I was driving my wife's Vauxhall Astra, heading for it's MOT and had came down a slip road, probably a little faster than I should, it was signposted for 40mph, I was at about 60mph on a dry clear sunny day with little traffic.

As I came down the slip road checking my rear view, I asked myself, is that a window cleaning van with ladders on top or is it a cop car??
Slowing and checking, checking again I answered that I believed it was a cop car.....

To be sure I actually sped up so I could make a right turn a short way up the road out of sight, then drove a few hundred yards up the street and pulled in to the left, stopped the car. I pulled out my mobile and pretended to be on a call and sure enough, a police car came up with blues n twos behind me.

I ignored it and continued with "my call" until an officer got out and approached, knocking on my window.
I pretended to finish "my call" and opened the window to ask what I could do to help?
He stated that they had followed me and I was going a little fast wasn't I?
I replied that I didn't think I was

He asked me to get out of the car and then asked me if it was my car?
I said no........but actually Yes it was
Of course he was confused
I stated that it was my wife's car ( her daily driver ) but it was registered in my name....of course he checked the database and found this to be true.

He then came back to the speeding scenario and said they were travelling at 70mph trying to catch me so I must have been speeding.
I said, sorry officer, don't want to argue, but I wasn't!
He said I must have been again
I said , sorry, but I definitely wasn't!

At this point, clearly they had no evidence as such and he was frustrated.....he told me to be on my way and to be careful.
Close call....

 

There was also the time, back in my youth when I was travelling south on the M6 at a decent pace, probably around 100mph there or thereabouts and engaged in a friendly pace making with a Q registered Ford Escort......at least I thought it was friendly.

One of those where it doesn't matter if you're in front or behind, just good natured stuff....
We came to some roadworks, lane 3 closed off at 800yards and a 50 mph limit with average speed cameras, so as I was in front, I indicated and pulled in with around 500 yards still to go.
The Escort remained in lane 3 and drew level with me, looking at me to let him in...I'm like, you can get in behind me if you want...lol

His reaction was priceless.
With around 250 yards still to go, he rammed into the side of my car damaging the front wing, bumper etc with tyre marks on my car and almost put me under the wheels of an artic.
I managed to keep control and stay in lane but he did get in and obviously quite pleased with himself.

Needless to say I was gobsmacked and immediately called the police and explained what had happened, we were at Junction 22 approaching Junction 21a
They said they would have a car at Junction 21 waiting and to keep him in sight.

This is gods honest truth
They said to me, to keep him in sight and give a running report on this
I told them that might be difficult, he obviously knew or thought I was speaking to the police and was really going for it.
The police said to me, what do you mean, really going for it?
I said he must be doing 130mph easy

They said to me, how do you know that?
I said I'm doing 120mph trying to keep up with him.
They said, keep him in sight, don't lose him!!!!!

Anyhow, he came off at Junction 21
I ws still in lane 3 but a quick checked showed all was ok, so moved over 2 lanes and also exited up tot he roundabout, but he was gone off to the right at the roundabout.
I followed over to the right and then pulled over

Shortly afterwards an unmarked Vauxhall Senator 3.0V6 with blues In the grille, raced past, about 30 secs later followed by a marked Vauxhall Senator.
Another car had came off the motorway and pulled in behind me, the lady stated that she had saw everything and couldn't believe it, the guy was a lunatic.
I breathed a sigh of relief and said that was great she'd be my witness
Only to be stunned as she said her b/f was a cop and she didn't know if she wanted to be involved??!!

They never did catch the guy

 

Reminds me of a different 70's vintage Chevy Impala located in the country.

Running at 120 a Camaro driver sees the unmarked Impala pull along side.

The driver thumbs his nose at the Impala and walks him, taking it to 160.

Impala pulls along side again, the Impala driver thumbs his nose, laughs
and walks him *from* 160. The Camaro couldn't do a thing, 160 was all
he had.

The Impala is a unmarked bank robbery pursuit vehicle with a 454, highway
gears and the best of everything. Definitely not smog legal. It rarely came
out of the bat cave being reserved for special duties. It was out on a test
run after some maintenance. There were two of them, both mid gray. You
could barely see them at dusk against pavement.

 

State and local PDs in many US jurisdictions used to keep a number of special purpose, high-speed pursuit vehicles in their fleets, but not so much anymore. Those vehicles were impressive as long as the roads were very straight . . . LOL.

Moreover, high-speed, police pursuits are quickly falling out of favor in the more professional departments. Too many innocents have gotten killed or seriously injured, and helicopters do the job much more effectively by deploying police vehicles to shut off escape routes.

 

I live in Santa Cruz County and I was driving highway 9 really early in the morning in my old CLS63. I was doing at least 110 on a straight away and the rest of the highway is full of turns. As I hit the 100 + mark flew by and thought I saw a police car parked. Then as I sped away I saw him hit the lights. At that point I had to make a choice of pull over and take a huge ticket or keep going and try to get away. I decided to take the chance and speed up. I knew if I could get far ahead take a side road and turn off my lights and hope he passes.

As I pushed the car to its limits on that road I swore to myself if I got away I would never drive like an idiot again. I finally got far enough I turned off and prayed he would pass. Longest 5 seconds of my life. He passed and I took off back other way. Since that point I am very cautious hitting triple digits and always have my laser detector with me in new f type.

Anyone have any stories that things go the opposite way and you got busted?

 

Wow, that had to be frightening. I 've often wondered if would ever have the stones to do that. How did you know when to pull off without him seeing you?

 

Unreasonable Acceleration So after 12 years and 16 Jags the law has finally caught up with me. For those who have the time here's a readers digest version of my first ticket in 25 years. (excuse my formatting and punctuation... it is what it is)


Purchased an 07 XKR with 19,000 miles in late Oct. last year. Drove it home from Grand Rapids MI to central Wisconsin on tired Pirelli's so I was not able to cut her loose (and I did not know how to turn off the traction control). Spooled up a month later 4 Blizzaks and was far more confident with experiencing the car. However doing a burn out with $740.00 worth of rear tires was out of the question. So I finally got around to changing back to the Pirelli's a couple days ago. Yeah I know a little late for Blizzaks but now I figured with only 6 months or so to snow maybe I could get by running the original Pirelli's and put off buying new set of tires until next year.
So now it's finally time for a burn out. After all it's been 8 months. Not ever doing one in this car and realizing how fast things can happen in this car I didn't want any eyeballs watching me until I had a few practice runs in. So I head off into the country side where I grew up. So it's Friday night around dusk but not dark, I'm at a four way stop with corn fields on all sides as far as the eye can see. New black top with a decent hill to the right so I'm going right to get the benefit of gravity. Now it's only ten seconds or so to get the traction control button to realize your serious but it seems like 3 minutes when your waiting to do a burn out.
I can see a mile in front of me... nothing, a mile to the left... nothing, a 1/2 mile to the rear... nothing, 150-200 yards to the right... nothing. So I cut it loose, A 150 feet or so into it I'm in 3rd gear with incredible wheel spin, so I shift to 4th and she's still melting rubber and I cant see a thing behind me. So I thought "this is ridiculous" so I let off the gas ending the burnout early. Note: always roll up both windows when shredding tires, I did not so as I crest the hill smoke is still rolling out of the rear end, tires and the cabin. I look back to see how much of the ozone layer I have destroyed and through the incredibly dense fog that had suddenly settled in I see a set of headlights about a mile away.
Hmmm... must have been in the dip by the swamp "no matter it couldn't possibly be a cop" as I head down the other side. He sure made that mile up in a hurry, before I got to the bottom of the hill I was looking for a place to pull over.
So just coming from a barbeque and having a few cocktails with friends I started doing the math and realized I should be fine... but... would rather not have to go through the motions just in case. He appears at the window and doesn't say a word. He is just staring at me. So I finally break the silence, smiled and asked "what can I possibly say?" "Not much" he replied, "but I thought I would give you a chance". More agonizing silence so I asked "can I phone a friend?" He never even twitched, just looked at me. Finally he say's "License and proof of insurance".
So as I'm fumbling around the glove box for the insurance he asks "been drinking?" "not me I replied" figuring he must have smelled the Coors. "I seem to be unable to locate my insurance papers". "Stay in the car" he indicates as he walks away with my license.
So now I'm in the "Son of a Bitch... you have got to be kidding me phase". What more could I have done... that intersection probably has the sheriff on it 3 maybe 4 times a day for a total of 3 maybe 4 minutes of traffic enforcement per 24 hour period. I have got to buy a lottery ticket after this I'm thinking. Then I realize he could not have possibly have smelled alcohol on me as there was still smoke in the cabin, the car just reeked of rubber.
He comes back with two pieces of paper in his hand so now I know I'm golden and I'm not getting out of the car. $214.00 for no proof of insurance, this I just show my insurance paper work and it will be dropped. $214.00 and 4 points for "Unreasonable Acceleration".


"Questions?" he asked? "not me" I replied. "Have a nice day" and he turned and walked away. On his dash cam is the best burnout he as ever witnessed on patrol... guaranteed. Period. It was freaking insane and I cut it short. I will not need a hill next time. I figured the burnout cost me about a buck a foot... I would have had better value if I would not have let off the gas.
Why is it that the owner of an XKR looks at an "Unreasonable Acceleration" ticket as a badge of honor?

 

LOL . . . great story!

 

"unreasonable acceleration" ............. that's actually a thing in the US ?

 

It's actually 214 things $ and 4 points

 

in the uk - they would most likely hit us with "driving without due care and attention" or "dangerous driving" - but I've not heard of anyone being done for anything like that before

 

Not funny at all but I hope maybe somewhat interesting to hear....


Every time I get my car out of my garage I drive past a big refugee camp nearby (>1000 people, scary I know...). We all know that after cold start our car makes all those crackles and misfiring noises. As I go through the street the sound is a bit amplified through the nearby factory walls. It was one day after Brussles attack: I suddenly noticed that all guards from the camp rushed to the street with their walie-talkies prepared to investigate whats going on. It scared me a bit...one fraction of second nobody knew what the bangs meant to be. It was a very striking moment as I never noticed the bangs that loud that you could misjudge them for something different.

 

It's also still referred to as "reckless driving" in some places, but some would (and have) argued in court that things like burnouts are or rapid acceleration are not "reckless," per se. Many believe they can legally accelerate from 0-60 in 2.5 seconds in a hyper-car and avoid being charged with an offense as long as they didn't exceed the speed limit. That's not the case in many places, and the term "unreasonable acceleration" was adopted to eliminate those grey areas.

 

Keep in mind that back in the mid-fifties and well beyond, there were few if any cars in Europe capable of doing burnouts, which may be why such laws don't exist there. Generally in the U.S., accelerating to the speed limit as quickly as possible without doing a burnout won't result in a violation (unless, perhaps, the muffler valves are wide open).

 

I guess, it depends upon your definition of "generally." I can personally vouch for that not being the case if it occurs in close promixity to the LEO, in which case I would say it's quite likely.

 

There's some truth to that...check out this street racing prank where only noise gets them pulled over...




(btw, the passenger in those videos actually owns an F-Type)

 

Seems to me it would only have been 'unreasonable acceleration' if the tires hooked up, not smoked. But I wouldn't have pointed that out to the officer...

 

I talked my way out of 'acceleration' ticket once, my story was that I was riding clutch (I really wasn't) to hear it roar and the smoke was clutch burning up (different car, with F-type more believable than ever) and wasn't actually making anything more than noise. I killed it with "This doesn't harm the car, right? I am new to this whole third pedal thing...". LEO walked away shaking his head and I drove away making sure to shift badly.

Without radar speed reading it would be trivially easy to get such ticket tossed at the court. How would LEO prove that you actually accelerated at all without some kind of measurement? "It looked fast". Well, F-type looks fast when parked! Plus, if you do it on the side road away from houses he can't even argue excessive noise...

 

Hey Mike,
Ya it was one of the choices once you commit no going back. I waited till I couldn't see him for the first time and took the first road I could find. Highway 9 is not like typical highway lots of blind turns thank god.

 

Here's another one. BTW, I'll save the bad one for last.

I was out racing my friend at about 1:00 am out in the middle of nowhere on our motorcycles. After we had done a number of 1/2 mile passes, we decided to sit and chat and let the adrenaline die down. As we did, a car came by then turned around, went about an eighth mile, then turned around again. We didn't wait to see what they wanted.

There was a four way stop about a mile ahead of us. So we planned to get to the stop sign quickly, make a right turn, then really bug out to the next stop sign and another right back toward home. No way for them to keep up.

Well...after the first right I noticed a set of headlights coming up to the stop sign from my left. I thought to myself, there's no way that's a cop. Very shortly, I was doing about 100 mph and it didn't seem like the car was getting farther away and then the lights came on. My friend was in front of me by a good bit, but when he saw me getting pulled over he actually came back.

We explained to the officer about the other vehicle and that we were scared and were just trying to get some distance between us and them. It was fortunate that the exact vehicle we described came by in about 30 seconds. He told us to go straight home and we did.

So really lucky that night, especially considering what we'd been doing just 15 min. earlier.