As expected, the officer did not ask me whether or not I had a place of employment. He was busier asking if I had proof-of-insurance (No, officer) and registration (No, officer) and whether I was insured (Yes, officer!) and the car’s registration was up-to-date (Yes, officer!).
I was leaving the interview today when I got nailed on a side-street. When I saw the cops standing at the Intersection, I knew I was busted. It was kind of strange because I had not intentionally been speeding at all. As far as I was concerned, I was not going too fast. Generally, in my experience, a road that has the Interstate to one side of it and a business park to the other will usually have a speed limit of 40 or 45mph. Alas, it was 30mph. But even not knowing the speed limit (30) or specifically how fast I was going (40), I knew that if the police bothered to put up a popsicle stand in the middle of the road, it had to be the sort of place where a lot of people would be speeding without realizing it. Sure enough, as the process took about 10 minutes, the only cars I saw that did not get pulled over were the ones that passed while the two cops manning the intersection were busy tending to those of us (5 in all) that were.
I was driving Clancy’s car because Crayola, my sick little Ford Escort, is a sick little car and not good for trips all the way out to New City. So when the officer asked for license and proof-of-insurance, I didn’t have the latter. I didn’t know where she kept it. I didn’t keep a card on me. The only card I did have, for some reason, only had Crayola listed on it. And expired in July. The officer didn’t seem much in a mood to care and said that the number on the card was all he really needed.
The next thing he noticed was that the Estacado registration was out of date. There was a big to-do about this several months back when Clancy was doing a rotation at a local military base. Her registration was less than a couple weeks out of date, but they wouldn’t let her onto the base without current registration. So she had to scurry around Seafort County to get her ducks in a row. Putting the license plate on the car was an afterthought. She liked having an Estacado license plate anyway because Cascadian drivers seem to be more patient with out-of-state drivers than in-state ones. But we would have changed it, I swear. But when I tried, the screw that had the Estacado plate was rusted and recalcitrant. It was always one of those things we were going to get taken care of one of these days. Ahhh tomorrow. It’s always a day away.
When I told the officer that it had actually been registered in Cascadia, he looked at me skeptically. “Where’s the plate?” I scrambled around looking for them convincingly and he waved it off. I realized later that they were in the trunk. Interestingly, Crayola has both Estacado and Cascadia plates visible (the Estacado plates resting behind the back seat). The reason being that when I got the new plates, I did not want my car to be towed from the Mindstorm parking lot. I had always intended to at least do that until we could figure out how to switch the plates. Tomorrow. One of these days. Whenever.
Once again, the officer turned out not to care. I was probably already taking up too much of his time as it was. For every minute he talked to me, two or three cars were passing by going somewhere faster than 30 mph.
Interestingly, Clancy and I were talking about tickets just the other day. It’s a bit ironic that I have a worse driving record than she does because she is by far the less patient driver. It can mostly be attributed to two things: whether speeding or not, she is generally more cogniscent of speed limits and how fast she is going, and I spend a lot more time on the road than she does. But anyway, we were talking about it and how in the end as long as we were doing the speed that we were accused of doing, it wasn’t something worth getting all worked up about. If it’s a case like Real-Life Wyoming or an episode she had in eastern Delosa where we were accused of going speeds out cars did not like to go, that’s one thing. The rest of the time, it serves at its own sort of a make-shift, randomized use tax avoided by certain demographics (the conscientious, the white, the not-young, the in-state driver, the driver of cars that are neither sporty nor red, etc).
So, though I do consider the speed limit to be artificially low and at least intellectually I consider the entire traffic enforcement of speed something of a joke from a safety standpoint, I guess I congratulate the New City Police Department for catching me fair-and-square. Pity about my insurance, though.
-{More thoughts to come…}-
If Cascadia is like California, the speed limit for most streets is artificially low — but not by much and not for 85% of the road users. Surveys are done at times which are not announced in advance to either law enforcement and the general public, timed to include both rush and non-rush hours. The 85th percentile speed reading taken over the course of several hours is then rounded to the nearest 5-mile-an-hour increment, which becomes the speed limit absent some overriding reason (e.g., a school, which depresses the speed limit to 25 mph during school hours regardless of the survey).
You may have been a little pumped up from the interview and not really thinking about your speed.
Comment by Transplanted Lawyer — September 16, 2009 @ 6:51 am
I highly recommend having either you or Clancy be in charge of paying the insurance bills and getting the new cards into the cars’ glove compartments, but not both. It’s just easier if one person is responsible for the whole bit.
Comment by Linus — September 16, 2009 @ 8:27 am
It was more a matter of being pumped up and not paying attention to the speed limit, assuming that it was posted on the short stretch of road that I drove on. I wasn’t at all surprised when he told me I was going 40. But I wasn’t knowingly speeding.
That’s some interesting background on speed limit determination. It seems like kind of a screwy way to go about it. Not just in the sense that it seems set up to be able to pull over one in seven drivers or so, but in that if it could lead to speed limits that are too high, too, if there are certain roads that give drivers the illusion of safety at higher speeds.
Comment by trumwill — September 16, 2009 @ 8:34 am
Around here, the wealthier the neighborhood, the lower the speed limit. On just one road, the limit near the golf course is 35. Less than one mile down that road, just when you get to the neighborhood where little black kids are playing in the street, the limit increases to 40.
I see the same type of thing all over the place. It’s a real testament as to who runs things.
Comment by Kirk — September 17, 2009 @ 5:58 am
Kirk, I’ve noticed that too. I thought it wasn’t so much ‘who cares if black children get run over’ as ‘We can pull over anyone in a wealthy neighborhood when we want to, because everyone is speeding.’
As for safety, I’ve heard that most highway accidents aren’t caused by speeding, they’re caused by lane changing. Mostly people change lanes because of turtles. The turtles don’t get into many accidents: they cause lots of accidents.
It sounds bizarre, but cops should pull over people going even just a few mph below average. Highways should have only limitted areas where changing lanes is allowed.
I’ve also heard that 35 mph is the highest throughput speed on congested roads. Faster than that, and people spread out so much that fewer cars go through.
Wonder if they’re any documentaries about roads and traffic laws and such? There are people who make entire careers of timing traffic lights. Maybe the subject is just too geeky for anyone to watch? But most adults drive, so there’s common denominator appeal.
Comment by rob — September 17, 2009 @ 6:34 am