When it’s 2:30 in the morning and there are no other cars on the road, I try to time my speed with the red lights so that I never have to come to a complete stop. On approaching an intersection less than a kilometer from home yesterday, I successfully did so, and started accelerating again when the light turned green.
Then I noticed a police car driving in the opposite direction do a U-turn and start tailing me. In my head, I’m hoping he pulls me over. I’m in no rush to be anywhere, I’ve done absolutely nothing wrong, and I want some justification for every time I’ve driven fumbled for my wallet in the dark before driving her home in my pajamas, on the off-chance that this may happen. Besides, I’d never been pulled over before, I want to know what to expect.
After a moment, his lights go on.
“Why were you driving so slowly?”
“Cause it was a red light.”
“I had a green on my side. Did you know the tags on your plate are expired?”
“Excuse me? I just got this car in April.”
“Do you have your papers?”
I pull out the three pieces from my wallet and hand them to him. He walks back to his car. Another cop pulls up on the opposite side of the road. I hear them yelling at each other from their interceptors.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Do I have to give a ticket for expired tags?”
“No. You give a warning first time.”
“And then you give a ticket next time?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“YOU NOOB”, I’m thinking.
He walks back to my window, and says, “Your tags expired on November 13th.”
“Ohhh, my birthday. I thought it was a year from day of ownership.”
“I’m going to give you a warning.” He shows me the citation. At the top, the biggest words are PAYMENT NOTICE. A bill to help the city balance its budget. “You see here how it says total payable is $0.00? That means you don’t have to pay anything this time.”
Good thing he caught it early. Otherwise, I could have been driving a year with expired tags, and maybe charged with a lot more.
“What do I do with this?”, I ask, holding up the citation.
Instead of telling me to throw it out, invalidating his little exercise, he says, “You can put it on your fridge.”
Canadian cops have been pretty cool in my experience. I got pulled over in Winnipeg, the guy gave me a warning for a broken taillight and gave us tips on the best bars and restaurants in town. American cops are almost universally jerks, so it was a nice change of pace for me.
I’m glad you didn’t get stuck with a big fine.
I think that’s a stereotype of Canadian’s and American’s in general. :)
Stick it on your fridge?! They’re really humourous! :D
I saw him think about it for a while, then spit that out because he couldn’t come up with anything else.
HA! You sure got off easy. In L.A. they’re usually totally harsh. I even got a ticket for crossing as a pedestrian IN A CROSSWALK, but while the little hand-up signal was on, and the countdown was going on. I thought as long as it was counting down, I had time to cross; apparently not, it’s the stupid hand thingy you have to go by. Completely a money-maker for the city. I protested it by mail, but have not gotten money back; I suspect they are thumbing their noses at me.
On the other hand, the other day I was sitting pulled over in a red zone at the end of a corner when this BIG macho black dude traffic cop on a bike pulled up, peered in my window, saw that I was just putting on makeup (which was why I was pulled over), and said in an accusatory and authoritative voice: “AH-HAA!!.” And then he rode away laughing. I smiled for a while on that.
Hey, if I don’t have to pay anything, then that’s fine by me. There are not many signal countdowns in this city, so maybe they go by the flashing. I think that cops who ticket people for jaywalking are just trying to meet ticket quotas, or have been facing boring shifts.