Traffic Stops are Great

My wife told me I had to post two of her favorite traffic stop stories.

The first took place while I was doing Field Training with my traffic FTO. We had been sitting watching a four way stop mainly watching for north bound traffic. The cars coming south could see us for about 30 feet behind the stop sign, so they had no reason to run it. We were sitting there and I see a car coming south and think it is for sure going to stop. She slows to about 10-15 mph and then goes right on through. I pull out completely dumbfounded. I have to fly to catch up to her because she is cruising through a residential area. As we approach the next stop sign about a mile up the road, I am just getting caught up to her and she rolls through that one also. I could not believe it. I get her pulled over and approach the car. I asked if there was a reason she did not stop at the two stop signs and she replies, "I can't come to a complete stop because I drive a stick shift." I was speechless. Needless to say, she got both tickets. Then as she was trying to pull away, she stalled the car.

The other one was after being on my own and I was working an area with a highway running through it and not much else. We get a lot of locates for bad drivers. Around midnight I got two locates on the highway, so I headed out looking for them. One was for a vehicle driving without headlights and flashing her highbeams when anyone flashed their lights at her. I find the vehicle and get it pulled over. The driver is a young, blonde girl. When I asked her why she did not have her headlights on, she said they were not working. She said when she turned them on, they were on high. As she was looking for her insurance and registration, I reached in and tapped the switch and low and behold, it went to low beams. I showed her how to work the light switch and gave her a ticket. She contested the ticket in court and afterward, her dad told me she had done the same thing about a week later and he had to show her how to work the lights again.

It is amazing the number of people that truly have no business driving a car.