This is something I don’t get about the USA. Do you really get stopped by the police so often that you can work out a standard behaviour? Not that I go by car particularly often, but only once have I been in one when it was stopped and that was because one of the headlights didn’t work.
Well that might be because the modern lights are blinding the drivers. Back in the day, it was one bubblegum light that rotated slowly. Now it’s a bank of strobe lights. I suspect the next generation lights will be LASER cannons.
I have noticed that some jurisdictions turn the front bank of lights off so oncoming traffic isn’t blinded.
I’ve averaged about 30,000 miles a year over the past 20 years and have only been stopped by the police 5 times that I can recall. Each time was for speeding and 4 stops resulted in tickets.
Washington State does as well.
Too bad it is mostly about collecting revenue. Cops are getting killed to balance budgets.
The lights are to inform other drivers that it’s safe to speed on by - the cop is too occupied with the car he has stopped to get his radar gun out.
Wow. That’s really weird. How do you know if it’s a real emergency or not? Often you can’t hear the sirens untill they are right on top of you. The lights you can see for miles.
Police officers here have a lot of leeway for making your life either very easy, or a huge pain in the ass, as well as expensive as hell - just based on a traffic stop. Most people speed, lots of people don’t wear their seatbelts, there’s a host of other stupid minor things that are often “wrong” with people’s driving or vehicle (tag lights out, lights broken or not on/not using turn signals when you pulled off the road, haven’t had your emissions controls checked recently enough… ).
Officers can cite and ticket you for all of that if they really want to make their point, and all of it’s perfectly legal. For most of it, you can go to court and argue the points/fines down, but not everyone can get off work/get to the courthouse, and even if you do, it’s a huge hassle.
So it’s easier to know and use a standard procedure for ‘making the officer NOT NERVOUS or angry with me.’ Most times, I’m pulled for speeding. I know this, the officer knows this - it’s in my best interests to be contrite, cooperative, and as honest and non-shady as possible so that he/she doesn’t get all upset with me for ALREADY breaking the law, which I was doing.
It just helps keep things as businesslike and formal as possible, which is a good thing where both parties are understandably under a bit of stress.
Some people do and some people don’t. My wife and I have both been driving for about 20 years and neither of us has ever been pulled over. I doubt we are all that unusual either.
I don’t know about you, but I keep my vehicle in roadworthy and code-conforming condition and I wear my seatbelt. As do most drivers I note on the road. As such, cops don’t have as much leeway as you claim in my experience.
The standard behavior is to be responsive and courteous, but not be obsequious if the police is asking you to do something that you do not feel you have an obligation to comply with, constitutionally speaking.
I live in a very rural area in the southeast. There are some seriously tragic vehicles on the roads where I live. I have my doubts that a significant portion of drivers in this area even know they’re SUPPOSED to check on the condition of their lights and whatnot.
Seatbelt use has gone up now that it’s a pullable offense rather than only a cite-after-pulled over offense, but I don’t think I could drive 10 minutes without seeing a popeye or a car with tape “replacing” a bodylight.
Heh. I’ve noticed that here in the US with the amber lights of security vehicles in shopping mall parking lights, but not cops. Even with security it strikes me as odd – that is, as something I’d be happy to see if I were someone who breaks into cars (or snatches purses, or whatever) in shopping mall parking lots.
As far as the standard behavior goes, it’s something they teach in Driver’s Ed and Defensive Driving classes as a standard behavior for not making the armed man twitchy while dealing with strangers. Most of the time when a cop pulls a guy over, it’s just a soccer mom or a college student or a welder who was speeding because they were in a hurry or who had a tail light out because they didn’t notice the bulb had burnt out (because honestly, when’s the last time you were behind your car when you were tapping the brakes?)
And every once in a while, it’s a guy who just blew up a building or murdered his wife or who is hopped up on cocaine or is a North Irish ultra-nationalist seeking to kill an Annapolis professor’s wife and kid for botching an assassination of the Prince of Wales.
OK, so one of those might have been a plotline from a Tom Clancy novel.
Point is, the cop really doesn’t normally have much of an idea what kind of person he is pulling over until he is dealing with them, and cops have been shot and killed doing routine traffic stops, so they are understandably nervous at times. So you pull as far over as you safely can, keep your hands wresting on top of the steering wheel (I was taught to cross my wrists and rest them on the wheel, to make it all the more clear I’m not about to try and drive off while he’s right next to my car).
You don’t go reaching for your wallet or digging through your glove box, because he doesn’t know if you’re looking for your license and registration or the .357 revolver you bought from a guy with your drug money. If you DO have a .357 revolver that you bought from a guy with your drug money in the glove box, I’m gonna go ahead and say just play it cool, maybe the cop will let you off with a warning if you don’t try to shoot him first.
But yeah, back to the OP, as others have said, the lights are flashing so the car is more visible and people give the cop (AND the driver he has pulled over, neither one wants to get rear ended by a guy doing 70 on the highway at night) enough room for safety’s sake. If drunk people are homing in on the flashing lights because they can see them, the problem isn’t with anything the cop is doing.
Oh, on that topic, don’t drink and drive. Seriously. Just take a cab or have a DD. Or do what my in-laws did and build a fully-stocked bar with a pool table and a Nintendo Wii in your basement (did I mention my in-laws are much awesomer than TV sitcoms and romantic comedies lead me to believe they would be?)
You’d probably also be happy to see the flashy lights if you had some sketchy guy following you towards your car in the parking lot, which might be part of the idea. Also, they might just want to avoid drivers backing their cars out of parking spaces and hitting the security guy’s car because they didn’t see him there.
Wait, they built this in YOUR house or theirs??? You have exceptionally rockin’ In-Laws.
In their house. I live in a dorm room on the 6th floor, so no bars in my basement.