Reader Question: Speed Round Speeding Tickets?

Here’s the latest reader question, along with my reply!

Matt asks: Tonight while driving home from work I passed a cop who already had somebody else pulled over on the shoulder of a freeway I routinely commute on. After passing, I became the next victim. This same cop rushed from behind the vehicle he had pulled over, caught up with me, and pulled me over for speeding. And before I could even get the ticket in my glove box and my license back in my wallet, the blue lights fired up again and the cop sped off in front of me! I pulled back into traffic behind the badged extortionist and watched in a combination of horror and disbelief as this very same cop pulled victim number three over as I passed by. Of course, I made sure I was driving the speed limit this time petrified of getting stuck in a nightmare. From start to finish, the events just described happened in under five minutes. Same cop car, three stops, and presumably three speeding tickets. My question is: How does this work? Is there a partner, a second cop riding along tasked with targeting the next victim while the first cop is literally walking back to to the police cruiser after issuing the current victim’s citation? An internet search revealed nothing on this practice, so I figured I’d run it by you.

My reply: The simple answer is – because they can. Armed government workers are literally a law unto themselves (who watches the watchmen?) and their job, such as it is, is to suborn submission and extract revenue, as much of both as possible.

Sometimes, AGWs work in teams – a spotter and an enforcer. One gets you on radar, the other gives you the ticket. But the fulsome scurvy truth is that there is really nothing – or next to nothing – preventing an AGW (it’s important to refer to them this way) from doing just what you describe without using any mechanical speed measuring device. He can just claim you were “speeding” – and his mere assertion is taken at face value as fact while anything you or I say in reply is “hearsay.”

In some areas, the system actually makes this official – endows AGWs with the formal/official power to measure speed with their eyes. They become living radar, as it were. And these “visual estimates of speed” are taken as legitimate, as if you’d been painted by radar or laser. Really.

I used to (and still do) recommend a radar detector but things have become so bad that I also counsel splitting, if at all possible.  Just the same as you’d attempt to get away from a violent squeegee man. It’s sensible policy. An AGW – like a psychotic squeegee man – can cost you a lot more than just money. Both are dangerous- and the AGW is arguably far worse because you are legally obliged to submit and obey, even if he begins to beat the crap out of you or otherwise abuse you.

It’s that bad.

. . .