Highway Robbery

So I got a ticket the other night.

I was driving my friend's car because she was drunk, and we get pulled over on the way home. As we're sitting there on the side of the road gathering all the proper identification and paperwork, we're wondering, "What the hell are we getting pulled over for?"

Tags current? Check. Blinkers in good working condition? Check. License plate properly lit? Check. Speeding? Nope.

Turns out, I was getting pulled over for making a "California" stop, or, as the cop put it "rolling right through that stop sign back there". Back where? Oh, the one I stopped at for a half second because its fucking midnight and there's no one on the road but me?

While the officer was back at his car spending twenty minutes doing heaven only knows what, my carmate informed me that the law states that you must stop for a full three seconds. Oh.

So after making us sit on the side of the road for ages, the officer finally gave me my citation. We went home, and I got real drunk and had some cake.

Its a couple of days later now, and I decided to do some research. Apparently, Arizona law does not state a particular length of time that you must be stopped, only that momentum of the vehicle must completely cease. Since I did stop completely, though it may have been for the briefest amount of time possible, I think I'm going to fight the ticket. It should help that the officer only visually estimated my speed.

I know this ticket shouldn't affect my car insurance prices, but still... it's the principle of the fucking thing. Police officers are supposed to be there to "Protect and Serve" right? Who was this officer protecting? There was absolutely no one on the road, and certainly no pedestrians crossing through that particular intersection at midnight. He couldn't have been protecting me, and there's no way in hell he was serving me either.

This was a fundraising ticket, plain and simple.

The town I live in loves their tickets. We have Red Flex traffic cameras at several lights and mobile photo vans parked along strategic stretches of road at all times. This cameras have been in use for a few years now and are universally hated (on account of due-process rights and whatnot). Aside from that, it seems far to easy for certain individuals (cops, namely) to have their own tickets conveniently erased from the system.

Thankfully, the Arizona House is working to repeal these cameras right now. Most people are pretty thrilled about the idea, and the rest believe that without these unmanned sentinels watching drivers along every major road, people will go back to driving line a bunch of dickheads.

That's possible. I don't think that the cameras prevent anyone from driving like an asshole anyway. They just slow down where they know the cameras are and speed right back up once their through. Maybe if this state (and others) worked on educating drivers properly before they get the keys to their own car, we'd have less accidents and assholes on the road to start with. I believe that drivers' ed programs used to be mandatory for all high school students, and now its an optional course that you need to pay upwards for $100 to put your kid through.

Beyond that, I think the people of this country need to stop being such ignorant, self-centered douchebags in general, but that's just me.