speed racer

The Family that Speeds Together…

July 10, 2012 — 17 Comments

…has ridicu­lous insur­ance rates.

And gets to meet a very charm­ing motorcop.

Just a cou­ple weeks ago, I was sit­ting in one of my spots and I stopped a gen­tle­man for exceed­ing the posted speed limit.  He was 16 miles over in a res­i­den­tial area.  He was polite and we went our sep­a­rate ways quickly.  Him hav­ing signed the promise to appear (the softer, gen­tler term for ticket) and me with another stat in my pocket.

Not twenty min­utes later, I met his bet­ter, if not faster, half.While 16 over the posted speed is mov­ing at a decent clip, she was 22 over.  Not so bad when you think of your typ­i­cal free­way speeds, but pretty egre­gious when it’s a 25 mph zone.  I did my usual “Do you know why I stopped you” and “Can I see your license, reg­is­tra­tion and insur­ance, please” rigamarole.

It wasn’t until I had her license in hand the I saw the last name and the address.  Now, I don’t claim to have the mem­ory of an ele­phant, but I’d be pretty hard up if I couldn’t rec­og­nize two folks with the same last name and address inside of ten min­utes of one another.

I wrote out her ticket and walked back to her car.

MC: Afraid I have more bad news for you, Mrs. Gonzales.

Mrs. G: What’s that?

MC: Seems it’s been a bad day for the Gon­za­les clan.  I met Mr. Gon­za­les about ten min­utes ago.  He was speed­ing as well…just not as fast as you.

Lucky for the Gonzales’s nei­ther of them had been to traf­fic school in the last 18 months, so they dodged a pretty big insur­ance bul­let with that one.

But they made me smile.  So there’s that.

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Motorcop

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  • Rita A

    this reminds me of my uncle, aunt and 2 cousins they each got a ticket all in one day — uncle got cited for speed­ing, aunt for run­ning a red light, and both cousins were also cited for speed­ing. the icing on the cake they were all cited by the same offi­cer. it totally made my week when that hap­pened since they’re all so anti law enforce­ment. oh yeah they all fought their tick­ets and they all lost (i was so intrigued that i went to traf­fic court with them to see it — PRICELESS)

  • Car­rie Ann

    In the state I just moved from, 16 and 22 mph over would have been 6 point vio­la­tion and all the points may not be erased by attend­ing dri­ving school. How many points is it in your state? And how many points can be erased by attend­ing dri­ving school?

    • http://motorcopblog.com Motor­cop

      Here, they’re both only one point and traf­fic school erases one point and you can attend once every 18 months.

      • Car­rie Ann

        This is com­pletely off topic but I just noticed that you read Jon Acuff’s blog. Since you like him you may also enjoy, The Wally Show pod­cast. (It’s a pod­cast of a Chris­t­ian radio show based in Nashville and Jon Acuff does a seg­ment on the show every other week. If you don’t like stereo­typ­i­cal Chris­t­ian radio sta­tions, you will prob­a­bly like this show)

    • HonkingAn­te­lope

      Car­rieAnn: Here in CA, no vio­la­tion car­ries more than two points. Most traf­fic charges carry a one point penalty, while seri­ous stuff like DUI, run­ning over a police offi­cer, or dri­ving over 100mph carry two points. One point vio­la­tions are usu­ally no big deal, but it’s not unusual for two-pointers to get your insur­ance to dou­ble, if not can­celled outright.

      • Car­rie Ann

        Inter­est­ing. In Ken­tucky, the minor vio­la­tions are 3 points and then there are 6 point vio­la­tions. If you get 12 points in a 2 year period your license is sus­pended. DUI, reck­less dri­ving, etc.… are all 12 point violations.

  • FrankT

    That had a bet­ter end­ing than I expected. I thought Mrs. G. was going to say some­thing like “Ten min­utes ago? Wait until I ask him why he didn’t show up.”

  • Jay

    It would have been inter­est­ing to hear their din­ner­time con­ver­sa­tion that night. Methinks you would have recieved a gen­er­ous mention.

    • HonkingAn­te­lope

      Espe­cially once the bills from court arrive and add up to $500+. I got a ticket on the 4th of July and got writ­ten up for just 10 over by a patrol offi­cer (I hit the brakes before he got a pace on me), and even that is $244 to eat the point or $289 to do traf­fic school. Oh well, it’s not the first time I’ve beaten a ticket in court…

      • HonkingAn­te­lope

        Ugh, scratch my last post. That bill will be at least $700, and maybe $800+ if both of the accused choose to take traf­fic school in lieu of con­test­ing the charges.

  • Beth

    MC — I’ve been read­ing your blog for years and enjoy­ing it! Just this past week­end, I got pulled over for speed­ing (59 in a 45) for the first time in over 20 years. The offi­cer asked me the stan­dard ques­tions, where are you headed, do you know why I stopped you, how fast you were going, etc. I replied with the truth — “I was dri­ving home from the gro­cery store”. And then I said “I got noth­ing for you”. I was fully pre­pared to accept respon­si­bil­ity for going over the speed limit and I was still plan­ning on thank­ing him for all he does every day (THIS par­tic­u­lar day, it was going to be 106 deg in Atlanta). It galls me to no end to see all the dif­fer­ent excuses/bad atti­tudes you have blogged about. PEOPLE — if you break the law, be pre­pared to PAY for it.
    This very kind offi­cer gave me a writ­ten warn­ing instead of a ticket.

  • John

    I was pulled over once for NOT speed­ing. The cop asked me why I was dri­ving so slowly (I was doing a lit­tle under 35 in a 35). I politely responded “Two rea­sons. 1. I’m not in any hurry, and 2. I already pay enough in taxes, and I’m not about to donate any more.” I never did fig­ure out why I was stopped. Could have been the “Don’t Tread On Me” bumper sticker, but of course, no cop would ever admit that.

  • Nancy

    A neigh­bor of mine was a police offi­cer and was known for being very strict and giv­ing out lots of speed­ing tick­ets (the news even did a report on him). One day he gave his wife a ticket for speeding.

    • http://motorcopblog.com Motor­cop

      Atta boy!

  • Val

    A friend has a very sim­i­lar story. She got both Dad and Son. Except she was work­ing an under­cover pros­ti­tu­tion detail. Dad was being processed when they brought the son back. Now talk about inter­est­ing din­ner conversation!

  • Kelly

    I’ve been read­ing your blog for about 15 min­utes, and I think it’s hilar­i­ous! I mean, “you deserved it…” that’s gotta be some pretty heavy sar­casm, right? Even my pal who’s been a cop for 10+ years says, “Oh yeah, if I want to pull you over I’ll find a rea­son to do it.”

    Funny thing about that — many years ago I was dri­ving along with my girl­friend on a coun­try road in a com­pletely non­crim­i­nal man­ner when I got red n blue in the rearview. The cop said there had been a report about some mis­chief, a cou­ple kids in a car that looked kinda like a Mus­tang, took my papers, wasted my time for a while, gave ‘em back and let me go. Never made an accu­sa­tion. Last year I was doing ride­a­long with my cop pal, and he came upon some guy and gave him the exact same non­sense — even used the “Mus­tang” line. Huh. Won­der if we deserved it.

    Once upon a time I got pulled over TWICE in the same day for hav­ing a head­light out. If your response to that is, “Well, that’s ille­gal and you deserved it,” why isn’t every cop both­er­ing every per­did­dle dri­ver? We all know they’re not.

    I once got pulled over for hav­ing a small crack in my tail­light. Isn’t that mar­velous? We can sleep easy in my town know­ing only a few dozen drug deals went down and only a hand­ful of wife beat­ings occurred in the time it took to whine about my light.

    I once got pulled over by a cop who said I merged onto a des­o­late free­way a lit­tle too quickly. No lie. I was out­right rude to him, because we all know he didn’t give a damn how I merged. He just found a stu­pid excuse to harass me. No ticket. When he ulti­mately gave me his dumb lit­tle line about being a lit­tle more care­ful I said, “Slow night, huh?” and drove away peeved.

    Another time I was com­ing home late from work in my old half-renovated Impala when a cop pulled me over and asked me if I’d come to a com­plete stop at that inter­sec­tion back there. I told him I did and that the car was pretty fast, which might account for not seem­ing like I’d stopped. He then men­tioned that the stop sign wasn’t actu­ally in his view at the time any­way. So he’d just admit­ted his basis for pulling me over was no basis at all. Thanks for wast­ing my time.

    You see, the com­mon ele­ment here is that I like dri­ving old beater cars. Cops spot me and assume I’m drunk or have no insur­ance, so they find some jack­ass excuse to harass me…which, by the way, does not meet the def­i­n­i­tion of “deserv­ing it,” (but prob­a­bly fits the def­i­n­i­tion of “pro­fil­ing”) espe­cially since I always have insur­ance and I’ve never had a beer in my life, which makes being drunk kinda unlikely.

    So I’m just going to assume “you deserved it” is tongue-in-cheek…instead of being a heap­ing pile of self-righteous cow crap.

    • http://motorcopblog.com Motor­cop

      Ain’t prob­a­ble cause a bitch?