Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 78 in a 55 work zone

I have borrowed a horse trailer, and insured it for the term of use.

Insurance had no problem with who was on the title. If I had wrecked it, I sure as as hell would have suffered the loss.

About a year ago, there was a work zone down the road from the house a few miles. Only 1 lane open on a 2 lane road, so they had flaggers letting the traffic come from one direction and then the other. Some norwegian decided he wasn't going to wait in line, so he drove around the line. Flagger stepped out to stop him, but he kept coming, so the flagger threw the pole/sign at the car as it drove by, cracking the windshield. The norwegian stopped when he saw the traffic coming head on to him, so he pulled over and let the traffic by, then sped off. Teen age norwegian in his mom's car. When he got home he shot his mom some bs story, so they got in the car and drove out to the site.

Road crew had already called the law and deputy was on scene when the mom and son drove up. When the mom found out what really happened, she told the officer to 'throw the book at him'. Mom drove off and left the teen at the site and he had to get home on his own.

You know a person is bright when they blame 20 over on the downhill grade.

Because i mean, who watches their speed on a downhill grade?

Can you pick my lottery numbers?

Exactly....

Got a 140 in a 60 when I had a 1970 corvette. Cost me 900.00. I quit that crap after that.

That should have been on a written warning:

Driving like an [bleep].

I would have it framed.

Fwiw, 5/5 on warnings is good. You must be a smooth talker.

Just respectful and honest.

So a 16 year old kid must be in the title to drive everyday?

Must be different in your state.

16 year old is a listed household driver. And the check for a claim won't be written to him or her, just the titled owner of the vehicle.

Yep. 105 in a 55 in my '74 Camaro. Had me an F-150 by the next weekend. 300 and a 4 speed, pretty good truck.

never mind, I won't waste my time. Clearly you all have it under control in your vast knowledge.

Username says it all!!

I did! But I did gain a new appreciation for those guys that work for road, street or highway departments.

"...Get a different job. ..." ???

Sounds like you think little of highway workers?
I'd think if you didn't want to drive mud tracks and dirt roads, you might think better of those guys! 😉


Okay.

Not true at all.

I will offer some perspective.

Here is a look into the "other side". For a number of years I was a state trooper, before I was recruited to the dark side of the .gov and dropped off the radar for a long time.

When I was a trooper, I worked criminal interdiction. It ended up that while I was working I seized more money in drugs than all of our drug dogs/handlers combined. Millions annually. Interestingly I was doing this while also performing other assignments such as doing stints on my Governor's Executive Protection Detail and being the primary Firearms Instructor as well as Armorer for my part of the state. I wore a few hats.

At the time, the Governor had mandated that one of the State Police's primary roles was the fight against Methamphetamine, which was a significant problem everywhere in the state. Conducting interdiction on the highways was a good tool in slowing down the flow.

While I was in uniform I would go out and perform traffic stops. Anything from an equipment violation to speeding, to illegal lane changes. It did not matter. The goal was not to write tickets. The goal was to have a high volume of legal traffic stops.

You catch a person doing 10 over. You stop them, you approach, get their info and run it. While it is being run, you talk with them. Every single contact you make with a citizen is an "interview". No matter how casual.

****Side bar that is critical. the single most valuable LE classes in terms of skills are not firearms or tactical crap, it is interview and interrogation. It is the understating human behavior, how people deal with stress. How and why people lie, How people tell the truth. Learning non confrontational techniques to recognize both truthful responses and less than honest ones, while in the field, and in a formal interview. etc etc.


So I would stop dozens of people for speeding, whatever. Guys just like Roger. Chat them up. If I determined that they were not major players, then I kicked them loose with a verbal warning.

The fact is that in the time it takes to write someone a ticket for speeding on some road where they can see for miles and doing 10 over is really not a safety factor, I may have let a cartel member go with 1/2 dollar load of meth or heroin. ( I got in trouble by one of my bosses for joking about saying "speed safely" around a couple of our traffic Nazis, who viewed their self worth as officers by how many tickets they could write. D-bags)

Anyways, So I rarely wrote tickets. But I made a very high volume of legal stops and talked to a whole lot of people. I had one prick of a supervisor who called me out on it claiming I was slacking. I pulled my stats in response. It ended up, I wrote only 3% of the people I stopped for a traffic violation. 97 % received warnings, but I was still far above the average in terms of performance and I was 600% above average in terms of drugs seized among my peers. His attempts to nail me went nowhere.

The other thing that pops up is marijuana. My coworkers used to get pissed that I rarely arrested for weed. I told them that it takes the same amount of time out of the field for a $30 bag of weed that it does for $100K worth of Meth or Heroine and I can further a case with hard drugs, versus a nothing amount of weed. If anything give them a ticket and get back to looking for hard core criminals.

I never told them that during my searches I often "overlooked" small/personal use amounts of weed, because it was not the point of my job. Yes, sometimes I would be forced to take some sort of enforcement action based on a substantial amount (pounds/kilos) or the fact that I had other LE present like supervisors.

I was after big fish. As long as they are not under the influence of ABC and a danger to themselves or others, then I have a larger picture to be concerned about.

Long story short. Don't assume someone is lazy because they don't write a ticket. The Officer may be doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing, and stopping to write a ticket is preventing them from doing that. This is especially true when the person "violator" is doing something that may be technically not legal but is not unsafe (like 15 over on a clear dry highway with minimal traffic). I have watched my own agency guys miss a specific target vehicle because they decided to stop a speeder and "get and easy ticket". Then they were pissed when they were not involved in the stop on the big load.

Just my perspective from "not a ticket writer".

Hope this helps and glad those days are many many years in my rear view mirror.

So, is there such a thing as a, "Quota", system?

Shoulda fought it.

Vette top speed was 129.

.most excellent post , especially the side bar note ..

Just say ya know Flave.😆

Both my kids are LEO's.
Yeppers, there are "quotas"! But the quota isn't tickets, it's contacts. Daily logs reveal how many contacts each officer make.

Knew a state trooper who would attend roll call every day, then go back home. He put his unit in the garage then sit on the couch and play video games all day.
Contacts got him fired!