rules

I'm waiting for it......waiting......

because somebody is going to say the DOT bears are just revenue collectors who make things up to write innocent drivers up for......

Somebody will say it and have an anecdotal story to back it up...

and I'm waiting for it....

 

Cops are for Revenue,doesn't matter what the prefix,State Local,County,DOT . . . . .
Occasionally they fight crime(s) yes,but . . . . . .
The founding Judicial System went defunct 50 years ago(check history)

If you have a gun and a badge,you Oppress & Collect
Protect & Serve was a misprint.

 

Some truckers wouldn't be hired anywhere else. Some rebel against authority and will do the wrong thing for spite and thrills.

As long as rejects are allowed in the industry, there will be babysitters around.

 

If all drivers started to follow the vast majority of the rules, so that the police agency's did not get the revenue they need, they would just start making new rules and following the ones already on the books closer than now.
You would see trucks being pulled over for 2-4 mph over the speed limit, lights looking a little too dim, mud flaps flapping too much. And anything else they could think of.
One way or another they would manage to find the money.

 

You are 100% right! This holds true for passenger cars as well, I got pulled over once for no other reason except that he thought my bumper sticker inappropriate. All it said was "Politically Incorrect and Morally Impaired"

 

It already happens.............. If any LEO wants to stop you, they need to have probable cause (P.C.) . IF they cant find PC in time, they use something called C.P.C ( Creative Probable Cause)

 

I heard quite a few DOT inspectors were laid off in the IL and IN area, not sure how true it is though

 

You should always have good PC. If you find contraband, the whole reason for your being there is the result of a traffic stop. If that is shady and gets thrown out, you had no reason for the stop, and all your contraband charges go away.

I'll tell you how it works though, government agencies do budget a certain percentage on tickets. They don't completely rely on that number, but they do budget for it based on past experience. If ticket numbers go down, you don't have some beauraucrat yelling that they need more tickets; I know many a cop that would love that just to be able to cry foul. You do have traffic supervisors who want to make sure their officers are productive though. Should your tax money pay some officer to sit under a shade tree and read a book, or play on the internet? If your job is traffic, then that's what you should be doing.

As far as the 2-4 mph over stops, most radar and lidar manuals say accuracy within +/- 3 mph. I'd fight a ticket like that any day of the week. What I worry about are the rulings by the courts, like the recent one in Ohio. It allows officers to write tickets based on a visual estimation alone. Now I'm pretty good at estimating the speed of a vehicle, but I can't imagine not even pacing to confirm it. I hope their legislators squash that pretty soon, and it seems like they will.

There are good guys and bad guys in every profession. The thing to remember is whichever side of that stop you happen to be on, you are a professional, and you should take pride in your profession. If you don't, time to find a new one.

 

I was driving my pickup in my town one night on my way home from work.
On one of the main streets I was coming down a hill and saw a police officer past a traffic light.
The light was green, so I went a little wide and went around the officer.
Well when I got next to him I saw that he was there because the town was flushing water mains. There was water running across the road that I did not really notice since it had been raining a little while earlier.
Well......
He came around his car as I went into the water. (I had 10 inch wide tires) He ended up getting splashed bad. Soaked head to toe.
I keep going down the street.
I made my turn about 2 blocks up and as I came down the hill on that street I saw him on his way down with disco lights going.
I pulled off and waited. He came to my truck and was going off.
Telling me that I was speeding and all kinds of stuff.
I was looking for my registration card for several minutes and had not passed him anything, while he was ranting. And I told him several times that I knew I was driving 28 mph and that I was not speeding.
He now yells at me claiming that I was telling him that he did not know how to do his job. Now he finally asks for my license. As soon as he looked at it he turned green and asked if I was still driving a truck.
I answered yes sir. And he lost all his bluster. He told me to go, and to be more careful the next time.
If I had not had a CDL and was not a driver I think he would have givin me the speeding ticket. But when he saw that I drove for a living he felt really guilty about saying that I could not have known how fast I was going since I was not looking at the guage, and for saying that he believed I was telling him he did not know his job.