Summary of Driving records

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am curious about driving records of other people. The points I am mainly interested in (which I have filled in for myself):

Driving for how long: 20 months

Miles driven: over 21K

Over the limit: 20 (When I started driving, it used to be 5 over the limit, ie, I would do 70 in a 65 mph zone. As time went on and got no tix, I have just gotten bolder)

Pulled over: Once, within a month of me starting to drive (Ran a red light as I was making a left; my excuse, I was following this mamoth trailer and I had no idea that the light had changed to red as the trailer made the turn)

Traffic Tix: None

Parking Tix: >5.
Interesting experiences: Had a tree fall on my car. TWICE. I hate Baltimore and its lousy city workers. Both times, they had cut the tree less than 6 months back. They did such a horrible job, they left weak branches behind. These were two different trees in different locations.

Basically, a friend of mine told me that your driving record kind of gets reset every 20K miles in this sense: You will get a ticket every 20K miles and then you start behaving yourself, ie, you will go back to 5 above, will look twice to avoid running a red light, etc. I want to see how true his idea is.

2

Driving: 35 years

Miles: Easily 300K, not sure.

Tickets: 2 - 1 for speeding, 1 for getting hit by someone when making a left turn.

Miles over limit - I try to keep up with not the fastest traffic, but the second fastest. This has obviously worked well, since I haven’t been caught in 30 years.

Parking tickets: none.

Interesting experience. My last accident happened when a clown pulled out of a store driveway right in front of me. I managed to slow down enough so that when I hit him the airbag didn’t deploy. When the cop came it turned out he was driving on a suspended license, and he didn’t have insurance. The cop asked me if I was wearing a seatbelt (I was) and then lit into this clown. Very satisfying.

3

Driving: 4 years

Miles: geez, I don’t know…I got a new car in February, and I’ve driven it 25,000.

Miles over limit: I generally don’t go 10 over, unless I’m in a hurry or with a lot of traffic

Tickets: 3 speeding (I’m in a hurry a lot, I guess). Two for 22 miles over, and one for 24 miles over.

Parking tickets: none

Interesting experience: lossing control and doing a complete 360 in the middle of the road. I honestly ended up turned back the right way, and not a scratch on me or the car. It wasn’t fun.

4

Driving: 31 years

Miles: 320K on current vehicle-didn’t retain old DOT logs from prior employ, which involved OTR. 2.5-3M miles is a good faith estimate.

Tickets: A few-for speeding, and a few for parking. When I was younger and had much less conscience, I’d park and kipe a ticket from another nearby ticketed vehicle, placing same under my own wiper. You can figure the results.

Miles over limit: 142MPH in a 65 zone-circa 1975. PSP issued a warning. Still can’t believe I didn’t go to jail that night.

5

Driving: 36 years

Miles: Probably over 1 million. for many years I did outside sales and logged over 50K/year.

Tickets: One for illegal lane change (2 wks after I got my lic) quite a few for speed over the years. One for a California lookout stop.
maybe 3 parking tics during that time. No tickets since 1997.

Miles over the limit: Depends, 20 maybe 25. Most ever as a driver 87. (152 in a 65 zone) as a passenger 108. (163 in a 55 zone). This was during a race in Nevada.
Fastest I have been stopped for: 89 on radar.
Fastest I have been given a pass on: Driving on interstate 5 in the middle of nowhere about 88 and I was passed by a CHP doing 95. He did not even look over at me.

Interesting experience: One week after the 1994 Northridge earthquake I had to travel on business to Virginia near DC. On the way back to the hotel I get stopped for speeding (I was out of the built up area passing farms, so I had assumed I was outside of city limits. Wrong) Cop looks at my license and tells me: “Did you know that California is the only state that has not signed the reciprocal agreement with Virginia?” I asked for the English translation and he tells me that he is supposed to take me to jail.
At this point I lost it. I looked the officer straight in the eye and said “This is just perfect, it’s not enough that my house got nuked last week in the earthquake, but now I’m gonna have to go to jail for a speeding ticket. Perfect, just fucking perfect”
The cop looked again at my license and asked how close I was to the quake (about 5 miles) and told me he was going to see what he could do.
He came back with a cite for failure to observe a road sign, I got to mail in $25. What a nice guy.

6

2.5-3 million miles in 31 years? That’s about 90,000 miles a year. Do you drive taxis or trucks or something for a living?
Me:

Driving: 17yrs

Miles: No idea, really. I’ve haven’t always had a car, and don’t own one now.

Over the limit: Depends on conditions. I’m much more careful than i was when i was younger. In retrospect, i really can’t believe that i survived my first few years on the road. On freeways and open roads, i’ll usually go a bit over, as long as i’m not the fastest guy on the road. In built-up areas, i pretty much stick to the limit.

Pulled Over: Twice in Australia; twice in the UK; never in Canada or the US.

Tickets: none for speeding; one for making an illegal turn; about 4 or 5 parking tickets.
In England, i got pulled over twice but never got a ticket. The first time, i had only been in the country a few weeks and i was lost. I went around a roundabout three or four times trying to figure out which exit i needed to take, and a cop pulled me over. When he heard my Aussie accent, and that i was lost, he just pointed me in the right direction.

About a year later i got pulled over for not displaying my registration tag in the car’s front window. It had fallen off the inside of the windscreen and onto the dashboard so the cop couldn’t see it. And it was the same cop who had pulled me over the previous year. We had a bit of a chat, and he sent me on my way with a suggestion to fix the sticker properly to the windshield.

7

Starting driving on a learners permit at 14 in 1976.

Not too many miles, I average less than 10,000/year.

Only ever had 2 speeding tickets, got the 2nd within 10 minutes of the first. No other types of tickets at all. I’ve never made an insurance claim.

Interesting fact 1 - My dad received a 1 million mile safe driving award for logging over 1,000,000 company car miles with no accidents. He didn’t get his first ticket until he was over 70.

Interesting fact 2 - I’ve had licenses in Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, and now the UK.

Interesting fact 3 - I’ve driven all 4 possible steering wheel/lane position combinations. That is, a left hand drive car in the US (right side of road) and the UK (left side of road) and a right hand drive car in the UK and France.

8

Been driving for 31 years.

Miles driven: including race cars, well over a million miles.

Over the limit: I drive at a speed I am comfortable with. Sometimes I am the fasted car on the road, most of the time I just go with the flow.

Pulled over: I have been pulled over 4 times in the last 15 years and was not ticketed. Twice was for speeding, once for driving over a curb and the last time for stopping at a yellow light. Yep, stopping at a yellow light. Traffic was heavy moving slowly, the light turned yellow and instead of risking getting caught in the intersection, I stopped. I knew the officer was behind me and though he would appreciate my exceptional driving skills. Nope. He was late for court and decided to take it out on me. He cussed me out as he almost rear ended me. He said he would have given me a ticket if he had the time.

Traffic tickets: One in 1973, failure to yield, accident. 1974, following to closely, accident. 1974, speeding, 60 in a 45. 1979, speeding, 32 in a 25. Haven’t had one since.

Parking tickets: None. Once found a barrell chained to my car for illegal parking. I just happened to have a pair of bolt cutters in my car.

Interesting experiences: Had a tree land in the road right behind my car. The pickup behind me hit it. Another time a couple of cars crashed into each other on an icy bridge. I swerved to avoid them and did a 360 spin and didn’t hit a thing. A couple more cars then piled into the accident. I know where the phrase “shittin’ little green bricks” came from.

9

Driving: 19 years (I got my license back when 14-year-olds could be issued driver’s licenses in Idaho; the minimum age has since been raised to 16).

Miles: Hard to say how much I drove before I finally got my first car in 1994. I put about 60,000 miles on it, and I’ve put about 17,000 miles on my current car. Overall, I’d estimate about 150,000 miles roughly.

Over the limit: In my rebellious teenage years I routinely drove 70 mph on roads where 55 mph was posted. These days I tend to go 5 to 10 mph over the limit. Now that the speed limit on the interstate is 75 I can comply with the posted limit more easily.

Fastest I have actually driven: 95 mph in the Nissan Sentra that I currently drive.

Tickets: Probably about a dozen or so, all but one for speeding (the other was for following too closely), most of them occuring during the first 6 years. At one point I was in danger of losing my license. I have since moderated my driving habits and now I only get nailed once every 2-3 years or so.

Fastest I was ever cited for: 72 in a 55 zone.

Getting pulled over: Only twice have I escaped being issued a citation. Every time otherwise resulted in being issued a ticket. The most recent incident was earlier this month when I was stopped for a burned out taillight and also informed that I was driving over the limit. I was polite and calm with the officer and he kindly let me off with a warning about the speed violation.

Parking tickets: None, unless I count the one I got from the over-zealous parking nazis at my college.

Accidents: None, thank God.

Interesting experience: Can’t really think of any, just the one time a couple years ago when some deer were crossing the road and I almost hit one of them.

10

Driving: 20 years in April

Miles: about 750,000 - I have a commercail drivers license and drove big rigs for about 3 years

Over the limit: no more than 5 - we have photo radar here calibrated to 8 over. I did hit 150MPH once on a motorcycle. Fun once, won’t do it again!

Tickets: None. Ever. Really

Pulled over: Not a once

Accidents: 3 - All ruled by insurance to be 100% other driver’s fault

Parking tickets: probably 10, mostly when I was young, arrogant and stupid

Interesting experience: Had a part time job for a couple of years driving British double decker tour bus. Seniors and high school kids. Both groups present challenges.

11

Driving with a licence for 27 years. Drove work trucks for my familys business since I was about 12.

Pretty much obey the speed limit. Mostly just drive with trafic.

Tickets: 3.

Accidents: None.

Parking tickets: None.

Interesting experience: Hmmm. Nothing much. I drive over the continental divide every day. Or, how about this. Woke up one morning to a moose licking all the salt from the road off my car. Made quite a mess of it.

12

I’ve been driving for five years. I have no idea how many miles I’ve racked up over that time, but I know I’ve done over 25,000 miles just on road trips, plus whatever I’ve racked up in everyday driving.

I pretty much obey the speed limit, although on straight, smooth roads with no houses close to the street I’ll usually go 55 regardless of the posted limit. On highways I like to go around 70, which was 15 over the limit in New York but right at the limit in Texas.

Pulled over once for drinking an IBC root beer - the cop wanted to see if it was real beer. Pulled over again for going 15 miles over the limit in western Louisiana. That was kind of annoying, first of all because the only reason I was going that fast is I was headed down a hill and wasn’t riding my brakes - I honestly gained 7 mph just from coasting down the hill with my feet off the pedals - and secondly because the cop treated me like shit because my license and my car were from New York State and the car was registed in my grandmother’s name, not mine (we have the same last name, however), and he gave me all sorts of abuse about why I’d come from New York to Louisiana and what I was doing there and where I was going and this and that and the other, hollering at me the entire time.

Traffic tickets: I got a speeding ticket for the abovementioned traffic stop. That’s it.

Parking tickets, not a one. Until six months ago I lived in a rural area where there weren’t any parking restrictions to be ticketed for.

I have been in two accidents, neither of which I got in trouble for. The first one, I went off the road during an ice storm and struck a metal guardrail. The guardrail prevented my car from ending up in the bottom of a very steep ravine. This was right after I got my unrestricted license. I got a little hysterical but I realized the car was OK and continued where I was going, much more slowly. In the second, I was going up a hill on a dirt country road on my way to school when another driver suddenly roared over the crest of the hill and drove down the center of the road. He took off my driver’s side mirror and tore a piece of the sheet metal on my door back like the lid of a sardine can. He was ticketed for failure to keep left and I didn’t get in trouble because my skid marks proved to the cop that I had been on my own side of the road. The other driver’s father called my parents’ house that night, threatening to sue me. Obviously nothing ever came from it. I bet he went to a lawyer and got laughed at.

13

Driving: About 1 1/2 years licenced, 3 1/2 years including my permit

Miles:16,000?

Average over the limit: in town, 5-10, highway, 10-20
Fastest I’ve gone:110, in a Solara, in a 75 (not that impressive, I know)

Pulled over: Once, warning, Officer Quote “I clocked you going 58 in a 45, and I know you were going faster before I clocked you. SLOW DOWN!” As he walked away, I gaped at him, I was so amazed, stuck my head out the window, and thanked him. I had also forgotten my licence at home…

Tickets: 0
Parking tickets: 0

Accidents: 5 :One while I was in Drivers Ed (their fault), One when I hit a tree in the yard (D’oh)(my fault), One where I hit a woman when I accelerated and she didn’t (my fault, no injuries), One when a girl hydroplaned in front of me on the interstate (her fault, nothing but bumps and bruises), and once when a woman and I both backed out at the same time (our fault). God, I sound clumsy!

Interesting experience: I got into an accident while I was in driver’s ed. Not in the same period of time that I was taking driver’s ed, but when I was in the driver’s ed car with the instructor. 2 guys in seprate cars ran a red left turn, and I bumped into one of them. Gah, did that suck. Luckily it wasn’t my fault, the officer was very nice, and everone was ok, and I still passed drivers ed.