Right so I was driving down coming up to a light and it turned yellow and I was already at the (no return point) you know like 3 car lenths from the light and right when I was in the middle of my turn it changed to Red and thier was a cop caticorner to me. My first reaction was SH*t, I'm going to get a ticket for rolling a red light or something, so I pull into walgreens and go thru the parking lot and notice he is following me so I turn right come around back to where the dumb light was and went straight this time and he flashes his light so i pull into the parking lot of Quiznos and have my insurance and license out before he gets out. I'm nervous as hell and I'm 16 so he thinks I'm in-experienced at driving and what not ( I get on the freeway in Houston and drive in traffic every day)... so he can't get over how my parents bought me a Mini Cooper S, and he's going on and says "alright i'll let you go but don't let me catch you do that again or i'll cite you" plus i got a thumbs up from the cop

 

Here's a hint if you see a light that has been GREEN for a while it will at somepoint change colors soon! usually to YELLOW then to RED Prepare yourself accordingly.

From reading this all I've determined is you are indeed one lucky kid.

 

I know, I know now thinking of the situation it's funny, but what a great man leutenant Hill was for giving me a warning gotta love the guy

 

And there you have your answer to your auto vs stick... if you had an auto the cop would have arrested you. Sorry auto drivers, it is just not the same car

 

I don't think he would have he was asking how much horses, ft lb of torque, and accelaration, I think he would have been more amazed with the paddle shifters becuase he noticed the cruise and radio control buttons on the steering wheel.

 

Thank goodness, Green Goblin.

 

Haha, nice.

How long have you been driving stick?

 

What part of Houston were you in? I have noticed that you are more likely to get a ticket than others. Oh and if you are driving through the villages on Memorial Drive, watch your speed. They cops there are very strict.

 

Congrats on getting your cherry popped...LOL

 

Thats an interesting way to put it You got lucky man, beware of those changing lights

 

Here's a hint: watch the cross walk signs. If they're flashing "don't walk", the light's about to change.

 

That's what I use.


You need to add: If it's night (outside of regular "busy" traffic time) and the walk light is solid red (not just flashing) and a car pulls up to the cross intersection, the light will change almost instantly. (At least here in the Cleveland area it will)

 

I would have given your *** a ticket just for this attitude. Hate to break it to you but you ARE inexperienced at 16. Time is the requisite for experience. and you havent even lived let aloned driven long egnough to consider yourself experienced even million mile truckers have not seen it all and people do new creatively stupid crap every day.....The cop and you KNOW you blew through an intersection on a yellow light. then you try to loose him by quickly pulling in a parking lot of a buisness you had no intention of going to. If you had been actually going to that store he MAY have never did anything but when you just go back out to the street he lights you up because it is clear that you were just being elusive and suspecious. I think that you were acting so suspeciously that cop needed to pull you over just to run the tags to see if it were stolen....experienced drivers wouldn't flip out just because a light went yellow and a cop was nearby

 

planeguy, you hit the nail on the head! You took the words right off my keyboard. Just because you played GT3 everyday after school does not make you an experienced driver. My niece who is only 12 tells me how great of a driver she is. Because how well she plays GT3 along with how her dad lets her sit on his lap when they drive on the beach and never gets stuck. This is what you call a false sense of security.

 

I agree with the last 2 posts. Some of us on this site have more than twice as manys years of driving experience, than you have on this planet.

Mark

 

I agree with the last three.

However, being 18, I know that since I am insanly ranked on Project Gotham Racing 3, I am very able to drift my dads Veyron around any corner.




::end sarcasm here::

 

Lucky you got off. I got 2 tickets in one week. I do however, disagree somewhat with the experiance thing. I'm 18 and I drive 90 miles a day to work and back. I drive on the worst freeways and highways in michigan and I have seen plenty myself. I know that I'm an excellant driver regardless of what my age is because I drive twice as much as the normal person.

 

The cop was thinking right. If you lived in WI you wouldn't even be able to drive alone at night yet or with more then 2 passengers, much less call yourself experienced.

If I was the cop I would have slammed you hard with a ticket. Blowing a red, illegal travel through a private lot...

I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but it's the only way you'll learn. But since he let you off you've learned nothing, except that maybe you'll get away with it again.

The only thing that makes you experienced is time. I'm 8 years your senior and wouldn't even come close to calling myself experienced, even though I'm accident and traffic violation free.

Here... here is some stuff to read...
http://www.iihs.org/research/topics/teenagers.html

http://www.iihs.org/research/topics/rlr.html

 

Talking about traffic lights, i recently went on vacation in Guatemala and i noticed that when a green light is about to change, it flashes for a couple seconds giving you a decent warning that yellow is coming, i thought that was an awesome feature that should be used here in the U.S.

 

I have a mere 62 mile commute, does that mean that I have only 2/3rds your skill ?

Actually when I was your age - many years ago - I told my father that I was a way better driver than he is, he was (and is) over cautious and not really interested in driving as anything other than a way to get from A to B.

By my 18th birthday I had been racing motorcycles for ten years and cars for about a year. I considered myself to be the cream of the crop, the absolute best driver on the road.

Obviously the string of tickets that I picked up where not my fault, I was such a great driver that I was more than capable of handling my car (or motorcycle) at twice the speed limit, my reactions where way faster than some old guy in his 40's. I did try to tell the judge that, but for some reason he considered me arrogent ?

Right ?

Obviously the crash that put me in hospital for seven months with a broken neck and many other fractures was not my fault - it had nothing at all to do with my speed it was all the fault of some old guy that could not judge my speed pulling out on me.....

Pride normally comes before a fall.

Getting a ticket or two is a good wake-up call, assuming you can actually learn from them.....

 

My comment with my commute is that I drive a lot more and have experiance a lot more than an average 18 year old.

I also never claimed that I didn't deserve or that it wasn't my fault I got a ticket. One was a 5 over on the highway. I'm pretty sure driving 5 over the speed limit on the highway makes someone arrogant and a bad driver.

I'm not some dumb kid that had his parents buy him a new car. This is my car and I pay for it, along with insurance and gas.

And I certainly do drive more conservatively. I even took down my radar to motivate me to keep my speeds down. I really can't afford more tickets or to have my parents find out.

 

I'm sorry about your accident, but glad you're still here to share that story.

Thank you for sharing it... I hope some of the more "arrogant" ones around here will learn from it.

I have a friend in the WI Sherrif's Dept. who explained to me in great length on how an impact from a car going 30mph is 10x that of the impact of a bullet. Yet people fear bullets and abuse vehicles.

Vehicles, in the hands of the arrogant, are nothing more then tools to kill or injure people.

 

I swear the number of arrogant teens apearing around here is driving me nuts:impatient
Oh, so in two years you have motored twice as much as the normal person .......That just makes your equivallent driving age 20. Not alot of diffrence between 18 and 20

 

BTW....the REASON your insurance goes down at 25 or/and married is because of statistics!......Statistically speaking age and lifestyle influence how safe you are NOT number of miles driven....Statistically speaking there is hardly any diffrence between 16 and 18 and 24.....and factually speaking you will be a bit more realisticly humble at 25 than at 16, and even more so by 45 than 25

 

OK - let me re-post that - and this time I will repost and surround irony with my new invention - irony tags

[irony]
this is Irony
[/irony]

[humor]
and this is humor
[/humor]

[irony][humor]
and this is ironic humor
[/irony][/humor]




[humor]
I have a mere 62 mile commute, does that mean that I have only 2/3rds your skill ?

[/humor]

[irony]
Actually when I was your age - many years ago - I told my father that I was a way better driver than he is, he was (and is) over cautious and not really interested in driving as anything other than a way to get from A to B.
[/irony]

(note that this was an actual conversation that I had with him on December 7th 1982 - two days after my 18th birthday)

By my 18th birthday I had been racing motorcycles for ten years and cars for about a year. [irony]I considered myself to be the cream of the crop, the absolute best driver on the road. [/irony]

[humor]
Obviously the string of tickets that I picked up where not my fault, I was such a great driver that I was more than capable of handling my car (or motorcycle) at twice the speed limit, my reactions where way faster than some old guy in his 40's. I did try to tell the judge that, but for some reason he considered me arrogent ?
[/humor]

(partly true - I got caught speeding numerous times, I am not about to publish the numbers, but lets just say that it was more than 5 over - for which I have never, ever been pulled - remember that at 70mph indicated your Mini is probably running at 64-66mph - so 5 over a 65 would mean a real 70mph, which in a Mini is an indicated 75-78mph - ie you where running a deliberate 10-13mph over)

Right ?

[humor][irony]
Obviously the crash that put me in hospital for seven months with a broken neck and many other fractures was not my fault - it had nothing at all to do with my speed it was all the fault of some old guy that could not judge my speed pulling out on me.....
[/humor]
Pride normally comes before a fall.

(this is also true - I hit a taxi that pulled out on me on December 18th 1982, I was way over the speed limit at the time and literally had nowhere to go, I was a bad driver because I did not spot the danger, I did not have an escape route and I was driving way beyond the limits of the road and/or the conditions. I got out of hospital in July of 1993)

Getting a ticket or two is a good wake-up call, assuming you can actually learn from them.....
[/irony]

[humor]
Better ? - hopefully you will be able to read my post better
[/humor]