And a cop hiding at the bottom of a steep hill on a country road looking to extort you for not riding your breaks down the hill isn't an asshole.
Cops stopping you at road blocks and shinning lights to your back seat, snooping and invading your privacy aren't being assholes?
Had that happen to me recently. Driving back from Buffalo and coming down through the mtns in VA... Steep grade up the mtn where you are going 40mph behind trucks, and then everyone coasting down the mtn around 80mph or so...
Cop on the side of the road tags me with radar, which seems dubious as I am in a pack of at least 10 cars all going the same speed, traffic was fairly heavy...
Pulls me over, says I was doing 88mph... I point out that I was in the middle of a pack of cars... He says that they were all doing around 85mph and I was visibly gaining on the car in front of me.
I am sure it had nothing to do with my being in a big red truck with straight pipes and out of state tags, drawing attention to myself. But, he was pleasant enough and I am not gonna debate him on the side of the road. He gives me my ticket, I sign it and drive away.
It is at that point where my wife reads the ticket fully and says that it has "Reckless Driving" on it. She pulls up her laptop and does a little research, and it turns out that VA has taken "Super Speeder" to a whole new level.
Any speeding violation 80mph or higher, regardless of the posted speed limit, is no longer a "moving violation"... It is an automatic criminal offense, a class III misdemeanor with a max penalty of $2500 and up to 12 months in prison.
Yeah, 10 over, if they wanted to throw the book at you, can put you in jail.
I had to hire a lawyer to go and appear in court for me, had to pay $100 and take a saturday for the A-1 Defensive Driving school in Gainesville and sit next to a guy that just got out of prison for leading police on a high speed chase through Atlanta a few years ago because he was a dealer and had 2 kilo's of pot in the trunk...
It's pretty clear that the law and the tactics used, are to generate revenue. But I WAS speeding, so do I have a real defense here?