stories
Oh, No! You “Accidentally” “Lost” The Keys To The Truck!
My mom was driving my sister and me to the store for the weekly grocery run, using our roommate’s truck. At the halfway point, a police car going the opposite way flipped on the lights and turned around. [Mom] pulled over.
Mom: *To me* “Find where [Roommate] keeps the insurance.” *Muttering to herself* “Please don’t give me a ticket. I still haven’t paid the last one.”
I started digging through the dashboard.
Me: “I don’t see it.”
The cop walked up, did a visible double-take at [Mom], hesitated, and then recovered.
Cop: “Hi, ma’am. The reason I pulled you over is that you were going seventy-nine in a sixty-five.”
Mom glanced at me disbelievingly.
Mom: “Really?”
Cop: *A bit more confident* “Yes, ma’am. Do you have an ID and proof of insurance?”
Mom handed over her license.
Mom: “This isn’t my truck, and I can’t find the insurance. The truck belongs to [Roommate’s Full Name]. I’m trying to get him to send the insurance to me.”
Cop: “Yeah, I know [Roommate]. I went to high school with his daughter. Just get him to send you a copy. I’ll go run your ID while you get that sorted; I’ll be right back.”
He walked back to his car to run the license while Mom texted [Roommate], who sent a copy of the insurance through text.
Mom: “The signal out here is s***. It won’t load.”
The cop came back.
Cop: “Did he send it?”
Mom showed him the loading page.
Mom: “He sent it, but it’s not loading.”
Cop: *Waving his hand dismissively* “Don’t worry about it. I know there’s insurance. I pulled [Roommate] over three days ago again for drunk driving. Well, you were going seventy-nine in a sixty-five, but I’m not going to give you a ticket this time, just a warning.”
He handed Mom a written warning.
Cop: “Just remember to slow down around here. Tell [Roommate] that [Cop] says hi.”
He went back to his car and let us leave.
But here’s the thing. There isn’t a chance in h*** we actually were speeding. First off, the power steering is almost completely out on the truck, making my tiny mother, 5’3″ and ninety-five pounds soaking wet, have a LOT of difficulty turning, and the road we were on had a lot of curves, so we had to drive slowly. Plus, I have anxiety from literally everyone in my life speeding and a few almost crashes, so I regularly check the speedometer if I’m the passenger, and Mom never went over sixty-five. Plus, the truck is old and has trouble reaching seventy, never mind seventy-nine. Not to mention that we have a family tracking app that also tracks how fast you were going, and it showed an average speed of sixty-eight for the entire ride.
It turns out that [Roommate] has been a frequent flyer with the police department, repeatedly getting pulled over for drunk driving and gaining a laundry list of DUIs. It’s to the point that there’s a flag on his truck’s information. Any time an officer sees the truck, they pull him over because every time they do, he’s drunk at the wheel.
We came to the conclusion that the double-take from the cop was because he realized it wasn’t [Roommate] driving, and the seventy-nine was essentially pulled out of his a** as a believable excuse to pull us over. That’s why we didn’t get a ticket for supposedly going fourteen miles an hour over the limit, which would otherwise mean a court date, a line, and points on Mom’s license. We don’t know if that’s actually what happened, but given the circumstances, that’s what we think.