Weird tickets and lessons learned.

** Start Third Ticket
I was on a trip with my father around Ticonderoga, NY. I am stuck behind an old fart driving a beat up Cavalier. I pass the car quickly and end up about 10mph over before I slow down. I make a left at an intersection and BOOM.

Cop lights me up from behind. Gets out. Asks how fast I was going. Thinking he just now got me at the intersection I respond with "about 35 maybe" since the new road I was on was congested and I really was going that slow.

He yells at me and insists that I am lying. I tell him I don't know where he clocked me at and asked him to show me on my GPS. He gets more pissed and yells, "The truth would have set you free Lloyd!!!" He storms back and writes me for 28mph or so over the limit. I thought the unposted speed was 45 when it was actually 35 where I was.

He continues to act like an asshole and call me a liar. I would have told him the truth if he told me where he clocked me. It turns out he clocked my while he was in motion towards me on the other side of the road with dual radar units. He got me the moment after I completed the pass. He had to slow down and pull a U-turn and force all the road users to the side to catch up with me.

Hilariously enough one of the road users he had to pass to get to me was my dad.

So, I'm pretty pissed. I know he cannot detain me since the citation is complete. I walk over to his passenger window and tell him "Quite respectfully sir I think you are an asshole."

I hired a lawyer for 200 bucks and had the ticket turned into a parking violation. Best of all I didn't have to drive back to NY or even appear in court.

Yeah yeah not all cops are asshole and I understand they have stresses and pressures they deal with that civvies don't. But this guy really was an asshole with or without the badge.
** End Third Ticket.

When I was a young, stupid kid, I used to race an FZ600 at Willow Springs on the weekends. One weekend I won a race and we had a bit of party after. I didn't want to ride back to San Diego drunk, I stayed the night.


Since I had to be at work at 7am the next morning, I woke up at 3 am and hit the road. I was flying down the 15 at WFO in top gear when I passed a CHP sitting on the side of the road. He immediately hit his lights and came after me and, since my dad was a CHP officer too, I pulled over.


I handed the officer my license which had my dad's card stapled to it. (Back then our licenses were literally printed on photo paper.) He looked at the card and said, "Oh, you're [Dad's] son? Good, let's call him." :eek1 He gets on the radio and, through dispatch, calls my dad at home, waking him up at 4:30am just after he'd finished a Graveyard shift. The officer, talked to him for a second, got a big ol' smile and said, "Your dad said to go to his house. Now. Do NOT go to your apartment. Do NOT go to work. Go directly to his house." (My dad told him he was going to beat my ass.)


I got to my dad's scared as hell, wondering what he was going to do to me. When I was a little kid, the WORST, absolute worst thing my brother and I could do was wake my dad up when he was on graveyards. He had some very "creative" punishments.


He came out, thanked me for pulling over for the officer instead of running and told me never to speed at 4:30am again because he needed his sleep. :ddog Then he went back inside and went to sleep.

Back in '75 I returned from SE Asia and bought a new 750 Honda. Went up to Oregon to visit the folks and then headed to Georgia ... Moody AFB for my next duty rotation. On a divided 4 lane of north Texas, cruising an easy 95 or so and passed a wreck in the divide with a State patrol car parked by it. Well, I did slow down but he was all over me but I think he was just scarred about scraping me off the pavement. He let me go without a ticket, god bless him, but cruising through a small town in Georgia I heard a siren but could not see what it was coming from. So I pulled over to the side of the road, took off my helmet and sat on the bike with the kickstand down listening to the siren wail. A cop car pulled to a fast stop beside me with lights and siren going. His story was that someone had called him because I was speeding and that was good enough for the local judge.
What did I learn? Don't stop until you see what is making all that noise.

Another time, Fairfield Ca, I stopped at a sign and continued on without putting my foot down. Took the ticket to court and the judge asked if I had counted to three! I said no but I did come to a stop. He said guilty as charged.
guilty by accusation.

Yeah, I don't get that. I have also been pulled over for coming to a complete stop, but not putting a foot down. If you're stopped you're stopped, right? I only got a warning, and he said at the minimum he wanted to see a toe touch pavement while stopped.

In my area, we have lots of illegal migrant workers who are very careful not to get pulled over. They always stay stopped for approximately a count of three (in cars). I guess they knew something I didn't.

Do not use the freshly put of traffic cones as a slalom course. When the officer stopped me and asked me what in the hell did I think I doing, I replied, practicing emergency avoidance maneuvers for the next time someone pulls out in front of me. On a curve. He looked at my odo, and saw about 70K miles. Then he smiled and said no wrecks on your record. Said, think you can not practice on my street. I said sure. I was free to go.

Rod

Got pulled over a few years ago towing 2 bikes on a trailer back from a race in south carolina. Both bikes were registered and insured but one didn't have the new reg sticker on it....both were on a trailer. Tail lights had shorted out on the trailer and we couldn't fix. Gave us a warning for the tail lights, a ticket for the trailer reg which had just expired a day or two prior and then warned us that one of the bikes was out of registration

Its also very difficult to outrun the radio in the cop car behind you.

That sounds like a victory, but it's really an excellent illustration of how broken our "justice" system really is.

Got one in the truck the other day.

In my town we have 'spring clean-up'. Also referred to as 'hooptie christmas'. Most of the stuff people throw away is junk, but occasionally you can grab something good. Last year I got a self propelled electric start push mower a guy was throwing away, turned out the battery was dead. My bedroom TV came from there a few years ago, I once got a neon Miller Lite sign, and some other stuff not worth mentioning.

I was going to a friend's house in West Virginia, and we decided to drive a round a bit to see what people were throwing away. We stopped at one point to, he was picking up a computer sitting on the side of the road, and the cop nailed us. Apparantly that is illegal in WV.

$170 ticket, but I got a singer sewing machine that works perfectly, there was a piece of thread stuck in it, 2 garden hoses that are good, a battery powered john deere Gator that I put a car battery on and works great, and a Coleman cooler with a squeaky lid.

He got 2 computer towers, one working monitor, a small home CD player/radio that works but a kid colored on it, and some little stuff.

You were just doing a public service: Picking up litter. I'd fight that.

I did some checking, turns out they mentioned pretty regularly that it was illegal. Every local news station ran a story on it, it was in the paper, came up on google search, etc.

He had me dead to rights anyways. We were picking up trash at the time he stopped us. The fine for 'scavenging', as they called it, is $500, which was also advertised. He gave me a ticket for a cracked windshield, which was $170.

IMO it's a pretty dumb law. There are a lot of people that throw away good items, sometime needing very little repair and occasionally they are ready to use.

A friend's dad used to be a TV repair guy, he has TV's all over his house from trash pickup day. There's one in every room, all connected to each other, it's pretty sweet. He'll usually go out and pick up a pile of them, then fix what he can cheaply and scrap the rest. He has a huge flatscreen in his basement, like 50"+ huge, that he fixed with a soldier gun and a $2 resistor from radio shack.

i've got a good one.
About a year ago, i was riding to work, stuck in traffic. Sitting in the middle of a backed up 4 lane road, i look in my rear view, and see an unmarked police car behind me, and think nothing of it. Once traffic starts rolling, he bleeps the siren, and flashes his lights. I figured he wanted to get past me, so I signal, and mover over to the right. He gets in right behind me, and gets on his loud speaker "i'm not fucking around, pull it over". I still had no idea what i did, but pulled it over, backed the tire to the curb, and killed the motor. Fresh out of the academy rookie comes over with his gun drawn, draggs me off of the bike, throws me on the ground and cuffs me, sits me at the curb. Keeps muttering something about a stolen vehicle. Eventually, I started piecing together what had happened. When I applied for my vanity plate, xr650L was already taken, so out of curiosity i typed in xr65oL. that one was free, and the issued it to me. what i did not know, is that NY does not differentiate between the letter "o" and the number zero on their license plates...both plates look identical. The plate with a zero in it had been reported stolen, my plate with the letter "o" was clean as a whistle. He searched my wallet and found my registration, which did use distinct characters for 0's and o's, and he realized his mistake. Still red in the face, he pulled the cuffs off, and said "the bike isn't stolen, but you failed to signal when I pulled you over (i KNOW i did) so i'm writing you a ticket for that".

went to a shop the same day, had them change a turn signal bulb for me, brought the receipt to court with me. Judge asked the officer if he had checked if my turn signals actually worked, he said no. Ticket was dismissed.

Unless they were picking the stuff up for some charity or something I agree.
The two neighboring counties have small buildings at the transfer station/recycling center where people can leave house hold items that are still useful to others. The county I live in doesn't have anything like that and made it illegal to pull items out of the trash/recycle bins.
There are many tourists who stop in my county all year long. They also generate a lot of trash they picked up(read, bought) in the county. They don't let people without a county sticker leave trash at the transfer stations. I guess they would rather have it strewn down the edge of the highway. How and why is someone on vacation going to carry trash all over the friggin state?
Stupid f'n county commissioners...

It's nice to be guilty until proven innocent.

A long time ago in the cage I found out that traveling with the flow of traffic is no way to avoid a ticket. The patrol car pulled over the guy ahead of me, me, and the guy behind me, and gave all of us tickets for being over the limit in a classic speed trap spot where it went from 55 mph to 30 mph with no visual indication of why other than the sign--no houses, no town, no nothing--it just seemed to be a speed trap set up to catch people, and it did! I was just not paying attention, going with the flow of the traffic, and following the car ahead of me. Should have slammed on the brakes and might have caused an accident.

Another thing it taught me is not to plead "not guilty" in traffic court unless you've got a good local lawyer. The guy ahead of me tried that and the judge just started screaming at him and he walked out with the book thrown at him. The guy never was able to get in another word other than "but" "wait" "no" "hey"! I was meak, plead guilty, with lots of deep bowing and kissing of feet, and walked away with a fine.

Nope, everything is going to the landfill.

Sorry for the rambling that follows. Ignore if desired. Some happening right now.

Here's my opinion on that law. I'm confident most will agree with me, but I'll never win the argument in court. FWIW, I am a trash pick-up day veteran, and am not ashamed to admit it.

There are two types of people that will go around on trash pickup day. Tight asses and broke people. I always fall in the first category, and occasionally fall in the second. No matter which category you fall into, the fact of the matter is that you are personally saving an item from the landfill, and putting what is potentially a perfectly good item back into service.

I have a close friend that is always in the 'broke' category. Most of his daughters toys have came from trash pickup day, and he has gotten roughly half to 3/4 of his furniture from there. The guy makes $10 an hour, 40 hours a week, and is raising his 7 year old as a single dad. His ex is supposed to give him $38 a month in child support, which he's never seen yet. The items I have gotten pale in comparison to what he has gotten, mostly because he diligently hits the pickup days, whereas I just hit them when I am able. His entire paycheck goes to bills, his daughter, and his dune buggy. His buggy, for those that are wondering, is an expensive hobby. He has a child seat mounted in it, and that is their weekend entertainment. Buggies can be expensive, but if they are built right can be cheap. We can have a good weekend riding together for about $50 each, which in our opinion is way better, and healthier for the kid, than staying at home and playing video games or something. His daughter is great about it, especially for a 7 year old. She tells him that she doesn't want new toys, she says she would rather him put the money in 'her' buggy so they can ride together. Trash pickup day makes his life a little bit better, and the state of WV says that they would rather that stuff go to the landfill.

Rant over, back to regularly scheduled program.

Christmas eve, a couple years ago I'm riding my Wee-Strom home around 9pm or so. Long straight down and back up a big hill, 2 lanes with passing and lots of shoulder. Conditions are clear & dry.

Going at or about the 45 posted limit I come up on an old Microbus traveling 10 or so under. The driver sees me, signals right and fades right (two wheels over the fog line like they do in Europe & Cali) and I go around him. No sweat. All done in 20 seconds and On Our Way.

But no.

There is a patrol car at the crest of the hill a quarter-mile away who sees this blatant trangression of The Law and flips on his gumball machine.

I get written up for an improper pass ("You didn't leave your lane. You can't pass somebody in thier lane.") -- Nevermind there was no other traffic around and I COULD have gone over the centerline but CHOSE not to, - we both had plenty of room : he had to make sure I knew who was boss.

Didn't argue, got the ticket, provided a written explanation, ticket cancelled, with fees it still cost $ 25.00.

Don't pass in the same lane in Hawaii. Christmas eve or not.

In the rest of the world this wouldn't raise the slightest eyebrow. In italy you could do this move on one wheel and nobody would care. But not here, nope.

I was in texas a few months ago, passing in the same lane is standard, even in cars. 2 lane roads, traffic both ways. The car in front would pull on the shoulder and keep driving while the cars behind passed, then pull back on the road and keep going. Speeds of 60 to 80 mph the whole time.

Two years while on my cross country trip in Oregon I learned that it is not ok to pass a pickup truck pulling a large boat up a mountain pass on a double yellow even if you have the space to do so safely, espcially when that pickup truck happens to an unmarked Oregon State Police vehicle pulling a patrol boat up to Canyon Lake

Lesson learned!

Rick G

PS Wifey still doesn't know about that $285 brain fart.

That is one of the best things about Texas. That driving technique/custom dates back to the early days of Auto's in Texas, the FM Roads(Farm to Market) have large paved shoulders so that Farm vehicles or Vehicles of Animal Husbandry can pull over and allow faster traffic to pass.

I was passed in my lane doing 75 in a 55 by a HPD motor cop while on my GS. Pulled up next to me, checked out the bike, waved and took off.

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