Do you think I should turn myself in?

I used to know a very pretty, 25-year-old hairdresser. She cleaned up my look when I started losing my hair, did my wife's hair every couple of weeks, and was always in high demand.

She and her boyfriend were killed about 5 am one Monday morning between Dallas and Lubbock when their car ran off the road.

The assumption, of course, is that they were coming home from a weekend getaway and whomever was driving fell asleep at the wheel.

No ... in that case, shut your mouth. If the OP is in the US, he should exercise his Fifth Amendment right to shut the hell up. The fact that his car may or may not have been speeding, doesn't mean that HE was the driver of that car.

But, on the other hand ... if the OP feels guilty, then by all means he should turn himself in to the coppers.

It might sound like a stupid question, but how can one person (policeman) tell from a distance at night how fast you're going? (Here, patrol cars are therefore manned with two and they have to record your speed.)

Damn you guys would give your mother up if you knew it would make you a dollar!

Isn't there a statue of limitations on parking tickets?

They usually use a radar gun.

Last I knew, radar guns are only reliable when it is used from a stationary position.

Often cops will try to get you to admit to speeding. "We clocked you going 85...."

1000 years. Little known fact. Hitler was prosecuted posthumously and found guilty not for his genocidal crimes against humanity but for renting a car in England and parking in front of a fire hydrant on the street near his bed and breakfast. Due to his premature death, he never got around to paying that ticket's fine. For this transgression, he will always be known for being a ticket ripping scofflaw.

I got a speeding ticket in a little Texas town the day before I got out of the USAF. Driving back from Houston to San Angelo, I got a little used to going 90 mph on the four-lane and when it turned a two-lane then onto the main street of beautiful downtown Menard, I was still going about 45 in 25 zone.

Anyway.

The next day, I packed up the guitars and banjos, my clothes, an extra tire, a used parachute (makes a great tent) and a badly worn USAF blanket in my '69 red VW Bug, signed out and headed for Montana. Woot!

Never looked back, never even thought about paying for that ticket.

(Insert really long story here about blizzards in Wyoming.... .)

About ten months later I got invited back to Texas to see some friends, I was living in Tulsa by then. I got in the red VW bug and headed South.

Right about a mile before the Texas/Oklahoma border I remembered about the ticket. I was going about 75mph at the time.

I ..........slowed.................... down.
From the border on down to San Angelo, through the little towns on the two lane, I was the obedient, careful driver you've all seen in the driver's ed movies. I drove very carefully through the rolling sandy lands of West Texas, put my signal flicker on if I even thought about changing lanes, made full stops at every stop sign and yield sign and drove 22 mph through the 30 mph zones.

I promised myself I would pay the ticket as soon as I got back to Tulsa.

I left under cover of darkness [insert long story here about not even playing the radio] and made it back across the State Line.

What else do you want to know?

Joe(No. No, I did not. I really meant to, but no.)Nation

VWs can't go much past 70 mph without a tailwind. You're telling tall Texas tales here.

Rags: I used to have two speeds: stopped and is it pegged yet?


~ The 90 was doable occasionally, and once with a solid 65mph tailwind out of Colorado heading into Kansas, done easily.
I kept the sparkplugs clean, the oil filled and didn't buy the cheapest gas.

I used to regularly drive from San Angelo up to Grand Lake in Oklahoma, about 600 miles in less than nine hours and there are a LOT of little towns on that drive to slow you down.

(But, okay, maybe there's a little spandex in the estimates.)

Joe(can't a brother just tell a story around here? )Nation

hey.
I just re-read this part again.


Aspvenom means she hit the rumble stripe at the edge on the road, probably because she fell asleep.

Please don't drive alone if you are drowsy. If you have to, then sing loudly to yourself, open all the windows, turn the radio up to 20....if that doesn't work,
GET OFF THE ROAD.

Joe(so many people would miss you)Nation

Speaking of crazy cross-country-getting-out-of-the-service-stories, here's mine, on a slightly-different-but-on-a-parallel note:

Speaking of Texas, I made it out of Wichita Falls, TX in 1965 GTO summer of '72 after my USAF enlistment ended. I'd just bought a used Goat from Mr. Eugene Lemon, I **** you not.

My departure: I drove straight through from OK City to just south of Wash DC area with this gas hog.

After stopping at my sister's house in No. VA for a few days, I zipped home northward to Boston. The car had ran a little rough and a little hot so after I recovered from my journey, I brought the car into for repair. Seems that 2 cylinders were not working at all. It STILL had more power than I ever had in a car. That was the last 8-cylinder car I ever owned.

Which is why I posted the little morality play.

Pull over, take a little nap.

Then grab a cold soda and sip.

My dad loves to tell us the story of traveling cross-country by car with my mom. It was late at night and she was driving while he slept. He woke up and asked her, "How are you doing?". She said, "I'd be doing a lot better if that train whistle would stop waking me up!!!". He made her pull over so he could drive

Absolutely right, Drew.
When you start getting what I used to call the 'wa-wahs', where your focus is coming in and out. Stop. Do some stretches. Jump up and down.

Ask yourself "Just how fricking important is it if I get there dead?"

Joe(♥ ♥)Nation

Never sleep in the car.....

Thanks. (They use here mainly ProViDa or the similar system VASCAR ("Video Average Speed Computer And Recorder").

When a highway patrol cop stopped me in Arizona, he didn't tell me how fast I'd been but only (though this a couple of times) that I had to go in jail for speeding ...

Yeah. I was going more for the don't lie angle. Saying nothing is a better option if one can do that. I think if I opened the door to a couple of cops asking about my whereabouts on a certain night/time I'd stumble a bit and answer before the idea of not answering entered my mind.

I'll never reveal my true identity - ha - you will never reap the rewards of turning me in.