Always check 'yer six!
 

I had one of those interesting mornings…

I’ve finally figured out why I was having trouble with the fuel maps in the EMU- if you want both I/J maps turned on, you gotta manually enable the second one for each injector channel individually in the I/J Parameter screen. So last night I made a new set, and this morning I went out to try ‘em out and capture some datalogs.

My favorite place for this sort of thing is Alga Road just east of El Camino Real in Carlsbad. Very few stoplights and lots of long, uphill stretches where you can floor it in the lower gears and really let the engine wind up. I should mention that the top was up (chilly morning) and that I’m somewhat tall. This becomes important later.

So I’m sitting at the stoplight on El Camino southbound waiting to turn left onto Alga. The light turns green, and I head off. As soon as I’m straightened out heading east I give it the gas. About the time I’m ready to shift out of fourth (nearing the crest of a hill) I hear the siren, look back and see the lights. Ok, flashers on, pull over to the side, engine off, hands on the wheel, look straight ahead. The drill.

Officer: “Do you know why I stopped you?”
Me: “Yeah, I guess I was going a bit fast back there” (important tip: Just admit it. This is not the time to play dumb.)
Officer: “You were doing close to 80 MPH back there.”
Me: (thinking: Only 80?)
Officer: “You drive like this all the time?”
Me: (thinking: Only when I’m tuning my illegal, non-CARB-approved engine management system)

Now, I don’t condone road-racing. I’m a reasonably mature and restrained person, but this is a nice straight section of four-lane divided highway, and traffic is light today. But because there are a few neighborhoods around, it’s a 45MPH limit.

So he goes back to the Crown Vic with my license and registration, which I’m thinking I won’t be seeing again any time soon. I’ve always assumed that getting pulled over for speeding with boost and EGT gauges on the A-pillar, a vent-mounted WB02, and a computer on the dash showing your datalogs was pretty much instant impound. Which is about when I remembered that since I had been logging, my vehicle speed graph was still sitting there prominently on the display. (Very discretely reach over and hit the “hibernate” button on the PC while he’s walking back to the cruiser.)

At any rate, I’m cool and reasonable with the officer, and at the end of the conversation I’m holding nothing worse than a written warning!

When I got back home, I read the warning, and it says I was doing 75. More importantly, the speed was estimated by pacing, no radar hit. I checked the data logs from the run a bit later, and it looks like before he hit the siren I’d peaked at 167KPH, which is 104 MPH. (thinking: God, am I lucky!)

Oh, about the top being up? Well, I’m about 6’2” tall, and between that, my small glass rear window, and the fact that I keep the side mirrors turned out to the side (rather than inward) means my rearward visibility is pretty poor. The police officer had been sitting right behind me at the stoplight before I took off. :eek:

Bahaa @ the last sentence!

Good story, I try to keep it reasonable but most of the drive to work is highway. My V1 is my friend.

BTDT at the last sentence. four wheel burnout and cut across 3 lanes and made a HARD left onto a side street. cop was behind me at the light.

but guess what? VERBAL warning. hehe

luck SOBs i always admit my mistakes and i always get tickets, but its only in my Camry im still ticket free in my miata.

Great story. You got off.

my first ticket.... err tickets 10 years ago...
I left 150' of rubber behind my 70 Oldsmobile (455 cid and somewhere north of 500 lb ft). Cop on a motorcycle was the second vehicle behind me. The judge (bench trial) hit me with something like "improper start" and let me off of laying drags and reckless driving.

second ticket...
Driving somehwere in my E420 on a divided highway, saw a cop with a radar gun on the opposite side. On the return trip, without thinking, approched the cop at 115. When I saw him, I hit the brakes *hard*. Came by the cop at the speed limit, but we all knew what was coming, so I pulled over. Before he wrote me the ticket, he told me that my car caught his eye when he saw the front end dip down (when I hit the binders). He wrote it at 71 in a 50 and told me how lucky I was he couldn't prove more.

i got pulled over for a 65 in a 30.. it was like 1 AM and no one was on the road... needless to say i was VERY kind to the officer and i now have to go to court

What, did you blow him or something?

What happens after getting caught seems to be luck- is the cop an a$$hole or not. I've always followed the "yes sir" method to minimize the pain and it works MOST of the time.

I'm glad my new car has an integrated radar detector. Saved my bacon already on several small two-lane back roads I like to drive on.

yeah i am glad you got off ok wow maybe when i am old theyll cut me some slack :gay: i always get a ticket for some reason but luckily i stay away from them for the most part so i dont have to many tickets.

I got a streetracing ticket for 99 in a 45 one time years ago. That wasnt the only ticket I have gotten. At last count I have been pulled over 18 times. I have gotten out of 14 of them and went to traffic school on the other 4.

damn remind me to ask you how you got out did nismo hook you up or what.

back when I had a dusty mauve corrado, I always told them some crazy shit. "Its a blue gti, its a black scirocco, or some other random shit. I had several tickets in that car, and always got a lawyer to say the facts were obviously incorrect.

I know people always bs about the car color or some shit, but when both the model and color are incorrect, i guess it works out.

yeah the always do black mazda on mine maybe i should ditch the mazda badge as well, the right it for coupe to go figure i love my hardtop

You guys are lucky bastards. I'm going to court soon for doing 35 in a 30. No, I wasn't radar-ed but apparently a visual was good enough for RECKLESS DRIVING... if you're at Deal's Gap. I was totally in my lane, and the car wasn't even leaned over at all. I was polite too.

haha great story, sounds like my luck :)

i was doing some doughnuts in a parking lot kinda out in the sticks and two cops randomly pull in and setup a speed trap (my guess) so i have got the lot stinking of rubber with smoke everywhere and my car pulls out of the smoke and i am looking right at them. they just waved and i casually drove away. but then other times i go 6 over on the interstate and pay 280$ in fines for three tickets for bogus shit so i guess i still come out the same with getting off on some and getting hit hard on others... i dont let it bother me as i get away with alot of shit on a daily basis to still only have 4 points :gay:

one of the few nice things about flint... I can come around a corner 30* out of parallel with my path of travel and cops just wave and possibly blink their lights once.

Al Hounos and others,

I think a lot of it has to do with where you are and where you come from. Speeding a bit through your own neighborhood is one thing, but just being at a place like the gap makes you a target. I mean, you went out there for a reason, right? :rolleyes:

Out here we've got a similar bunch of roads, collectively referred to as Palomar Mountain. (guess which mountain they run across?) Palomar is a big-time mecca for the local sportbike crowd in particular, and fatalities are common. Just do some searching on the web and you'll find some awesome helmet-cam footage.

But recently, it seems that the attitude of the local law in the area has changed from "we don't care if they kill themselves" to a slightly more enforcement-oriented one. Car drivers seem to be more often targeted, probably because they're easier to catch.

Realy makes you wish we had something like the Nürburgring here...


I remember a while back one of our members observed that, when budgeting for a turbo project, one line item which most folks forget to include is the speeding fines and insurance premiums you'll be running up. :bigtu:

I think you can get away with a lot more in a Miata than in many other cars. I think the police have a hard time believing a Miata is really going that fast and tend to ignore us. I went right past a parked cop a couple of months ago with the rear tires in a full boil in a 25mph zone and they did nothin'. Not the first or last time either.
Gotta love that about our hairdresser's cars.:bigtu:

Well see that's the thing. I had seen cops on the way up, so I was careful to take it easy. If he had actually caught me doing what I would've if I had done a clear recon run, it wouldn't have been so infuriating!