Ever seen a cop appear at the perfect time and bust some idiot right in front of you?

In My Humble Opinion
21

This isn’t about a cop catching someone, but kinda fits. We live near a traffic circle in DC. The circle is on NH avenue, a major artery for people coming from Maryland into the city. We were walking our dog in the circle and I said to my wife, “a neighbor told me people come speeding down NH Ave., don’t realize there is a circle and slam right into it.”

My wife: “no way, how stupid would you have to be to…”

BAM! A car speeding down NH Avenue doesn’t see the traffic circl and slams into it tearing of his oilpan and seriously damaging his transmission.

22

Unfortunately not. But i did have a similar moment this evening.

I was driving out to the airport to pick up a friend, and it was rush hour here in Baltimore. I was headed out of the city towards the airport, and before the freeway there’s a relatively long section with a bunch of traffic lights (295, near the football stadium and the turnoff to 95).

The traffic was going about 30 as we approached a light and it began to change. I realized that it would be red well before i got to it, so i braked and came to a stop. The guy in the lane next to me, however, decided to go for it, even though it was clear that he wouldn’t make it through in time. Well, the light was red for a full second before he blew through it, and i took great satisfaction is seeing the FLASH FLASH of the red light camera.

23

I’m stopped at a red, motorcycle cop stopped next to me. Light turns green. Cop gets a quick jump on the green. Car on the cross-street is trying to make it through on yellow, but misses and runs red, almost hitting cop. Cop has to slam on brakes to avoid getting hit. Cop pulls driver over immediately.

24

Around the border of California and Arizona, about 3 years ago, a PT Cruiser flew next to me when I was driving on the desert.

I was a little startled considering I was going at 70 MPH and that bastard was easily doing 100-110 MPH and it seemed to be like 4 young adults inside, I then remembered how a business owner I know lost two sons in a crash around the same area and I began to not only to curse them, but to also feel concerned, I was seeing the Cruiser get about a mile away when suddenly from one of the big bushes that are in between the roads a police car ejected out of the bush like the Batmobile used to do in the movies from a very good hiding place below the road level, and did a u-turn and pursued the car.

I passed later the Patrol car and the Cruiser parked on the side of the road with the cops talking to the guys inside.

25

Not only perfect timing, but also a fair bit of Schadenfreude: there was another Mom who worked at my daughter’s school with me and she was an over-the-top, holier-than-EVERYONE, very rude pain in the butt. Constantly saying things like “I would never let MY kids do that” and “If you were a Christian, you’d know better” and “My husband and I would NEVER watch a movie that wasn’t rated G, I know what’s in those other movies and we certainly don’t need to see THAT kind of stuff” (that’s not an exaggeration, either, that’s a direct quote.)

One morning I was driving my daughter to school and came to the corner where a school bus was stopped on the cross street, red lights flashing, swingy little stop sign out. There’s a preschooler who lives right there, and sometimes it takes a second or two longer than normal to get him situated on the bus. All of a sudden, a van that was behind the bus pulled out and passed the bus. I goggled, and said to my daughter, “Where’s the cop that would have been there if I had done that?” A nanosecond later, a squad car pulled out of the next street and stopped the van. We drove past it, to see our little holier-than-thou school mom being asked to “step out of the vehicle, ma’am.”

26

One time about a year ago,driving down the interstate. The rightlane was packed with semis, and there was one of those morons hanging out at the speed limit in the left lane, and refusing to go into the right lane even though it was going the same speed. I was about 13 out of 18 cars backed up behind the idiot.

Suddenly an unmarked car about three behind me turns on lights and sirens. We all start moving right, and the cop gets right behind the dude in front and pulls his ass over. I hope he gave him a ticket instead of just a warning.

27

You know those cars that whiz past you on the freeway while you’re doing the speed limit? They’re called Scouts for a reason ya know…so they can check if there’s a cop car ahead… :smiley:

28

My hometown has an intersection that’s particularly nasty for clogged traffic and has been since the first street got tarmac. A narrow downslope splits into two lanes, pouring them left and right into a wide double-direction street which is a national road and, until the “belt” around town was built, had bumper-to-bumper trucks. Cars going right usually have to stop, since that’s the busiest pedestrian traffic in town.

One day, some genius coming down the slope sees the light go yellow but decides that he’s more macho than the freaking light and guns it up. He heads right, realizes there’s some people there finishing to cross, swerves and hits a car that was waiting patiently for its green light and for people to finish crossing.

Speedy gets out of his car and starts yelling at the other guy; he’s so aggresive the hit driver can’t even open his door all the way and get out of the car. At that point a mild voice says “maybe I can be of assistance?” and a smile wider than this :smiley: lights up the hit guy’s face.

It was one of the local cops, who was a couple cars behind the one that got hit, on his way to work.

An different kind of opposite.

In Spain the driving age for cars is 18. It’s common to get your driver’s license within the year, but not so common to get a car. The students from my college had organized a party and four of my classmates were going to spend the rest of the night at the house of one of them, who lived in a village pretty close by. The car they were using was his; he was the only one who had a driver’s license.

Who got so drunk he passed out? Of course, the guy with the car keys and license. His friends think of calling a taxi but, while they do know how to get to his house, they don’t know the address, plus the place where they are doesn’t seem particularly safe to leave an expensive new car. Two of them convince the third, who is learning to drive, to take the wheel.

He drives like a slug; the poor guy only had something like 4 hours experience! And they have to take the tollroad, maximum speed 120km/h.

They pass the entrance toll booth and slug along, in 2nd the whole time because he didn’t know how to go higher. After just a few meters, WHEEEEEEEEEEW! and enough lights to brighten the club where we’d been. “Oh my God I’m so busted, I’m so busted!” The penalty for driving without a license includes not being allowed to get your license for a year.

The cop goes to the door, asks to see a license. Driver says “don’t have one.”
“You don’t”
“Sorry”
Cop looks at the other two very-white faces. “Whose car is this?”
“Uh, his.” They show him the passed-out friend in the back.
Cop asks for all their IDs. As the awake guy in back fishes for his passed-out pal’s wallet, he realizes that will probably have the address they would have needed to call a cab, argh!
The cop takes the IDs and goes to talk with his partner. After an eternity or three, he comes back, points to the guy who’s riding shotgun and says “you, with my partner,” then tells the driver to move over.

The cops took them where they were going. The cop who’d taken up driving gave pointers to the guy who’d been doing it; when they got there, IDs were handed all around and three very relieved guys let themselves into their still-snoring pal’s house while the cops looked on and finally left.

They got mileage from that for years.

29

Not a traffic related one:

New Year’s night at a dance club many years ago. Was there with some pretty Scandanavian girls. A drunk guy starts to harass one of them pretty badly. She moves away, he follows, she tells him to stop, he doesn’t, she then moves behind me to get away (Gee, thanks!). He puffs up to full height of 6’5" but skinny as a rail. I’m trying to get him to calm down, smiling, joking, etc. Finally I lean conspiratorially and say “Listen, I know her, she’s a cold-bitch, she really isn’t worth it.” Hoping that this will get him to calm down. He leans down and gets in my face “Well, are you worth it?” and I knew it was just a matter of time from there on out, and I was resigned to getting in a fight, but was still fairly jovial about it…

So I reached up, grabbed his head, kissed him on the lips and said “For $50 I am, ya big stud!” winked, smiled, and started to prepare myself for a thrown punch…

He was just stunned. I short-circuitted his brain with that one because he just stood there for a good 5 seconds with this lost look on his face of “WTF did he just do?” My hands were in front of me palm’s out in a “It’s OK, relax” gesture, but I was waiting for him to move so I could palm him in the head. He starts to snap out of it and it looks like he is

WHAM!

…getting tackled by a police officer. I never saw the cop, didn’t even realize he was one until the guy was being dragged off the floor by him and another one. The girl said that they were watching it from behind the guy. The whole dance floor was laughing and I just calmly turned around and started dancing again.

When we were done we went up front and a bouncer asked me to talk to the cops. I had to fill out a report because the guy took a swing at the cops outside! I looked out the window and could see him screaming his head off in the back of an Ambulance with his hands handcuffed behind his back.

It was simply the most perfect timing anyone could ask for.

And the girls were so happy/impressed that nookie was had with a Finn for Tomcat that night.

-Tcat

30

Pepper Mill saw one of these years agho – guy speeding and weaving through traffice so bad that she thought “Why is there never a cop…”
…and suddenly there was! She felt vindicated.

31

Do cops give tickets for not speeding?

32

In some states, yes. They call it “obstruction of traffic”, but only if, like in the example wolfman posted, they can claim it was obstructing traffic.

There’s places where driving speed is a sort of “damned if I do, damned if I don’t”… you’re supposed to go at “approximately the same speed as everybody else”. So the dude in the BMW can get ticketed for going to far and me in my pony-powered Yaris for going too slow (sorry, officer, can’t have the AC on and go over 55mph).

33

Once in Lexington, KY I was driving on Man O’ War Blvd approaching a red light when the car ahead of me (with a bunch of teenagers in it) abruptly swerved into the passing lane, cutting off and almost hitting another car, whose driver laid on the horn. In response a couple of kids gave him a one-finger salute out the window.

It was only when the flashing lights came on that they realized they’d flipped off a cop in a marked cruiser. :smiley:

34

I use that theory when going directly from work in Melbourne (in Florida :p) to a concert in Kissimmee on 192 (not a highway) - slightly faster than going too far north to catch the Beeline(highway) - IF you go fast. But there are cops all along it since everyone else is thinking the same thing, so I wait for someone to pass me at 80 to speed up to a more reaosnable 65-70

35

I’ve got two stories.

The first was in Poughkeepsie. We were at this long light, waiting to make a right, and there was a gas station next to us on the right. With a big sign that said "Please do not use gas station to make a right ontop Route 9.) (i.e., cut through their parking lot.)

So of course this asshole decides he’s going to burn rubber, run one wheel over the curb, just so he can get through - and drives right past the patrolman who just got coffee and was just sitting back in his car.
When I finally did make my right he was sitting there, getting his ticket.

The other one was when we lived in downtown Albany. Some punk at 3 AM was peeing outside the front of our apartment and singing loudly and off-tune. I still get :mad: when I think of it. A beat cop comes up and starts laying into the kid, yelling at him. “Don’t you know people live here? They pay rent, too! They’d like to have their front yards urine-free!” Sweet, sweet to my ears.

36

I was moving, so I had my Jeep full and I was towing a large trailer that was also full. I was on a two lane road with a 55MPH speed limit. Normal traffic speed is 60-65 on that road, but I didn’t feel safe going any faster than 55. I didn’t feel too bad about holding up traffic, since A) I had everything I owned packed up with me and a wreck would be disasterous, and B) there were passing lanes every 5 miles or so.

There were about six cars behind me when I came up to a passing lane. A guy in an Escalade at the back of the line that was obviously annoyed at doing the speed limit and hammered the throttle as soon as the passing lane appeared. These passing lanes aren’t very long and you can only get around one or two cars safely in the distance. I estimate that he was doing about 90MPH when he passed me and I had to get over into the shoulder to keep him from hitting me as the lanes converged back to one.

Less than a mile up the road, there he was on the shoulder with a cop car behind him. I remeber saying out loud to myself, “Saved alot of time there, huh?”

What really sucks for him is that you automatically lose your license in WI for doing more that 20 over the posted limit.

37

Also known as Rabbits…

38

A friend of mine was sitting at a stoplight for a about ten seconds when he heard a crash and flet his car lurch forward. He looked back and saw tat he’d been rear-ended by a police officer for the town. The guy got out, took his license and registration and started writing him a ticket. The accident had been witnessed by a state trooper, though. The trooper pulled in behind the two of them and said to the town cop, “What are you writing? You’ll be lucky if you don’t get one of those yourself.”

39

Many years ago, returning from a July 4th holiday weekend in Poudre Canyon (northern Colorado Rockies west of Fort Collins, up near Red Feather Lakes) we were caught in heavy traffic coming down the canyon. Some jackass in a BMW two-seater was evidently too important to take his time with the rest of us, and began passing over double yellow lines. I saw him coming in my rear-view, flashing his lights and honking for people to make room for him. As he went past me, I saw his ultra-thin girlfriend laughing with glee at the thrill of passing all of us poor family slobs in our vans and sedans. He managed to find holes in the downhill traffic to avoid vehicles going up-canyon, but whenever he darted back into the downhill lane, it forced folks to hit the brakes. He’d just disappeared around a curve about a mile ahead of us when a state trooper flashed by in his cruiser, lit up like a Christmas tree. A few minutes later I heard honking ahead of us. As we came around a curve, there was the BMW and the state cruiser stopped alongside the road. As cars went by, each would honk and people would wave at the jackass in the BMW. I couldn’t resist – it mortified my wife, but as we drove slowly past, I hit the horn twice and waved. The guy sat there, looking stoically straight ahead.

40

I was sitting on the freeway in Toronto (the 401, for those interested). Traffic was nearly at a dead stop; conditions were described as “stop and go.” I’m in the right lane next to the shoulder. The guy in front of me decides that since he needs to get off at the next exit and he is obviously so much more imporant than everybody else out there (not an uncommon trait in Toronto drivers), he will just pull onto the shoulder and drive on up. And he does.

But then I notice in my side mirror that about three or four cars back from me, a police car is also pulling onto the shoulder, and driving up. It passes me. By the time traffic gets up the road a ways and I can see what happened, Mr. Shoulderdriver has been pulled over by the police car.

Another time years ago, a bunch of us were on our way home late at night. Some of us had been drinking, but the driver of the car we were in hadn’t been. Anyway, we were heading for an expressway on-ramp, and we were following a guy who obviously had been drinking. He was weaving in and out of lanes, speeding up, slowing down, and so on; and he was heading for the on-ramp too.

But the police had set up a spot-check on the on-ramp. The guy in front of us was, like all cars on the ramp, pulled over. Except he didn’t pull over. He just stopped in the middle of the ramp, opened his door, and literally fell out in a heap. We couldn’t get past him until the police had picked him up, did the roadside tests as best they could when he could barely stand, arrested him, and somebody moved his car out of the way. It took about ten minutes for all this to be done, and we had a front-row seat.