What's the most chickenshit traffic ticket you've gotten?

[Morella]

I have to mail $116 to the state of Florida because our trailer blew an inside tire, a passing motorist yelled at us and told us about it (otherwise we would have had no way of knowing), and we were looking for a safe place to pull over when one of Florida's Finest pulled us over. It is illegal to drive with a blown tire in Florida...yes...but we haven't yet figured out how to bring the truck to an instantaneous stop, aside from running it into a bridge abutment, which is also illegal, not to mention painful.

We got another ticket because the great state of Texas set up an ad-hoc truck inspection point, and just at the place where you're supposed to turn in, all of the lights were turned out, and there were no markings or signs. So Tony overshot the ramp by about a hundred feet or so, and guess what? The cop was already sitting there waiting to write the ticket for failure to obey a traffic sign, about $180, as I recall.

So who gives a shit? This is just our problem, right? Wrong. Take a trip down the road right now, and you will find semis pulled over all over the place. This is all part of a program called "CSA2010", which is supposed to improve traffic safety. It won't. What it will do is have a seriously deterimental effect on the US economy. More jobs will be lost, and the price of everything that you buy will go up. Why? Dawk! Everything that you buy is delivered by truck, even the gas that you put in your car. If you think that drivers are going to accept a life of poverty and just keep paying these tickets out of their own pockets, you don't have all four wheels on the road. The cost will be passed on to the shippers, to the customers, and to the consumers of everything...food, clothes, electronics, gas...everything. It will also be passed on to the cost of diesel fuel, because diesel fuel is delivered by truck, which will just compound the problem, over and over again, kind of like the "value added tax" that Obama and the dems in Congress have a hard-on for.

What's the answer? Maybe vote a little more carefully next time. Maybe stop and think for a minute..."change" doesn't necessarily mean "improvement"! Of course I would never, ever suggest running over the next cop you see getting out of his car. That just wouldn't be right. But if I see one lying in the road already, all I'm going to do is make a nice, safe lane change and go around him. I hate running over speed bumps.

-d

[spastic_chicken]

I just got a ticket for a crack in my windshield, and the exhaust on my diesel is loud, so they say the exhaust system is defective

[rum_runner69]

[Otto Baron]

This is all part of a program called "CSA2010",...I thought that program ended in 1865. Did the officers administering this program wear grey uniforms?

[Morella]

Here's the link, if you want to torture yourself. http://csa2010.fmcsa.dot.gov/

Hmm...lots of talk about behaviour analysis. Did you know that these people have actually proposed hooking up drivers to medical monitoring machines and putting cameras inside all of the trucks? The funny thing is...if all of these people who are wasting time and leeching money from the economy would just pick up shovels and repair the roads instead, those of us who drive in teams could get some sleep instead of being tossed around like rag dolls. That would be money well-spent for safety, which is why it will never happen.

-d

[Otto Baron]

I guarantee that they won't force any of that on truck drivers comming in from Mexico. For example, the duct tape repairs found on some Mexican trucks would not likely be approved for Licensed U.S. trucks.

[Abnorml]

I don't worry about truck drivers on the road. It's the idiots in the "regular cars" that are the ones that can't drive. The law makers are not truck drivers and they don't care about truck drivers, they just want votes.

[Morella]

Umm...I was hit twice in the same month, both times by other trucks. Whether or not the drivers were stupid wouldn't have mattered, because they were both sleeping at the time. One was a U-Haul, and I think that the driver had a little help from Oxycontin and alcohol (U-haul truck drivers are not truck drivers either, which makes me wonder why they are driving them). The other driver spoke no English, and may not have understood that he was supposed to sleep in between driving. This was a US company in Yuma...there is a big part of the US that has actually become Mexico, but of course I'm a racist for saying that.

The drivers in cars are just lemmings to me. They are constantly trying to find ways to kill themselves, and they will drive blindly into any traffic hazard if you don't move your trailer over and block their way. Sometimes I think our job is to keep them alive.

The law makers, oh yes, I definitely agree. They have no idea what they're doing, and the end result is that they're making things more dangerous and frustrating by trying to force us to follow rules that just can't be done, or that make no sense whatsoever. The biggest problem to us, as a team, is that we have to sleep when the government tells us we can, and not when we're tired. There have been many times when I was close to nodding off, Tony was behind me, wide awake and alert after a wonderful six hours of sleep, but he couldn't take over for me because the government says that he needs four more hours off before he's ready to drive. You have to be a truck driver to know what it's like to spend 10 hours in a sleeper berth on a rough road (we have many), being tossed all around, bruised and banged up, forget about trying to sleep, and then having to drive 11 hours because "you've been in the sleeper berth and you're all rested and ready for work". The lawmakers have no freaking idea, and people are dying because of it.

Some states have a 55 mph speed limit for trucks. That's just fucking brilliant. I was doing 60 when I was rear-ended by that U-Haul, and it hit me hard enough to destroy his truck and injure my back and hip. Imagine being distracted while driving a Vette or one of those little Jap sports cars, maybe your passenger is giving you a Lewinski under the steering wheel or whatever, you look up, and there's a truck doing 20 mph slower than you are...obeying the law. The bottom half of your car will be found under the trailer. They may have to search for a while to find your head. Hers will probably be down in the wreckage.


-d

[Scary Guy]

As far as tickets in general go I turned right on a red at 2 AM and didn't see the "no turn on red" sign. No traffic for miles, victimless crime... well not victimless because I got fucked out of $170. Of course it was either take the points and pay the lower fee or pay the higher fee and get no points. I never get into accidents I should have just taken the points. Although those would come up in a search on the plate so I guess this was better anyway.

[Morella]

I missed a "no turn on right" sign the day before my test for the CDL. I was just lucky enough to get away with it. It just isn't something that you look for. Although there is sometimes a good reason for that one, $170 is ridiculous, and playing games with the points as they are, I would say that they're just pulling a scam.

FLORIDA does something even worse. You have the choice of mailing the ticket and the fine in, or you can go to court, and if you're found guilty, the judge can assess an additional penalty of up to $500. The accused have no rights whatsoever, just one more reason to be concerned about cops who hand out accusations like they're candy. I'm with the rappers on this one...kill a motherfuckin cop!

-d

[dodgerider666]

Lets see I got all three of these at the same time first was defective exhaust on my truck (Its not just has no muff and guess what ITS STILL DONT!! ) Then one for having a car plate on a truck which is what the DMV sent me so I told them off. Next was a tail light out BUT the he pulled me over for failing to stop for 3sec at a stop sign at 11:30p.m witch he said he would not give me a ticket for that one.........GEEEEE thks IMO the one that pissed me off the most was the defective exhaust I hate that law