Medicine Hat Media

Getting Pulled Over…

So, there I was, merging onto the #1 from the overpass by The Medicine Hat College. There was a police officer next to me and as I began to merge he was not slowing down or speeding up to let me go in front or behind him. So I tapped the gas to get in front just as he begins to go into the right lane to go onto 13th. He pulls back and turns his lights on, drag. I was not speeding by enough to warrant a ticket, so what else could it be? He says “You did not signal”, which is like impossible (like as in, one in a billion amount of times I will forget it, since I am a very signal, mirror, shoulder checking type of person – usually). Although in thinking back, I did not see him signaling, but whatever. He checked my signal light, and it was working.

So in the way that funny stories go, he says “You have a nice car”. Oddly enough, I have been pulled over so rarely that it is years in between, and despite having probably the most recognizable car in Alberta/Saskatchewan (probably), it has never been the reason I have been pulled over in the past. He checks my insurance and it turns out that it is out of date. Double drag. But he calls it in and of course it is valid. He seems to be a good guy about it and polite as well, and not a jerk, something most people would contrarily attest to, and not without warrant, because usually cops seem all too happy to write out some tickets as opposed to realizing people are fallibly human. This one time I was going like 7kph over the limit at 11pm on Highway #3, got pulled over, cop asks why I was speeding, I said “I do not have cruise control and sometimes my foot eases on and off the gas ever so slightly”. Apparently that is not a good reason, and 7kph over on the loneliest of roads is a hazard to everyone around me.

He comes back to my car, we talk a bit, and in saying I am from Saskatchewan and only recently changed my plates over to Alberta plates. Insurance is way different there, which he agreed with and even said he liked Saskatchewan’s system better (diss to expensive Alberta insurance), he did not give me a ticket for either offense.

Long story short, most of the time police officers seem to hand out tickets without reason other than “because”, but sometimes it is not entirely a bad experience.

User Comments

2 Responses to “Getting Pulled Over…”

  1. April 20th, 2009 at 1:36 AM


    Ron says:

    Who was the police officer???

  2. April 21st, 2009 at 1:35 PM


    Sean says:

    I’m not sure, I didn’t catch his name. In a pretty smart move, he came to the passenger side window of the car to talk to me as opposed to the drivers side, since it was pretty busy on the highway, so he would lean down onto the window to talk to me and kind of poke his head in the car to not be drowned out by the noise of the traffic.

Leave a Reply


Events

Community