Speeding Ticket Tonight

I was pulled over by a police officer on my way home from work tonight on the turnpike around 7:15 PM. The officer clocked my speed at 76 in a 65 mile per hour zone. I got out of my car and instinctively put my keys into my pocket while walking back to his car. He asked me why I "went to my pocket" as I was walking toward his car, and said that he had told me not to "go to my pockets." I told him that I must have been more concerned about making sure my license and insurance were secured in my hands on the windy highway road when I instinctively put my keys in my pocket. I must not have clearly understood him as he was speaking to me from practically inside his own car while my window was still only half way rolled down.

After I had been sitting in his car for a few minutes while he was writing the ticket, he asked me if I'd been drinking tonight. I figured that was probably a typical question. I told him that I had just gotten off work and that I had not been drinking. Then I started thinking about what I had just said when I realized that whether or not I had just gotten off work had nothing to do with my current sobriety at that moment. So I then followed up my last few words by telling him, "I don't drink."

After a few more seconds transpired the officer told me that I was going to receive a $220 ticket. He also asked me if I knew that $220 was the penalty for going 11 over. I told him I did not know and that it would hurt. Of-course I meant it would hurt figuratively speaking. A few seconds later he informed me that he was only giving me a warning. I could not believe I had gotten that lucky. I have only been pulled over for speeding half a dozen times in the past 10 years, and never, not once been lucky enough to have an officer deliver the mercy of only a warning. I had always heard of people getting off with only a warning, but never had I experienced such luck myself.

That is all it is, luck. The other human being sitting on the side of the road with flashing lights atop his vehicle who happens to be holding the badge and gun can decide whether or not to require me to drain my bank account by some arbitrary amount based on his own mood or whim of the moment on that particular night. I was driving on a lonely highway road 11 miles per hour above the arbitrary speed limit set by some government bureaucrat or panel of bureaucrats in some government office. Never mind that I was in no way endangering any other human being whatsoever. Never mind that even while traveling the roads closer to peak times, there is actual empirical evidence that driving slightly faster than the speed limit is safer than driving slightly slower than the set speed limit. The reason for this is simple. There is a natural flow of traffic so to speak. This natural flow can be quantified as the mean speed by all travelers of the road. The normal protocol for city engineers is to set the speed limit 1 standard deviation above the mean speed of the road. This is known as the 85th percentile rule. In reality this rule is often ignored though mainly for political reasons. Speed limits have very little to do with public safety, and a whole lot more to do with raising city revenues. If you believe otherwise then you haven't been paying attention.

To make a long story even longer here is how it ended. I thanked the officer for letting me off with the "warning" before exiting his vehicle, and he looked at me and he actually said, "remember that the next time you give me a pay raise." I just looked at him until a few seconds passed and he broke into laughter and said, "just kidding."