Longer ago than I thought came stories about first accidents. Now how ’bout first (or best) tickets?
One sunny day after my last-period class, I hopped proudly into my recently-purchased first operable car, a very nice 1965 Canadian Valiant Custom 200 four-door sedan (a Dart 270 built and badged as such). I drove home to fetch my camera gear; there were after-school activities to be captured for posterity, and hiding behind the viewfinder of a screwmount Pentax as a yearbook photographer was one of my high school survival strategies.
Now, two different air cleaners were used on Slant-6 engines in 1963-’67 Darts and Valiants. One was about 11″ diameter; the other about 9″. Both of them took the same filters, fit the same carburetors, and cleared the hoods and all the engine accessories; which one any given car had was mostly a matter of what was to hand when that engine was being assembled. Both of them were silenced air cleaners: the baseplate’s outer circumference had a lip forming a fence rising about an inch from the floor, and the cake-cover type lid, about 8 mm larger in diameter than the base, dropped down to slightly below the bottom of this wall. Plenty of area for air to enter—several times the area of the carburetor throat—and that configuration kept things quiet. This is all relevant because of an equation I’d recently solved amidst my already-considerable collection of Slant-6 parts brought home from the yard: small baseplate plus large lid equals unsilenced air cleaner.
Camera equipment fetched, I headed back to school. There was twisty, uphill, semi-residential Temple Drive in the final few tenths of a mile of the route I chose, near the Denver Tech Center business district, and I dropped the Torqueflite into 2 and punched the gas—okeh, maybe a leetle harder than I should’ve, but I swear, only a leetle—delighting in the throaty intake roar from up front and imagining heaps of extra power from all that more air that wasn’t actually reaching the engine.
As I crested the hill and rounded the final bend to the straightaway before the traffic light at Yosemite, a copcycle sprang out, fly-cast an outstretched index finger and threw me over with it, to the side of the road in the widened area about 50 feet beyond the hidden driveway where he’d been perched.
Oh, carp.
I pulled over and shut off the car. He brought his motorcycle behind me, lights flashing, and strode up to my open window: “License, registration, insurance. Know what the speed limit is here?”
As I was fetching my documents, I said “It’s 25, sir”, and he said “That’s right, 25. I clocked you going at least 40.”
While he stood there watching me squirm and probably waiting to see how much trouble my mouth would buy me, I decided against mentioning the absence of any apparent radar or other equipment, or the contradiction between “clocked” and “at least”.
Eventually he spoke again: “I didn’t see a seatbelt when I pulled you over; I’m citing you for failure to wear a seatbelt.”
Now that I couldn’t let slide without speaking up: “Officer, this is a 1965 car; it has no shoulder belts, just lap belts, see? I had my belt on until I unbuckled to get my license out of my wallet.”
He eyelocked me and deadpanned, “A seatbelt ticket is $25 and no points. 40 in a 25 on a beginner’s license is $400 and 4 points. I can write you either ticket; now which one’ll it be?”
Oh. Er…oh. Thank you, officer. Yes, sir. I understand. Thank you. 25 means 25. Thank you.
So that was a hell of a lot better than it could’ve been, but I still had to tell my folks. Mom and dad were in the kitchen fixing supper. Plenty of throat clearing before I could spit it out: “I…got a ticket on my way back to school.”
Mom said “What for?”
“Failure to wear a seatbelt.”
Y’know that jukebox-needle-across-the-record sound effect and then everything goes suddenly quiet? Dad’s hands froze, knife stock-still in midair above the cutting board. His face toward me froze much, much colder. Barely above a whisper: “What did you say?”
More throat clearing and a cough or two. “F…failure to wear a seatbelt.” The temperature in the kitchen dropped another twenty or thirty degrees.
My folks were devoutly religious about seatbelt use by everyone in the car, every time. Had been ever since I’d become a conscious and comprehending individual in the late 1970s. Family, friends, strangers—no matter; no belt, no move. Very unusual when some paltry percent of Americans wore belts, but even before any belt-use laws there was just never any question about it in our car; it wasn’t discussed—it didn’t need to be. As the old British safety campaign went, “clunk-click, every trip”.
Plus, I was a good kid. I had more than my share of social struggle and strife, oh yes, but I was enthusiastically squeaky-clean. Never in any real or legal trouble. Opposite of a daredevil. Bit of a git about it, really.
And there I was, telling them I’d got a seatbelt ticket.
Soon as I could get my mental engine restarted (you want to believe it had been equipped with a well-silenced air cleaner since that afternoon) I explained what had happened and, for what little it was worth, assured them I hadn’t been doing anything like 40 mph. Sounded pretty damn lame, even to my own ears, when I said out loud that I’d just been making the car sound hotter than it was. Not quite as hot as the shame was making my face, but.
They stood down the red and went to yellow alert. They weren’t pleased; there were some long and very unpleasant talks that night and the next few days, but I don’t recall their taking away the keys or anything of that nature. And of course I had to pay the ticket and do the paperwork and have more unpleasant talks with the insurance guy, etc.
So that was my first traffic ticket. How ’bout you, what and when was your first or best? Just the ones you actually got; let’s save the ones we avoided for another day.
(Copcycle, yeah. It rhymes with popsicle.)
I parked my 1995 Plymouth Voyager in downtown Ithaca in 2011 on a two way street facing the wrong way cuz I didn’t feel like turning around after nabbing the spot. In Portland Oregon nobody seems to care about that and I routinely park facing the wrong way if safe to do so. So do a bunch of other people.
We do that in Seattle too:
https://www.knkx.org/post/why-do-so-many-park-wrong-way-seattle
My first ticket was a parking ticket in University City, Missouri, a close-in suburb of St. Louis. My first moving violation was also my first accident, which I covered in response to that QOTD.
Downtown Ithaca? Which street? There are a lot of one-way!
My first ticket….driving a friend to Thanksgiving break. There is a downgrade on NY-17, from Monticello to Rock Hill, that loses 400 feet in a couple of miles, and the old Safari wagon may have picked up some steam heading down to the old overpass bridge over the Neversink. The state trooper pulled me over in front of Glick’s Chevrolet, just before the Bridgeville exit, and wrote me a ticket for 67 in a 55.
I did not receive another ticket for 20 years.
The steep hills between Monticello and Middletown make it too easy to speed. So for me it’s cruise control basically all the way, in either direction.
@NYCMT
Outside the State Street Theatre.
Funny, that was my first one too fail to wear seatbelt it could have been worse today it definitely would be, it was summer the tar was melting on the main street of my home burg I came around the curve at the end of Queen street on the sand tail out in my grandmothers HB Vauxhall Viva with just enough wheelspin and opposite lock to execute a nice drifting turn, the audience in a magpie coloured V8 HQ Holden Traffic patrol car wasnt quite as impressed as I was but he let me off the sliding turn and wrote out a ticket for no seatbelt, I wrote in to the relevant senior officer and got off so didnt have to pay,
Today the car would get impounded for sustained loss of traction first and the tickets plural would flow next.
“Sustained Loss of Traction.”
What a great phrase! (would also be a great name for a band)
I too got a failure to wear a seatbelt as my first ticket. It was two days after I had passed my driver’s test and decided to go for a drive in my mid 70’s Ford Maverick into South Dakota (I lived just across the border in Minnesota at the time) after school, to see what the road on the other side of the border lakes was like. It wound up leading to a little town called Wilmont and I decided to take a quick detour through it. It had snowed a little the night before and the city streets still had a little bit covering them. I wanted to have a little fun and get the back end out at one of the corners. Only I gave it way too much throttle and wound up spinning the 270 degrees around, facing the opposite direction I had intended to go. So a made a U turn, getting a bit more squirrelly than I wanted, just in time to see the town cop driving down the street towards me. I get pulled over and asks for my license. After making me sweat for a while, explaining that I could be written up for a reckless driving charge for that little stunt, he hands me a $20 seatbelt violation, which I paid him on the spot, and sent me on my way.
I got my first ticket in January 1970 or pretty much 1 month after I got my license. I wasn’t even more than a 1/4 mile from the house.
It was a dark and rainy night, but actually a clear sunny San Diego Saturday morning. It was about 7:15 am and I was heading off to take the SAT test. The patrol car was on the next street down called Dwane and he had radar. Like above it was posted 25 and I was doing 35.
I got a ticket and a summons. I did not go to a traffic court I actually was called into the judge’s chambers along with my mother. I received the lecture on speeding from the judge and was asked for my promise not to do it again which of course I said yes to. That was it at least as far as I can recall. I don’t recall a fine and I also recall there was never another radar car spotted on the road afterwards.
I did make my SAT test by the way as it was only a 15 minute drive back then and today it is probably 45 minutes.
Labor Day Weekend 1982, 57 in a 55. Charlottesville, VA.
57 in a 55? Be grateful that the cop didn’t shoot you for such a serious infraction. Was the officers last name Fife?
The DoD sticker on the car didn’t help.
My wife also got one in VA Beach for 37 in a 35. For her? Probably driving while black.
Although not my first ticket, I too received a “seatbelt ticket” while wearing a lap belt (but not the secondary shoulder harness) in my 1969 Ford Custom.
I don’t exactly remember the details, but Michigan’s seat belt law, having been written long after the combined lap/shoulder belt came into existence, was a bit ambiguous about what constituted a “seat belt”.
I took the ticket to court and explained the ambiguity to the judge. The judge asked the officer if I was wearing my seat belt. “Yes, but…”, the officer said, at which point the judge cut off the officer by saying, “Perhaps you ought not try to enforce the law if you don’t understand the law.”
Ticket dismissed.
Must have been ’65 or ’66, a cop on a motorcycle pulled me for excessive noise. I had copied the exhaust layout on the Thames version of my side-valve Ford, with an exhaust exiting just before the L/H rear wheel. I had used a previously-owned straight-through silencer a friend had given me many months previously and the internals were maybe not as pristine as the exterior…..
He was very nice and chatty, but gave me a ticket regardless.
It was ten years before I got another ticket – “speeding”.
Fall of 1989, I was given a parking ticket for being parked approximately 15 minutes late in a 3 hour parking zone. The fine was around $45.
This one is really different: I was driving my Corvair on frozen Lake McBride near Iowa City, enjoying endless pirouettes enhanced greatly by the rear engine. I was out in the middle of the lake, when I saw someone waving to me at the shore. He was clearly waving me to him. Idiot as I was, I drove across the lake to him. Turns out he was a sheriff’s deputy and he gave me a ticket for driving on the ice. Since it was a county park, there was some regulation that applied. And he didn’t trust the ice enough to drive, or even walk out to me.
I could have so easily evaded him…
My first ticket less than a week after taking delivery of my first car.
I failed to come toma complete stop at a stop sign. The officer didnt notice i wasnt wearing my seatbelt.
My second ticket came the next month for speeding.
My first ticket was for letting an under age drive. I just had my drivers a few months when we were asked to take garbage to the dump by friends dad because I had drivers. When we were about to leave the dump my friend says “i’m Driving” and since it was his dad’s truck he did. Well let’s just say at 15 years of age experience had not yet been introduced to my friend and we ended up putting the 65 Ford on the roof. We were not hurt and the truck got fixed but the cops did get involved and I got the ticket, which my friends dad actually paid.
All tickets I got so far were for speeding, so the first one must have been for speeding too…somewhere in the early nineties, I guess. All of them were delivered at home by the postman (one from Germany, last year).
Besides for our usual alcohol-controls, I was never pulled over.
70-ish in a 55 in my ‘71 Vega on the way back from Spring Break at Myrtle Beach after high school graduation.
No seat belt infractions.
Last ticket was in 1990 in my ‘64 Beetle for an improper lane change. Motocop was sitting there handing ‘em out like popcorn as it was a confusing on-ramp in the Nashville TN area.
Knock on wood, but in 30 years of driving, I’ve never received a ticket. I don’t expect that good fortune to continue forever, but I’m glad it has for this long.
I have gotten pulled over twice, once in about 1996 in Philadelphia for reckless driving (weaving in and out of Expressway traffic), and once in about 2009 in Virginia (quite ridiculous… passing a stopped car, which is quite legal). Fortunately, I was let off both times.
Congratulation Eric, very impressive!! It’s not easy being a defensive driver, with such an increase in aggressive driving during those 30 years. And so many cars on the road in Virginia. Wishing you many years of safe driving ahead.
I woulda told the cop write it for both—see ya in court.
Lets see the first was 85 in a 55. Next was failure to stop , then fleeing from an officer , evading arrest , no seat belt , minor in possession , endangering minors, fleeing from an accident, failure to surrender and five more i don’t remember. This is an epic story of failure in gargantuan proportions called , How many tickets came in a book.
Er-ruhh…all of those in one go?! Go on, then, tell us the story!
Yes Sir.
Y’not gonna tell…?
Over thirty years ago now . Myself and three other under aged friends decided to go to a party in another small town. We loaded our libations and took off in my brothers car. Right outside of town the lights appeared . being the genius, I floored the 79 Volare wedge 6 banger . Shortly after those lights were behind and closing fast in the night. I took the next side road to lose him. A really nice wide dirt road that quickly narrowed . In my panic the order to ditch the beer was given . two cases were quickly thrown out the passenger side of the car. next the road made a sharp left that i almost didn’t. only to find an electric pole in the way. I yanked the wheel left again just in time to catch the down guy wire right behind the passenger rear tire that instantly shot the back end of the car into the air. During the hop i hit the drive selector in to neutral . I know because when we hit the ground I floored it again but it was done in my mind, the car was broken. I threw it into park and took out the keys. Next thing I know I’m running across plowed field in tight ass jeans and penny loafers all by myself then hiding behind a barn in the distance from the wreck counting police cars . Once i settled down i went back to the car. My friends were cuffed to the car by this time and and thoroughly upset at my shenanigans. I got my own set of cuffs and put into a 5.0 mustang . We all were taken into custody and back to our home town but not arrested or booked . During the ride out my diver was sure to point out the unexplained cases of beer that had bounced off the fence and landed in the middle of the road. They all got minor in possession tickets , i got my book of tickets. We all got to call our parental units to come get us. Lots of yelling and no sleep was available until way after the crack of dawn. I had been driving legally for almost five days when this happened . All my buddies got a MIP ticket from a town policeman and all mine came from the highway patrolman. They were fined in town and some community service. I went to a small town judge that took pity on me . Lots of fines he said . many months of community service , he said . He would set it all up and send me the final judgement. A month goes by and no judgement , so I call to check . I learn that shortly after our visit he was removed from the bench, my tickets, all 15 , were not on file . I never heard another peep about any of it. The buddies were pissed . The car was ok other than the giant crease of the wire on the thoroughly bent trunk but other wise drove fine once freed from the tow company.The remaining case of beer was still in the trunk. I was grounded until the next snow fall , this happened in spring. I am living proof the lord cares about the drunks and fools in his world , and proven it many times again since then.
Hot damn…! That beats my unsilenced-air-cleaner story to a pulp!
First and only(knock on wood), 80 in a 65 out of state back in 2014. Wisconsin got $210 out of this FIP that day. Oh and they raised the state speed limit to 75 the following January.
Whazza FIP?
F***ing Illinois Person 🙂
Oh! I asked Google, but I was pretty sure you weren’t on about feline infectious peritonitis or fielding-independent pitching.
FIP, then. Okeh, I have words to say (in another post someday) about FIPs who happen to be police officers on traffic duty.
We don’t call you FIPs, it’s FIBs, or FISHTAB.
My first ticket was 60 in a 45 when I was 17. This particular stretch of road was going though a rural corn field, which I’m sure was posted that way as a speed trap. It was night and I legitimately didn’t see the speed limit sign.
I learned the term from my Dad’s side of the family who hail from the Racine area(near where I got pinched on i94 incidentally), but I’ve heard FIB too.
FISHTAB I had to google myself, and it made me spit take when I saw the answer lol Even I’ll admit that’s accurate!
Bunch of stupid kid stuff in the ’70s. Going thru a red light (I thought it was yellow when I stepped on it to get through but it must have been red), not completely stopping at a stop sign in a deserted area at 3 AM, not fastening my seat belt at mile 134 of a 135 mile trip just after they passed the law making it mandatory. I was able to get out of most of these by throwing myself at the mercy of the court (and getting a haircut the day before).
I got my first at 23 – over 6 years after getting my license. 41 in a 25 zone I went through pretty often – just never in the afternoon when they had this trap to catch commuters driving home. Thankfully they only charged it as “5 MPH over”, and I had it dismissed after paying the court fee.
After reading all your stories mine was pretty lame. Was driving my 72 pinto hatchback to high school. Crisp fall morning. They had the huge back glass and the defroster had all the power of an asthmatic candle.
Forget the exact charge but basically not properly cleaning the glass off.
Made up for it later though by getting five speeding tickets in three months. In the same pinto.🏁🏁🏁
My first ticket was about 10 days after I got my license, on a very warm day in Jan ’73. I was driving my sister’s soon to be ex-fiancee’s little brother home in my just handed down to me from my sister (Who wasn’t happy about her new ’73 Cutlass at all) ’71 Olds Cutlass. We came up on an intersection, which was Holland-Sylvania Rd and Angola Rd. H-S had no stop signs at that intersection, but we did as we were heading West on Angola. I looked to the left, and then looked to the right, and a car passed up going South, I looked both ways again, and started moving. Richard, the kid with me, says, “There’s a VW!”, and BLAM, he hit me directly at the driver’s door rear seam, and bounced off, and wound up about 20 feet or so away, still running. Somehow, my ankle was trapped between the smashed in door and the power seat controls. That little joystick thing was stuck into my leg, but my knee was the source of most of my pain. My glasses were gone, and after a couple of minutes of flailing, I got my leg loose and got out the passenger door. The Cutlass was a mess. ALL the glass was broken, it was bent like a boomerang, and a huge puddle of transmission fluid was spreading quickly, as the Turbo 350’s case had split. It would soon be parts.
A woman in the VW was wailing, and it was pretty obvious why. A lot of her teeth had been knocked out from hitting the ’62 VW’s dash because she didn’t have her seatbelt on. The ends of it were on the floor. The driver, her husband, was apologizing to me, “I was in a hurry to get home to see a show that comes on at 7!”. Numerous witnesses said the VW had been airborne before he hit me, going about 70 in a 35 zone. The OSP troopers told him he hit me at about 60 MPH. There was a long set of skid marks that went to where my car was when it was hit, and then from the VW, with it’s brakes locked up, bouncing off. It was obvious I was going to get a ticket, which I wasn’t happy about, but the VW driver didn’t get one! I was more upset about that than the car being wrecked or my ticket. Richard’s dad took me home, and after my dad made sure I was ok, he said, “Oh boy, we are gonna be sued over this thing!”. Nope, apparently his lawyer figured his insane speed would hurt him in court, so no lawsuit. I always wondered what was done with his wife’s teeth..
After a couple of weeks, my knee was OK, and I had been handed down my mom’s ’72 Cutlass, red with black interior (Finally a car without a stupid colored interior!), and sadly, a white vinyl top. I had the car about 18 months, with it needing many repairs and several starters before it was dependable. In June of ’74, I traded it in for my ’74 Roadrunner, which after some ridiculous teething issues, was a very solid and dependable car for the 3+ years I had it before I stupidly got pickup fever and traded it.
I managed to go almost 8 years without a ticket after that first one, and it was for doing 35 in a 25 zone.
Driving a go kart on a sidewalk. When he asked for my license I said i didn’t know you needed a license to drive a go kart on the sidewalk. That didn’t help.
hehe!
My first was salutary, and effective.
When I first got my licence in ’86, there were no cameras, and it was normal for all traffic to exceed the stated one by about 20%. But I was young, and, most of all, male. (Yes, I checked. Often). So 20% wasn’t enough for my hormones, no way. 30, 40, 50% was much more like it. In short, I was a complete fuckwit.
And that fuckwittery lasted three years, right up until ticket No. 1. 55mph in a 37 zone, which doesn’t seem terrible until I tell you it was on a very narrow, hilly, accident prone stretch, where 30 was really a sensible approach. The car was full with my (non-car) friends. Less than 1 mph more, and I’d have lost my licence. They weren’t happy.
Right there and then, I sobered up from my idiocy. It worked.
Oh, I sped again since, and got the odd ticket, but only ever out in remote spots, with clear visibility.
I can thank that ticket for my still being alive, but more importantly, there’s a bunch of folk I would’ve endangered had the craziness not stopped.
I wasn’t some dumbo dissolute teen, either: I was doing two university degrees across this time. Turns out that science says your brainpower’s irrelevant: we now know that the male brain does not fully finish its wiring process until about 25, and that the lack of impulse control and lack of forward thinking relates to this, but I still look back on some pretty wild adventures before that ticket with embarrassment.
Your comments on the under 25 male are spot on. I lived it, and I have a son living it now.
In my first 18 months of driving, I picked up three tickets for relatively minor speeding offenses. Eventually tiring of the overhead of paying for tickets as a part of driving, and also becoming more acquainted with Nebraska’s license point system, I finally made a conscious forward thinking decision that I needed to change before something more serious happened.
I have not had a ticket since.
Here it is in all its embarrasing glory, Mum passed away last year, and it turned out that my parents never threw any paperwork items out, including this gem from 1981.
At the time I didn’t tell my parents about the incident and had no idea it would make it into the local newspaper, until they imformed me, I wasn’t very popular for a while.
I love it! You’d probably have been thinking “Well, at least the folks don’t know”, and there it is in all its Addie glory! Oh dear. Quiet news day in Bendigo Magistrate’s court, huh. How’s your luck?
Blimey, $250 would’ve been a sizeable mountain for an 18 y.o. in ’81. The dignity of Mr A.J. Curtain, SM, was a bit offended by your no-show, I reckon.
I (and my older enabler) got away with that once. It was a foggy night in Baltimore on the Beltway, and I (aged 15) was driving my older friend’s ’62 Cutlass w/4 barrel aluminum V8 above the speed limit. He was asleep. Saw the lights flashing behind me, and I pulled over and shook him awake, and we changed seats, which was no joke in that little Cutlass while the cop was getting his ticket book out and exiting. The thick fog must have obscured us well enough, because he did not notice the ruse. My (surprised) friend was in the seminary at the time, and showed him his ID and I guess something to show he was a seminarian. The cop warned him and let him off. Whew!
That makes up for your icecapade ticket later, right?
God punishes the unjust, sooner or later. 🙂
I got my first ticket on a bicycle. 6th grade, 1966.
A school chum and I were on our bikes and decided taking a shortcut on State route 17 through Campbell, California would save us lots of time. When he saw the “bicycles prohibited” sign on the onramp and protested, I assured him as long as we stayed on the shoulder we would not be in violation..(obviously didn’t know what I was talking about)
5 minutes later a CHP officer lit us up and there was no way we could talk our way out of it..he said “I dont like the taste of jail beans”
I dont remember if there was a fine or not, but our parents weren’t very happy.
I was dining in the downtown with a couple of young ladies and, since they were headed to their own transportation I decided to show off a little bit as I pulled away. My ’89 Chevy Cavalier RS was parked nose to the curb in an angled parking spot. I put the manual transmission into reverse and goosed the 2.8L V6 enough to clear the spot and cut the wheels to do a perfect, screeching 90 degree turn into my lane. Throwing the car into first I let the front wheel drive scream the tires for a good 20-30 feet, directly past a cruiser about to turn out of a side street, who had also been flagged by a passing foot patrolman.
I was sitting waiting to turn at a red light when the cruiser ominously pulled up behind me and just sat there while confirming over the radio with the officer on foot. Just as the light turned green they lit up the roof lights and pulled me over. The officer filled me in on the above details, took my license and registration, and asked that I drive down to the next block to meet up with the officer on foot. Being a squeaky clean type like Daniel Stern I was terrified. By the time all was said and done I was meekly sitting in the drivers seat with two flashing patrol cars and five uniforms around my car. In the end I went home with an Unnecessary Noise charge and later found out that the young ladies I was performing for had gotten into their vehicle and the whole thing went completely unnoticed.
In my first year of law school we had to negotiate 2 one-way streets to get there from where we lived. Leaving our parking lot there was a choice: Turn right on the one-way and take a 3 block route to get to the one-way going back the other direction that was a block over. Or “go straight” across, which actually involved maybe a 20 degree zag to the left (which was not the street’s direction.)
One day I made the zag to discover a pair of campus cops working in tandem – one pulling folks over and the other writing the tickets. “Illegal left hand turn” he said. I wanted to argue (hell, we were law students!) but decided not to since it was only a campus ticket. I figured that for all the things I had done that *should* have resulted in a ticket but didn’t, I was getting off easy.
Starting in 2003, France developped a vast network of automatic speedtraps with cameras.
A bit later, they installed some “pedagogical speedtraps”. No tickets with these ones which were only there to display your speed in big green or red numbers (whether you were going under or above the speed limit).
Back in 2012, I saw one of those, very late, in a deserted industrial skidrow.
I immediately told myself “LET’S TRY A HIGHSCORE !” and floored it.
Unfortunately, there was an actual not-pedagogical-at-all speed trap just behind. And there pops the flash, followed, a few week later, by a 90 € fine.
Worst thing about it, my high score was pretty lame. Only 5 mph above the speed limit…
Y’all are amateurs. I got so many tickets my first year of driving (speeding, careless driving, and more) that the judge literally took away my license for 6 months and sent me to “driving school”. Ah the good old days…
My first ticket took place in 75, well into my 20s. I was 24, drving in my 74 Audi Fox Northbound on Lindbergh Boulevard in Frontenac, Mo. (a western suburb of St. Louis.) Had me on radar as more than 5 over the limit. The cop asked me whose car it was. I responded “Me and the bank” hoping the humor would soften the cop…He laughed, still got the ticket. This was my first ticket… I did get pulled over several times in my teen and university years. but was always sent off with a warning. the first of those is somewhat humorous. However, that does not answer the question.
Whether by dumb luck or by relative good behavior behind the wheel, I’ve never received a moving violation. I thought I had done quite enough to deserve one, but the kind of brain-dead habitual speeding that a lot of people seem to get pulled over for isn’t one of them.
I got busted for spinning donuts in Dad’s car. Careless driving charge and a six month license suspension. It didn’t stop idiot teenage me from spinning donuts in future. I just learned to look around carefully before doing so.
First ticket I can remember was in my ’65 VW Bus. I ran a red light, my friend and I were telling each other jokes and laughing and I just didn’t see it until we were half way through the light. Got a ticket, was accused of having drugs, being under influence (we were both stone sober). The 2 cops pulled everything out of the van including the floor mats, damaging my door trim panels to look into them, finally giving me a ticket and driving off, pissed that there was nothing else to bust me for. They left everything out in the street.
We put everything back in the Bus after they left, and headed back down the road. 5 minutes later they pulled me over a second time. I asked what did I do, they ignored me and proceeded to tear the Bus apart a second time, did more damage, found nothing, got in their car and left everything on the street a second time. Total pricks.
18 years old in in my first car, the Fiat 125S. Got busted doing 76 KM in a 60 zone. Strangely enough ALL my tickets were 76 KM, NEVER 75 ( which was one less demerit point and less money. So 76 KM and three demerits it was. Plus one extra point for not having my licence on me.
The problem was that I had a provisional licence with only 4 points. As an apprentice mechanic, I needed that licence. Then someone told me I could pay the 3 point speeding fine, and elect to go to court for the other offense.
That would take some time. Seven or eight months to be exact. The court date came around, and by that time I had an open licence, so 9 points available. Plead guilty, lost that one point, and still had 5 points. Licence and job saved. Ironically, that road is now busier than it ever was 40 years ago, and has a 70 limit. I wonder if I should apply for a pro rata refund- plus interest.
It was about a month after getting my first car. I was cruising down the interstate at 78 mph with several other cars. We later passed a couple of cop cars while going the legal limit. Then the cops started signalling all of us to pull over. Guess there were marker lines on the road and an airplane calculated our speed going from one line to the next, and they were issuing tickets in bulk quantities. That was a new one to me. Now the limit there is 70 and thats fast enough for me anyway. In my first year of driving (1987-1988) I got two speeding tickets, and one for doing burnouts in a parking lot. But in the decades since (knock on wood) no tickets of any kind.. Mostly because everyone drives so crazy now that you really have to be doing something wild to get noticed. Also, I usually have conservative cars in conservative colors and am essentially invisible to cops with all the Chargers and flashy stuff blasting about.
First ticket was back in 1974. Had recently purchased a 1973 Moto Guzzi V7 Sport. Local fun was to see how fast you could do a lap around the lake. Didn’t know that the county sheriff lived on the lake. Did not know he had an unmarked squad car, an El Camino of all things. He did give me a break, wrote it for 55 in a 40. Probably was doing about 80. Only picked up two more in my 50 years of driving. I don’t know who has been looking out for me but I am grateful.
I’m not usually a speeder (usually the one everyone is passing) so I got my first ticket rather later in life on a trip to Europe…actually 2 tickets on the same trip. First one in Germany where I apparently didn’t slow down quickly enough (they take their signs very seriously apparently) when the limit changed quickly. The other was in Hungary, don’t remember the details of the actual ticket, but later on in that same day we had crossed the border into Slovakia, and about 15 km inside the border the police flagged me over..my Dad was instantly pissed at me thinking I was speeding again, but my Mother (whose first language is actually Slovak) said they wanted us to go back to the border. So we drove back the 15 km, and they proceeded to do another inspection. We had a station wagon with Swiss plates, maybe we fit some profile?…anyhow, they asked me to open up the cargo hatch, we had recently stopped to buy gifts (primarily alcohol) for our relatives whom we were about to visit, but on the top of the luggage was my Dad’s overnight bag, which they inspected…it had packets of instant oatmeal in it (my Dad was diabetic, and always had some food around in case he had low blood sugar). They looked bored, and stopped the inspection right there.
My most recent ticket was actually in my city while I was going to a car show (I used to go annually with my Dad). We had parked downtown, and there weren’t any other cars near us (we went on an unpopular day) so I parked parallel to the curb. Well, I couldn’t see the markings on the road but apparently I should have parked perpendicular to the curb instead. I protested the ticket, took pictures of the pavement, etc. and when I went to fight it, they asked how close I was to the corner…I think they were embarassed that the pavement was not well marked, but they ended up getting me for parking too close to the corner (which of course I wouldn’t have if the markings were visible). I guess you need to keep a measuring tape in your car to make sure you don’t park too close (I wasn’t particularly close, but I guess just close enough). They got the same amount for parking violation as I was originally charged, unfortunately.
The great thing about CC reader demographics is that all of these encounters happened while driving true Curbside Classics. No CUV’s here. My first ticket was in a Volvo 122S, but it got thrown out (I had to go to court, with a parent, as I was under 18) when the cop didn’t show up. Whew … The first that stuck was driving my friend’s BMW 2002. Come to think of it, maybe that’s the reason I’m less enthusiastic about ‘02’s than many of my generation.
Just after the imposition of the national 55-mph speed limit in the fall of 1973, I got stopped for going 61 on the westbound PA Turnpike on the way to McKeesport, outside of Pittsburgh, to futilely see a girl (a high school senior who already had a boyfriend) I’d met that summer. It was my first year of college, and I was driving my mother’s green 1967 GTO with automatic on the column, no console, and an aftermarket 8-track player/FM stereo. I can’t believe my parents were so cavalier about letting me do long solo highway trips in a car with bias-ply tires, no crumple zones, drum brakes all around, not even shoulder harnesses… Later they had 6-cylinder Volvos, but in the 1960s a friend of theirs was a Pontiac sales manager.
The car that stopped me was a 1972 or ’73 Plymouth Fury hardtop coupe with full state police markings. I was let off with a warning. It took a while for PA to lift its 55-mph signage, even after the national limit went back up.
110 mph in a 35 zone. On an airport maintenance road that dead ended, so the county cops didn’t even have to chase us down. I lost in my 57 Ford with a 406 to a 409 Chevy (62 vintage). Lost my license for 6 months. Joined the Marine Corps since life without a license is not worth living. I was wrong.
Damn…
On principal I once contested a 3-over that was issued as a spiteful backhanded slap. You would not believe how “the machine” operates with a complete disconnect from facts, reality, common sense, fiscal responsibility, etc. in its indoctrinated motivation to attempt to always reach a finding of guilt or responsibility, no matter how petty or insignificant the issue.
…I take that back, yes, today almost anybody would believe it.
Damn again…
First ticket(s)? Notice the plural?
Fall of ‘78 had me finally in high school, and it seemed everyone drove…except me. I was 15 and didn’t even have my learner’s permit.
However, I had been sneaking out in the middle of the night several times in my parents’ ‘68 AMC Rebel. Straight six with a three-on-the-tree, it was whisper quiet and our driveway was downhill to the street. I was golden.
Until the night a patrolman saw me stopped in an alley (we lived in a historic neighborhood). I had stopped to try to unsuccessfully dislodge a branch I had run over in the dark alley. I saw him and panicked; jumped in the car and high-railed it home, with him in pursuit for the whole mile or so.
I whipped it in our driveway and parked it right where it was under the carport. The cop was right there to grab me by the arm and drag me to his backseat. After explaining I wasn’t prowling but had run over a branch, and begging him to let it all slide, he knocked on the door, answered by my sleepy, surprised, and…furious parents.
Right there in the living room, he wrote me two tickets for running stop signs, and another for speeding. He wanted to write more, knowing I committed more moving violations, but admitted that’s all he actually witnessed.with his eyes. He said he was letting me slide on the “attempting to elude” charge, but wrote a 4th ticket for no valid drivers license.
After a day in court, a $100 fine, and a piece of tree branch permanently lodged between the chassis and body, my folks finally let me have a learners permit. However, my stepdad said he had decided against a car for Christmas (which I didn’t know about). I had to get my uncle to help me get my full drivers license the next year; and my mom (she divorced my stepdad a few years later) never, ever let me use her car. Not until the day she died.
Well I’m all damned out…
Good stories, these.
Never had a speeding ticket.
I drove for years without a license (never had one until I was 21). This was in the early 1970″s. Got used to checking my mirrors for cops. At that time most of the cars didn’t parking lights that came on with the headlights and the ones with them on were newer or cops.
Got stopped for speeding in Walnut Creek California by CHP driving my Loomis Courier Pinto wagon. I had gotten the little thing “airborne” before.
He asked me if I was in a hurry, I said “yes,always”. He told me to slow it down. No ticket.
One other time I was driving my 1974 Capri in Pleasant Hill Ca with no front plate. Ca needs them. I was just ready to light a “joint” when pulled over. Just gave me a fix it ticket. Whew!
A parking ticket in a UK registered car in Germany in 1992. It was still in the glovebox when I sold the car 4 years later….must pay it next time I’m there…..
And 3 French speed camera tickets
With a gentle prod from sister, I am submitting my first, and best, ticket. Picked my sister up from the community swimming pool in the new-to-me TR3, she wanted to dry her hair. So more is better, right? More speed, faster drying, until I get clocked at 80 in a 35!!!
Instructed to follow the police to the town hall, we were both asked to sit in a small detention room. I could just overhear the arresting police office say, “Sir, if you come down to pick up your daughter, you will have to take him too.”
Thanks to my sister, I didn’t spend the night on jail!!
And the car was gone the next day…
I got my first ticket, in 1967, at the ripe old age of 15. Not in a car, but on a go-kart. We had moved the previous year and I no longer had a place to use it. A quarter of a mile away from our new home was a school with a big parking lot. My Dad instructed me that I could drive it at the school, but had to push it there and back. I did do that for very short time, then started driving it on the road. Someone must have called the police because it wasn’t long before I was pulled over by the Ohio State Patrol. I was given a ticket for driving without a license. Needless to say, my Dad was NOT happy.
Well my first one was my biggest. Age 17, driving to my girlfriends place, late morning. Top of a hill I slap the ’86 Celica into 5th, and put the foot down. 50kph area, and doing about 100 by the bottom, and there’s a police car. Cops hand goes out the window, pointing to the side of the road nearest me… Do I try and take off? Sensibly, I pulled over.
Copper pulls up, walks over “do you know how fast you were going?” “Not exactly sir, maybe around 90?” “Lucky for you I was a bit slow setting the radar, I had you at over 100, but only got you at 98” Whew! Back then 50 over the speed limit was instant loss of licence. (I think it’s 30 now). Still a $600 fine. That was a fair bit of money for a kid working at a supermarket back in the 90’s!
First and most memorable ticket – February 1998, age 19, San Jose, CA: 95 MPH in a 65 MPH zone, driving my 1987 Oldsmobile Calais. The speedometer maxed out at 85 MPH, so I had to “trust” the officer clocking my speed. $250 fine, plus another $50 for the mandatory 8-hour driver’s training course on a Saturday.
After my first ticket there was my second who doing 60 mph on the San Diego freeway, in 1973, during the first gas crisis with the speed limit dropped to 55. I was in a 1972 VW Squareback at the time. My passenger friend said it looked like I was going to reach and strangle the CHP motorcycle officer through the passenger window.
A third was in the same VW for doing 70 mph in a 55. I was coming down the Altamont Pass on Dec. 18 around 11:00 pm and I was out of gas with no stations known to be open. The Livermore Valley was very different back then. I was coasting and came up behind a CHP cruiser and quickly slowed down. He got off and I started coasting again only to have him get back on and come up behind me lights on. Told what was going on, got nos suggestions, was given a ticket, and told Happy Birthday. So two in the VW and one in the Cougar with none since.
I just came back along the Altamomt pass last night at 11;45 pm and rest assured I looked back over my shoulder at the same spot where he got me back then, like I always do, 48 years ago. I was doing 70 again but was in the clear. Call it habit.