Y’know, as the author of the Autopian Asks series, I’m supposed to provide the copy – it’s kind of baked into the whole “author” concept. Sometimes, however, I don’t have enough juice to supply a suitably entertaining (to me, anyway) personal history or spicy hot-take on the question of the day, so I hit up The Gang for their stories. Today was not supposed to be one of those days. Despite assuring everyone that I had today’s Autopian Asks handled with my own tale, I suspected they might have their own silly-stop stories to share. And boy did they! David alone offered three! Now all I have to do is copy-paste; happy Friday to me.
Torch
In college, I was pulled over because I was a 19-year-old kid with longish hair driving a VW Beetle. There was a Dead show around Atlanta, where I was driving, and I think I just fit a profile. I never liked the Dead. They searched my car, too, looking for drugs. Can’t cops just get their drugs from the evidence room? Anyway, they didn’t find anything though I did find out later my girlfriend at the time was carrying. I had no idea.
Another: I once drove my Beetle while it was stuck in reverse backwards through town at three in the morning to get it to a shop to fix it, and had zero cop interactions. But in LA, I’ve had my truck impounded for being a month out of registration.
Matt
I’ve only been pulled over three times in 25 years of driving and those stops mostly made sense, although I was once pulled over for crossing a double yellow into a parking spot on a normal ass road. [Ed note: I agree, this isn’t much of a story. I just like that Matt left the hyphen out of “normal ass road,” which means there’s a non-zero chance it was a “normal ass-road.” – Pete]
Thomas
I once got pulled over because my license plates were too new for the ALPR system. I had a back seat full of winter tires, an exhaust leak the size of a baseball, no license plate light because it had rotted off, and I was driving an Ontario-registered car that the ministry accidentally registered to an address I didn’t even live at anymore, on a BC license … and they just let me go without even so much as a warning.
Stephen
Pulled twice for drugs (no drugs found either time), but mostly for being a kid in a rusty ’84 Cougar and a ’96 LHS. “Pulled” once for being a potential mass shooter. I pulled up to a beach bar by the pedestrian barricades and pulled a mic stand out of the trunk of my New Yorker for a beach bar gig. Sheriffs mistook it for a long gun and had me on my knees with a gun to my back in 30 sec. “DROP THE WEAPON!”
“It’s a mic stand! I’m a musician!”
Laurence
Last year my partner and I were on a backroad and late to a mate’s wedding in Project Cactus. We were going down a long straight into a valley and I wasn’t watching my speed. The one time I let the speed creep up, and of course there was a highway patrol car parked in the valley. I pulled over right after I went past him before he even put his lights on. The cop came up to my window and just laughed. He said “I had to check the radar a few times to make sure, didn’t think this thing could get over 100kmh!” We had a chat about what Project Cactus is and he let me off with a warning since I pulled over before he even turned his lights on. Of all the road trips I’ve done in that ute, taking it into the centre of Brisbane and everything, my one cop interaction is on an abandoned backroad when the cop was probably having a nap!
David
1. I was once pulled over for literally no reason. I had just been off-roading with my brother in my 1992 Jeep Cherokee XJ, which was already a bit old and rusty. Add the mud to it, and I looked both poor and a bit, I dunno, adventurous. Regardless of what looked like, I wasn’t doing anything wrong – I was just sitting in my car in a northern Michigan hotel parking lot taking a bit of a break. I pulled out of the lot, got the reds and blues, and the cop asked me for my license. I asked why he’d pulled me over, he raised his voice: “LICENSE AND REGISTRATION.” He then later gave it back and stated his reason: “You were looking suspicious.”
2. I got pulled over for doing 40 in a 40. Both cops ran to my car on either side and beamed flashlights into my eyes. Why would driving the speed limit get me pulled over? Because there was an inch of snow on the ground and I drove past a cop. This was the situation that made me lose faith in the American judicial system; I had great tires on my Jeep, tons of snow-driving experience, and an inch of snow wasn’t causing any significant handling issues. When I fought the ticket in court, they agreed to take the three points off my license but made me pay $190. Why? Because the damn magistrate was friends with the cop! The judge asked me “Did you or did you not drive past officer [what’shisname]” and when I responded with “Yes, but …” he cut me off and said, “We’re done here.” What an absolutely pathetic judge, pathetic cop, and pathetic system there in Troy.
3. On i-75 in Michigan, no drivers observe the speed limit of 70 MPH. Everyone does closer to 80. Everyone. If you were to use a radar gun, you’d probably find that 95% of all cars are doing over 75. That’s just how it is. One day I noticed that I was driving past everyone, and I was only doing 77. “What the?” I wondered. Then I saw it: There was a cop at the front of this big line of cars, and no car ahead of him for miles. “This is strange,” I thought. I set my cruise control for 71 MPH, and I slowly, slowly, SLOWLY passed the officer who IMMEDIATELY pulled me over to fulfill what was simply a power trip. Look, I appreciate cops and what they do for our communities, but in Michigan, especially driving my old junky cars, police were extremely unfair towards me (and I’m sure to many, many others — I hate to even think about what others have had to deal with), and it was simply unacceptable.
Your turn! What’s The Dumbest Reason You’ve Been Pulled Over?
Top image: framestock/stock.adobe.com
I had a beat up Buick Regal (late 80s coupe) during college/just after, that I had bought from a coworker that had a bunch of cosmetic issues, one of which was a hood that was blue while the rest of the car was maroon. Driving home was always interesting because we lived in an affluent neighborhood at the time with 3 sets of police – town, county, and neighboring town. I would get pulled over pretty often because of the color mismatch with the hood, they would realize I wasn’t Hispanic, and would send me home with a warning.
*side note – the hood flew up one day on the highway (it was “tied down” with Cat5 cable and stayed up because of the hood struts, so I opened the side window and stuck my head out to get on the hwy shoulder so I could remove the hood and push out the rest of the busted windshield to drive the care home with no windshield and no hood. Bonus though, found a matching color hood in a junkyard to make the car whole again!
Same car, but with basically all of my friends in it and trying to get to the movies – me driving, my best friend (a guy) in the middle of the front bench, a girl in the passenger seat, and then 4 more girls crammed every way imaginable in the back. Cop pulls us over going down a main road in our town, looks over the jenga puzzle of attractive under-20yo girls in the back, the girl in the passenger seat, my friend in the middle, and then at me and says “be safe out there and have a good time buddy” and lets me go. He definitely could have ticketed us for lack of seat belts or too many passengers, or something, but I think he was honestly psyched for how my evening was going to pan out.
I make a left on red at 230 in the morning because that light takes forever and I just want to get home. There is no one around for what seems like forever…. Except the cop I missed. He asks if I know why he stopped me, I say “of course, I made the left, I’m sorry officer….I’m just beat from work”.
He notices that I work in a computer store (name tag), asks me when we think we’ll get in the (then new) Neverwinter Nights game, I tell him, and he lets me go with just a seat belt violation. Fine by me!
Same car but it’s lost first gear at this point and has been suffering from blow-by for ages so it’s down on power. I’m leaving a friend’s house who has a flat street and then a big hill. I basically gun it on the level street (maybe hitting 30mph) and then barely make it up the hill and crest the top to exit the neighborhood when a cop pulls me over. He says I’m doing 5 over the posted speed limit and to slow down. I tell him the car is a step away from death’s door, didn’t think I’d even make it up the hill, and ask if he wants to drive it. He doesn’t want to hear anything from me and I get a ticket.
Driving myself, wife, and the in-laws down the east coast in their Odyssey packed to the gills and we go through Georgia. I’m not speeding at all (in-laws and in their car plus Georgia with out of state plates) and notice a cop is pulling up behind us. I stay the same speed and he tailgates us for about a mile. Finally turns on the lights and pulls us over. Come up and asks me for lic and reg, asks me to get out of the car and open the tailgate, asks if we’re transporting anything (yeah, it’s furniture, we’re moving a 90yo woman and her crap to assisted living), asks me what I do for work, and about 9k other questions. Finally tells me I can get back in the car and that “you were wandering all over the road” so that’s why he stopped me. BS. Knew he was there the whole time and my Father-in-law was pissed on my behalf and he’s usually very relaxed. Georgia cops and out of state plates man.
David was the only one who got proper cop treatment. American cop treatment.
The “I don’t look like I am on the up and up, so harass me and ruin my day for fun” treatment that is usually reserved for minorities, but in the northern states… well, they don’t get many so they have to go after the local scumbags in hoopties. Small mountain towns have the same harassment for no reason other than existing.
Bored cops.