Eric Thompson: No problems with speeding tickets, when they're deserved

Police officers are all smiles - until they catch you speeding. Photo / File

For a number of years I have been at various dinner parties, barbecues, posh soirees, pub bashes and the like and, without exception, heard someone having a go at the police for pulling them over and slapping them with a speeding ticket.

Many readers of these, dare I say, august and well-balanced missives, have read my rails against speed Nazis (the public - not the police) who decide just how fast we can drive on the open road.

Those with a keen eye for detail will have noticed at no point have I advocated breaking the speed limit, or driving in a reckless and dangerous manner. Octogenarians, or those younger who act like ones, and the socially challenged, who think they are always right, should understand that driving a car fast in a competent manner, and in accordance to the conditions, is not dangerous driving.

May I suggest that those who get their knickers in a twist over such matters get themselves on a driver-training course to learn how to pilot a vehicle at more than 70km/h on an open road safely. Anyway, I digress - back to the ticket whingers.

Over the years, as some of you may have guessed, I have received a few speeding tickets; none, I might add, in a built-up area. Anyone caught doing 70km/h in a 50 zone deserves to get whacked with a $300 fine. My transgressions have always been on the open road, and when there's very little traffic about. One memorable ticketing incident was when I was passing a logging truck on a dual carriageway after following it for kilometre after kilometre on a winding road. Not wanting to be surprised by something coming around a blind corner, I bided my time until it was safe to pass.

As per usual, said truck driver decided to put his foot down and ramp his rig up to about 90-100km/h before the next set of winding road - which incidentally was sign-posted halfway through the passing lane - but that didn't bother the ignorant sod.

As I'm sure others have found to their dismay, I had to accelerate to about 115-120km/h to get past the truck before the end of the passing lane and - whoa and behold - sure enough, there's a police officer sitting just over the brow of the hill at the end of the passing lane.

By the time he had fired up his car, turned on the bling and the techno beat, I was already pulling over.

The officer asked me if I knew how fast I was travelling and I said, "Yes, I do". There was a moment of stunned silence and I could see he was a little thrown, as I would hazard a guess that 99 per cent of drivers would have said "No, but it was just under the limit."

I was then asked how fast I thought I was going and I told him between 115-120km/h. He said I was indeed between those speeds, in fact I was clocked at 118km/h. I was then asked if I'd like to see his read-out to verify that was the case - I declined because I knew.

He asked why I was speeding and I told him my story about being a sensible driver and how I was stuck behind the truck all that time and he had sped up forcing me to break the limit to get ahead.

The cop's reply - in his indomitable logic - was that that might be the case, but the law was the law and I broke it. He went on to mention that the truck driver was now no doubt well down the road while I was on the side of it getting a ticket.

To get to the nub of the story, I have no issue with getting a speeding ticket and never have. The law is the law and I knowingly broke it by doing more than 100km/h. My big issue is with the police's policy of parking in places where they know drivers will be over the speed limit in an effort to get past slower vehicles, so as not to spend the next half hour trundling along at 50-60km/h. Of course, me taking the moral high ground had no effect on the officer's decision, as his revenue-gathering exercise was complete.

With all that said and done, I have no cause to complain about the speeding ticket, my issue was with the way in which it was done and the positioning of the speed trap.

I wouldn't quite go so far as the Bobby Fuller lyrics state "I fought the law and the law won", but a little understanding would have been nice - even if the officer had just said so.

And this is the story I always relate to folk who bang on about getting speeding tickets. We all know the rules, so break them at your own peril.

Having said all that, I got a hell of a fright the other night on my way back from work when I was pulled up at an alcohol breath-testing roadblock just after Johnsons Tunnel heading north on State Highway 1.

Tune in for next week's episode when I tell you how that went. Remember, it's not what you think you were doing in the car, it's what the police know what you were doing.