After hitting the gym and then picking up the fixin’s for a nice fetuccini alfredo, I headed home like I normally do. Most of the way, it’s a winding road with two lanes on either side, and I can practically drive it with my eyes closed. I know by rote the sections where it’s faster to be in the left lane and the ones where I should stay to the right, so I can get home in about 35 minutes without breaking the speed limit. And that’s what I do, because I enjoy my time in my rolling listening room.

Today, while I was passing through Hingham Harbor in my normal left lane approach to the rotary, a driver in an SUV couldn’t decide if she felt like stopping short or changing lanes. Being the skilled driver that she was, she failed miserably at both tasks, forcing me to stop short as she plugged up two lanes. My next impulse was to get the hell away from her before she rolled me into her pile-up, so I shot up to the speed limit, went through the rotary and headed for home.

Then, “Slow Ride” by Foghat came the radio. For the next mile and a half, I was cruising along, semi-oblivious to the outside world singing, “Slow Ride… nah nah nuhnuh nahnuhnuh… Take it Easaay…” when all of a sudden, the blue lights of a police car filled my rear view.

You know that sick feeling you get when you see the blue lights directly behind you? I didn’t feel that. I just pulled over and tried to let the cruiser pass. When it didn’t, I just thought, “That’s weird,” and wondered what was going on. I shut off “Slow ride,” shut the car down, and rolled down my window.

License and Registration,” the officer said, without giving me any sort of explanation as to what was going on.
“Uh, ok.” I said, as I fumbled for my wallet in my sweatshirt.
“Roll up your window for me?” he said, as I kept looking.
“Uh, ok.” I said, trying to figure out what was going on.

Then, it dawned on me: Although he still hadn’t told me why he had pulled me over, he was checking the legality of my window tint.

“Ohhh. The tint. It’s legal.”
“It doesn’t look legal.”
“It is. You can check it if you like.”
“I have a light meter in the cruiser.”
“Ok.”
“Maybe the fronts are legal, but not the backs.”
“They’re all the same…”
“No, they’re not…”
“The place I got them from doesn’t do illeg…
“Do you want me to get the light meter? Do you? It’s a $300 fine if I find that it’s not legal.”

At that point, the officer had no interest in what I had to say, and was getting more combative. I still didn’t know why I had been pulled over and tried to diffuse the situation.

“Listen, I’m not trying to be argumentative here…”
“Do you want me to get the meter? Because I’ll go get it right now.”
“The place I got these windows tinted at doesn’t do illegal tint.”
“Where was it done?”
“On the North Shore. The same place that tints the windows on the John Hancock Building.”
“The reason I pulled you over is you went into that rotary back there too fast.”

I stared at him confused, at first because of the lack of transition, and my first thought was, “what rotary?” By the time I figured out that he was talking about the the rotary a good mile and a half behind me, he had already moved on.

“…and I had you at 50 while following you”
[confused stammering] What? I don’t think…”
“When was the last time you got pulled over?”
“Geez I don’t know… years ago.”

I think I said that to the wind as he returned to his cruiser. Within 2 minutes he was back at my car…

“I’m going to let you off this time, Jon, because you were wearing your seat belt.”

Seat belts are actually required by Massachusetts law, so wearing them is not an optional action, but a required one. I also wasn’t really happy that he felt he could skip the respectful “Mr. Dyer” or even “Jonathan,” and jump directly to calling me “Jon.” I was getting further confused, but I seemed to be off the chopping block, so I just shut the fuck up and let him finish.

“Ok. Thanks.”
“When you drive on an unposted road, the speed limit is thirty.”

If it’s not thickly settled, I thought the limit was forty. The road we were on was desolate enough to have a posted limit of 45 MPH. I was seriously beyond confused…

“Ok,” I said.

He then went back to his cruiser and I headed home confused at why I got pulled over for supposedly speeding, only to get released because I was wearing a seat belt, which I’m required to do by law.

The only way that I can piece the whole thing together was to concoct this story:

The officer saw a black, tinted car with a big ass wing go through the rotary faster than some of the complete idiots who can’t get it together enough to merge, let alone handle driving in a circle. As I passed through the rotary, I was either under the speed limit, or he would’ve put on the lights and given chase. He then followed my car for a 1.5 miles to a straight, 1 mile road with a posted speed limit of 40 to maximize the chances of a speeding ticket. As we rolled along at the speed limit for a half mile (with me oblivious to the fact that he was even behind me thanks to Foghat) he realized that his ticket chances were dropping drastically as we approached the town border. He then lit them up, and pulled me over. Because the supposed speed limit variance was probably more like 5 MPH, the officer was aware that it was small enough that it could be explained away by calibration issues or error. When combined with a clean record, the odds of wasting a day in court for no reason were high enough that he sought other opportunities to write a ticket by focusing on my supposedly illegal tint. When that didn’t pan out, he let me go.

I was lucky to not have to fight this one out in court, but it the officer was confusingly combative and seemed to be looking for any excuse to write me up. He didn’t, though, which was even more confusing. I like to believe that he was just trying to keep the streets safe, but the whole thing seemed a little predatory.

Posted in Anger, Cars