma. I’ve seen it work in my life and in others’ lives. I always stop and think whenever I’m tempted to do something nasty to someone else (swearing is exempted. I hold with that). And my response to myself is “Don’t poop in the pond if you don’t want to drink shitty water.” I think your tale is hilarious and what a comeuppance for that twerp. Think he’ll learn from it?
In Utah it’s 5 miles over the speed limit or you’ll likely see John Law flashing his lights at you. And I’ve met many relations of your bad driver on I-15 here. Doing speeds that are insane. NOBODY has to get somewhere that badly, if they DO, they’d best call emergency services and get an escort.
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I’m guessing they took away his license for at least a week or two regardless and hopefully, that was a meaningful lesson. He was driving fast AND dangerously, so it was karma, but it was earned. He wasn’t just any old driver slipping past the speed limit. He was dangerous. I was lucky I didn’t hit him. At that speed, it would have been bye-bye to both of us.
Anyway, people who drive that fast aren’t in a hurry. They are out to prove how tough they are. The problem isn’t that they kill themselves. It’s that they cause accidents and other people die for their stupidity.
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I worked with a woman whose husband always drove as close to 100 mph as he could get because “he liked the speed feel”. He caused at least two accidents, and hurt some folks. They finally grabbed his license and he still kept driving. I’ve lost touch with her, but I rather hope he was killed in one of his speeding accidents, and that nobody else was hurt. That’s simply insane (IMHO) and I like speeding too, but only if nobody else is around (and that isn’t always out of the reach of John Law…there’s Arial surveillance now) One can outrun the cop car, one cannot out run the ‘copter nor the mikes in the cop cars. They often tip off their co-workers down the line if they can’t stop the speed freak.
This year I had someone tell me that I-15 from the Idaho border to St. George is considered the “Mormon 500” during spring and winter breaks because all the students going to BYU Idaho who want to spend some time in the sun will get on the road and everyone else best be buckled in. Those kids are foolish and they drive insanely….
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The “grace period” may be 15 there, but it’s closer to 10 where I live. The highway max is 65 in Illinois and 70 in Missouri, and if you’re going over 75 anywhere around here, you’re just asking to get pulled over. My old car’s engine would have come apart at the seams at those speeds, and even in my new one I don’t feel comfortable going over 70. I just don’t get the thrill of speeding, and I’m never in THAT big of a hurry to get anywhere…
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Here in NH it’s around 10, and a lot of that has to do with what you’re doing with that extra speed. I got stopped on the NY state thruway a few years back, doing the same speed as the box truck ahead of me. It felt like a set up, since I was from out of state, female, and there was no way I would be coming back to question a speeding ticket (295 dollars, maam) from NH. Dear god in heaven. I suspect he stopped me because he could catch me, too.
It was humiliating.
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Squirrel, I plead guilty to “heavy foot on the metal” for many years. We can no longer afford such behavior. Feels very weird to drive within the limits.
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You don’t see a cop so much here, they have cameras taking photos of you and your number plate. Now and again they attack in gangs and set up radar traps. Just along the road they give you a beckoning sign for a meet and greet
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They use cameras in town mostly, but on the highways, they like cruising. Plus, there are both highway (state) police AND local police. They all want to make a few bucks giving out tickets. I think a lot of small towns make their budgets giving out tickets.
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Slmret — one of our local TV stations has just done an investigative report on State Cops who fradulently filed pay sheets for”no show” assignments — predominantly on the Mass. Turnpike. These are the Troopers who ruled “speed traps” and bagged many drivers on a regular basis. It’s quite a scandal. Many Cops have been indicted, some resigned without compensation. The speed traps are gone — or are they?
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For once they were there when you needed them! Thumbs up!!!
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And after he cut me off at what had to be an easy hundred miles an hour — I wasn’t driving slowly either — it was SO satisfying 😀
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I still remember those Montreal speedsters who glared at us. We were doing 70 plus as they sped by.
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They didn’t have the guy in cuffs?
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I didn’t see that closely. I was, after all, driving. But damn, it made me so HAPPY. He was exactly the kind of guy you always says “Where’s a cop when you need one?” and by golly, there were dozens of cops! Oh joyful moment!
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