My husband- a terrible driver. My proof? Speeding tickets. Yesterday we’re driving to work together. We’re on a back road (two lanes, speed limit 45). He’s doing about 55 or 60. We are approaching a school zone, so I say “You’de better slow down, there are going to be cops out because it’s the first day of school”
We crest the hill, he hits the brakes- too late. There is a cop at the bottom of the hill turning on his lights and he pulls us over. My idiotic husband gets a ticket for doing 47 in a 30 (the speed limit dropped during my comment to him). So I don’t know the deal- he gets tickets all the time. He also loves to make fun of the fact that I leave early no matter where I’m going and I don’t go over the speed limit, no matter what (unless someone in the car is bleeding).
So this is just my mini rant about the fact that he just doesn’t get it. And now we’ll have another fine and our insurance will go up. Again.
I told him if he tries to fight the ticket in court, I’m showing up and telling them he was going even faster then he got clocked!!
PS- Don’t flame me- this is a lighthearted post- we rarely bicker, but I just find it bizzare/amusing that he just can’t get a grip on this bad habit.
An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; A pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.
I personally have never had a speeding ticket (knock wood), but like Zette, I leave early & keep to the posted speeds. My husband is like Zette’s, though. I feel like I should be preparing for takeoff with him, instead of just getting ready to go to the grocery store. Geez. Slow down, Earnhardt!
There’s only been once when I’ve really wanted him to go fast, and that was when I was in labor with our daughter. Now we’re expecting our second, and I’ll not complain if he breaks the speed of light this time, either. No cop in the world will give him a ticket in a case like that. They’ll give him an escort.
I’m sorry Zette, Unclebeer, you guys are going to hate me for this One day, a fellow cop and myself were running radar at a busy avenue when the whole thing went down. No more radar waves or anything on the flashing light doohickies on the face of the gun.
My buddy had just purchased a hair dryer and other assorted purchases for his wife and the package was sitting in the back seat of his cruiser.
We took it out and tied the cord to the rear view mirror and proceeded to run radar with his wife’s hair dryer. Granted we had nothing legal to base anything on and you could’ve zipped by us like Mario Andretti and our hair dryer wasn’t a legal basis for shit. But we had fun pointing it at people and watching their brake lights come on.
We were laughing so hard and having way too much fun. He decides to test how gullible people are so he takes her new curling iron out of its package and points it at oncoming traffic while pressing the heat button. Again, the same results, much braking and sweating, probably because radar detectors just don’t work very well against hair dryers and curling irons! By this time we are crying with laughter and I spilled an almost full cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee over his wife’s new hair dryer.
Yeah, we basically came up zero with tickets that day, but we sure had a laugh. Although I don’t think my buddy’s wife was amused about the condition her hair dryer and curling iron were given to her, out of the box with coffee stains and powdered sugar all over them.
The man o’ the house tended to drive rather speedily as well, until we figured something out - speed metal and/or industrial music does not a slow driver make.
Now he listens to mellow music in the car and we haven’t had the ticket problems.
Blue,
I wouldn’t care what you were pointing at me- that’s actually very funny I have never, ever hit my brakes when I saw a cop- I don’t speed. Period. My husband, however, would have stood his car up on end! We actually laughed about it. He said he was going to go to court and tell them he had to speed so he could get away from his wife quicker. Nice.
(too bad we work together!-no escape! MWUHAAAAAAA!)
PS- I’m not some “holier then thou” person. I had a close friend killed by a speeding driver in a residential area when we were kids and as a result I’m pretty sensitive to it.
An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; A pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.
I think part of the temptation to speed is the type of car that you have. When I drove my dad’s convertible Mustang GT, I tended to be a much more agressive driver (not just faster) than when I was behind the wheel of my Chevy Celebrity.
Mustang attitude:
“Speed up or get out of the way already!”
“Bet I can pass you!”
Celebrity attitude:
“Hey, I’m doing the speed limit, get off my tail!”
“No need to rush; I’ll get there soon enough.”
This is not a difference based on age or maturity level; I had access to both cars at the same age. The thing was, it took me quite a while to recognize this difference in myself.
Now that I am 10 years older, I am anything but a fast agressive driver. All part of a young man growing up, I guess.
Speeding ticket? What’s that? Y’all need to move to Atlanta. On the interstates, as long as 1/2 of the wheels on a vehicle are touching the pavement, the cops will pretty much leave you alone. I have gotten 3 speeding tickets in 21 years of driving, but never on an interstate. I deserved them all, and hundreds more to boot. I consistently drive 10-15 MPH over the posted limit (55-70) on the interstates. Course, so does everyone else. The average speed on I-285 near where I work is 85.
We may talk slow, but we drive fast!
The overwhelming majority of people have more than the average (mean) number of legs. – E. Grebenik
Two points- first, my husband drives a snazzy 1998 Ford Tauras. That’s right, four doors- family car. No excuse there.
Also, he doesn’t just speed on the highway (where most people speed) he does it on our back roads (we live in the country, and even our cities are really small). Very dangerous- we have all sorts of animals running into the road (dogs, deer) and other obsticles. He’s just an ijit. Usually a ticket slows him down for a month or so, then he’s leadfoot again.
An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; A pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.
Hah, Zette, my husband has received three tickets while driving with me. I cannot be bad luck, since I haven’t had a ticket since I was 18. ( Doing 75 in a 25. Wrote up for 5 over because I was honest with the cop.)
Driving the posted speeds IMHO is horseshit. If I did the speed limit it would take me forever to get somewhere. On the highway, I average at 90. On the country lanes in dipville here, I average 60. Dirt roads, about 40, depending on their condition.
If the cops ( and I love cops) want to slow us down, why don’t they put in sleeping policemen (speed bumps)on the 25 mph or school zones. The things cannot cost that much to put in, and the road crews of this world love nothing more than slowing up traffic and making extra cash in the mean time. Nothing works to slow down speeders more than the fear of a screwed up alignment on their car and alignments cost more than a ticket.
Blue Pony - HAH, you and your buddy should try pointing a vibrator at the traffic…see if that would work. Or just put a dummy in the car with the hair dryer.
I am a fast driver. If I’m on an open interstate and the visibility is good, I have no qualms about doing 15 over the limit-- even if the limit is 70.
But I am not an aggressive driver. I don’t speed in traffic, in a residential area, or in a school zone. I signal when changing lanes or making a turn. If someone wants to pass me, I move over and let them by. I do not tailgate, I do not rubberneck, and I do not talk on the phone while driving.
I am a New York driver, and I’m damn proud of it.
Of course I don’t fit in; I’m part of a better puzzle.
I always drive exactly 10MPH over the posted limits anywhere. I find that I pass more people than pass me, but the ratio is not too horrible. I have one ticket since 1987 and that was in an area where the limit went down and I forgot to compensate with a cop right behind me.
From my feckless youth, I naturally slow down when I see a cop, but I really don’t think it would matter with my rule of thumb, Sure, I may have a bored cop mess with me, but I don’t think so.
Kinda funny how they give out speeding tickets sometimes. I’ve been a passenger in vehicles that have been pulled over, and it does seem that if you’re honest with the cop, they cut you some slack. I was in the car with a boyfriend a few years ago, and he was doing about 78-79 (this was before the limit was raised). He got pulled over, and the cop asked him if he knew how fast he was going. My boyfriend said “Somewhere between 75 and 80, sir.” The cop gave him a ticket…for 5 over.
Then there’s my mom. When I was about 12 years old, my mom was driving me & about 5 other neighborhood kids to school, for a day-camp thing in the summer. We were late, and she was speeding. I don’t remember how fast she was going, but it wasn’t too ridiculous. She got pulled over, and my mom very nicely explained that we were late for day camp. Like I said, there were 6 kids in the car. The cop looked at us, looked at my mom, and said “Just take it easy from here on out, okay?” I think he took pity on her, toting us kids.
I’ve been stopped only once, for doing 68 in a 50. That was three years ago and I got off with a warning. Since then I keep within 5 mph of the posted limit (60-70) and I leave early enough that I don’t need to drive like a maniac to be on time.
You HAVE to drive carefully where I’m living now. There are motorcyclists all over and drivers from New Mexico apparently get their licenses free with a ten-dollar purchase at Wal-Mart.
– Sylence.
“The problem with reality is the lack of background music.” – Anon
I’m in my car for one reason: to get to my destination. The slower my car is going, the longer I’m in my car, the less time I have at my destination.
If I’m doing a 300-mile drive, going 60 miles an hour, it’ll take me 5 hours. Going 75, it’ll take me 4. That gives me an extra hour to spend in the place where I really want to be.
You bet I speed. I’ve gotten my share of tickets. But I’ll continue to drive at speeds that are safe and slam on my brakes whenever I see someone like Bluepony. I hope you’re enjoying yourself now, because when I’m president, the first thing I’m going to do is make every interstate like the autobahn.
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
I am amazed to hear about people who NEVER speed…how can you not? The places I have lived, I’d have been killed long ago trying to go 45 while everyone else is going 65-70. (Chicago-dwellers: North Lakeshore Drive?)
Where I live now (Florida: God’s Waiting Room) I feel much more threatened by old blind people in their Cadillacs going about 20 mph under the limit and not signaling turns. Nothing against the grandmas and grandpas, but I really wish they would test more often as people get older.
Speaking of which, who else is terrified of getting old and losing crucial judgment cells? My grandmother finally stopped driving at about 90 after a family member was in a car with her in a rainstorm: she just stopped the car–in the lane–because “she couldn’t see.” Didn’t pull over or anything. Yikes.
Zette, the same thing just happened to us. On Labor Day my husband and I were driving the kids to his parents’ for a holiday cookout. I bitch constantly about his driving. I had just told him to slow down when we passed a cop with someone pulled over on the other side of the highway. The blue lights came on, and it was a done deal. He clocked him at 66 in a 55, but wrote the ticket for 61. It’s only an $18 ticket, but he plans to fight it in court. What can you do?
One day, a fellow cop and myself were running radar at a busy avenue when the whole thing went down. No more radar waves or anything on the flashing light doohickies on the face of the gun.