Quote:
Originally Posted by molson
Again, their actions were reasonable and understandable, but also completely counterproductive to their goal. You really don't save that much time driving like a maniac in city streets.
If you run a red light, you're saving somewhere between 0 and 60 seconds, at the risk of losing 15+ minutes via traffic stop, and causing an accident (and if you run multiple lights and speed, your odds of geting stopped, or causing an accident go up). If you're under stress then maybe you're not capable of making that calcuation, and that's fine, but it's not anybody else's fault when your silly risk doesn't pay off.
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Your inputs are defective because most officers would not detain you for 15+ minutes. This particular guy got unlucky with the officer he drew.
The funny thing about all this, and probably part of why I'm so adamant about it, is that in one of the two situations I describe above where I violated traffic laws and ran traffic lights late at night was in Austin, Texas when my wife went into labor with our firstborn. The moment her labor started her contractions were two minutes apart and her water broke shortly thereafter. We called our midwife (who delivered at the hospital then) and she said we needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible. Risk of infection, incredibly short labor, etc.
I got tailed by a cop for running the light at 38th street and Lamar in Austin. This light is maybe 2 blocks from the hospital. The cop turned onto 38th street to follow me. Never turned on his lights. As soon as I entered the emergency room portion of the parking lot, he stopped his car, watched me get my wife out, then pulled away.
That is how not to be an asshole police officer. It was 2:30 in the morning, nobody else was on the roads (well, I passed a motorcyclist before that) and I wasn't endangering anyone. I was responding prudently to an emergency situation. Just like Moats was.