Singing at the top of my lungs “all these things about me, you never can tell!” I don’t know the name of the song. I met my wife out to dinner after work. Since I came right from work we had to take our own respective cars home. The drive home, I got to thinking: “they ought to just teach that you can go up to 10 miles over the speed limit.” Why not? You won’t get pulled over until you are going over 10 mph over the speed limit any way. In the game of risk versus reward, there’s no risk. Hey, there are instances where I am wrong, but that is the extreme exception and not the general rule. And think you can fight that in court? the rare instance you are ticketed going less than 10 mph over? You bet!
Then I thought, man alive, I don’t want people to know that I am a speeder. I don’t want all the police to read this and then come after me. Then the more I think of it, I don’t think any cops read this, and the ones that do, apathy and laziness would be just two of the many allies protecting me. Apathy and laziness of mankind; don't think I'm singling out quite possibly the most empathetic and hard working profession out there.
The more I think about it. Speeding isn’t barred. If it was, they wouldn’t make cars that fast. They wouldn’t allow it. When I say they, I mean the majority. Yeah, I might get a ticket, but they aren’t going to take away my freedom. I can go 10-15 over if I can tolerate the additional cost of insurance and the occasional ticket I receive.
You can’t be stupid about it. Police really just ticket stupidity. One time I was going 17 mpg over leaving a concert in Milwaukee and I saw cherries behind me. I pulled over to my left when I was 16 years old. The shoulder is on the right, and the officer cemented that into my memory with a $300 citation. Might as well have cited me for stupidity. After all, that’s what the law is there for. It’s not a magic number of miles per hour that makes you a criminal, it's lapse in judgement.
If you do get a ticket, your best defense is that it was a straight road, there was no traffic, things that make it sounds like you were less of a danger to society. Just say you were really close to home and you really had to go to the bathroom. I never tried that; I am a little skeptical of that, but my wife swears by it (she’s been pulled over 7 times, never once getting a ticket).
That’s about where my thought process finished when I pulled in my garage. Then I excitedly ran to the man cave and poured myself a whiskey and coke.
Let me part with this. I did like that song. I really liked it. So much that I satisfied my curiosity. And yours...
Kevin
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