Pulled over for "giving a bad impression"

[ellisd82]

Must be your area, I have gone passed them at all sorts of speeds, once doing 90, the other day doing 80 on my motorbike. Cops won't enter into a chase or try and pull you unless you are doing over 90 (thats bridge police with camera not motorway patrol). And check what kind of car it is. If its an Astra or a van, they are not allowed to pull you over, infact they are not even allowed on the motorway whilst on duty.

Does not matter if he was nice, I would question him for wasting your time, take his badge number and give his reason for being stopped to his superiors. the BiB are not the law, they only uphold it.
I have never had a problem and have some cop friends, but that does not mean I would take any crap from them!

[Mojocvh]

If the OP had a non altered plate then perhaps I would feel some understanding for his angst, but having made the decision not to comply with a seemingly important part of vehicle legislation () well you asked for it bud. Sorry.

[Terzo123]

ellisd82 said:

Must be your area, I have gone passed them at all sorts of speeds, once doing 90, the other day doing 80 on my motorbike. Cops won't enter into a chase or try and pull you unless you are doing over 90 (thats bridge police with camera not motorway patrol). And check what kind of car it is. If its an Astra or a van, they are not allowed to pull you over, infact they are not even allowed on the motorway whilst on duty.

Does not matter if he was nice, I would question him for wasting your time, take his badge number and give his reason for being stopped to his superiors. the BiB are not the law, they only uphold it.
I have never had a problem and have some cop friends, but that does not mean I would take any crap from them!

Awesome advice!

[Distant]

ellisd82 said:

Must be your area, I have gone passed them at all sorts of speeds, once doing 90, the other day doing 80 on my motorbike. Cops won't enter into a chase or try and pull you unless you are doing over 90 (thats bridge police with camera not motorway patrol). And check what kind of car it is. If its an Astra or a van, they are not allowed to pull you over, infact they are not even allowed on the motorway whilst on duty.

Does not matter if he was nice, I would question him for wasting your time, take his badge number and give his reason for being stopped to his superiors. the BiB are not the law, they only uphold it.
I have never had a problem and have some cop friends, but that does not mean I would take any crap from them!

[M5Tom]

ellisd82 said:

Must be your area, I have gone passed them at all sorts of speeds, once doing 90, the other day doing 80 on my motorbike. Cops won't enter into a chase or try and pull you unless you are doing over 90 (thats bridge police with camera not motorway patrol). And check what kind of car it is. If its an Astra or a van, they are not allowed to pull you over, infact they are not even allowed on the motorway whilst on duty.

Does not matter if he was nice, I would question him for wasting your time, take his badge number and give his reason for being stopped to his superiors. the BiB are not the law, they only uphold it.
I have never had a problem and have some cop friends, but that does not mean I would take any crap from them!

Total rubbish. I can't wait for the day the 'bridge police' pull you over in their marked astra..........You really have no clue.

[ShiggyBiggs]

M5 Mark said:

Pulled over a few weeks back for "giving a bad impression" just curious on anyone elses take on this? Is it right?

Coming down the M3 there was a marked 5 series in the midle lane. I was very careful NOT to speed. Was keeping an eye on the GPS as I went past. GPS showing 71-72 and dial showing 75. he follows for about mile (doing vehicle check he told me later) then pulls me over.

To be fair he was very polite and reasonable but explained that he HAD to pull me over because it gives a bad impression someone passing a marked police car in powerful car! He stated what would other drivers think if they saw a performance car passing a marked vehicle! I knew better than to argue but did point out that his speedo was probably the same level of accuracy as mine but I was checking my GPS reading and that it was showing 70 ish. He interestingly pointed out that the police were under instruction NOT to ticket people for doing less than 79 as a general rule by the home office but I was taking the mickey.

But seriously giving a bad impression to other road users?! Surely if he is doing less than the legal limit, even slightly, then it shouldn't matter!

Still fair play didn't get a ticket and as he pointed out he could have given me one for my number plate. Glad I stopped.... was sooo tempting to dissapear! As much as I think the whole thing was BS I must say he was actually the nicest most polite copper I've encountered! Just rattles me that do the police really have little to do?!

Man, I got pulled over once for changing from lane 1, to lane 2 to turn right after a police car passed me(in lane 2), when I slowed down because hed been sitting along side me, about the front of their car level with the back of my van for about 3 or 4 miles as I sat at the 40mph limit. For apparently being suspicious despite this being the evening time and I was heading into the center of town.

[uk_vette]

Guybrush said:

If there is a line of cars travelling behind a police car, probably just on or below the speed limit and someone has the sheer cheek to step out of line and break away from the pack and overtake, thus challenging the authority of the police, then it is very likely that the miscreant will be pulled over as an example to those who were too afraid to overtake themselves - thus reinforcing the authority. Annoying but true.

.
.
No, I dont agree,
If I come up behind a line of sheep doing 69-71 behind a marked police car on the motorway, I will slide past them all probably doing about 75-77, and think nothing of it.
Then when I am sufficiently infront of the police car, I will gradually ease back up to around 80 ish.

'vette

[dwilkie]

Mad Dave said:

I think it's about time to quit this forum.

Please don't, it's the massively disproportioned outrage I see from some people (not aimed at you ) that keeps me coming back to SP&L - seriously I've seen better thought out arguments from scientologists!

[Tiggsy]

The real Apache said:

y2blade said:

The real Apache said:

Fair enough.....if he was pulled for that, but the officer said he's pulled him for giving a bad impression and for driving a powerful car.

we only have one side of this story

"pinch of salt" anyone?

yeah, but if you don't believe the poster there's no point in even commenting is there

PH suddenly grinds to a halt!

Edited by Tiggsy on Monday 17th May 14:21

[Landshark]

y2blade said:

Mad Dave said:

Rusty Arches said:

Hope you got his number, make a complaint.

Have I missed something here?

OP commits offence. OP is pulled over. OP is dealt with with civility and not prosecuted for the offence. OP is allowed on his way.

nope


just the usual "hate the police" attitude of some people


personally I still think there is more to this than meets the eye, like I said earlier it would be good if the Officer in question could give his side of events

I haven't finished reading this yet, but which part of the M3??

[Landshark]

Okay got to the end, couldn't help but laugh at this post though!!!

ellisd82 said:

Must be your area, I have gone passed them at all sorts of speeds, once doing 90, the other day doing 80 on my motorbike. Cops won't enter into a chase or try and pull you unless you are doing over 90 (thats bridge police with camera not motorway patrol). And check what kind of car it is. If its an Astra or a van, they are not allowed to pull you over, infact they are not even allowed on the motorway whilst on duty.

Does not matter if he was nice, I would question him for wasting your time, take his badge number and give his reason for being stopped to his superiors. the BiB are not the law, they only uphold it.
I have never had a problem and have some cop friends, but that does not mean I would take any crap from them!

All i can say is this must just be your area!!!

[maurauth]

M5 Mark said:

Mr_annie_vxr said:

M5 Mark said:

Mr_annie_vxr said:

havoc said:

Waste of time. Regardless of the technicality of your 'offence', or the 'appearance' of it to another road user, 72 on an M-way should in no way be an issue unless there are severe meteo conditions or unless the average speed is <50mph (i.e. your overtake is way too quick vs the vehicles you're passing). The copper should have known all of that and left alone!

I'd suggest he was either bored or had too big an impression of himself.

Or the OP had been gaining on the officer at a greater speed but only passed at 70 odd,

The OP was also committing another offence that made him stand out.

For the two offences he got a pull and polite chat.

The OP has not stated what speed the officer said he was doing.

Patrol speeds are anything between 60-90 mph.


The officer is polite and explains why he stopped the OP and applied discretion, yet still gets vilified.

He may as well have just stuck the OP on for his number plate and called the OP a rude name and been obnoxious as he would have got just as much stick.

I've had similar with ambler gamblers who have gone through when they shouldn't have but not by large margins. I've stopped them and had a quick chat more for the impression it gives to the public who were there, i.e I am not ignoring it.

Does that make me think I'm God ?

He joined the M3 as I was coming to the junction, so there was no coming up behind him at a much higher speed. I did state the marked car must have been doing around 5mph less than me so was clearly under the limit.

I've stated several times I did not think the officer was out of order, I was simply curious about the reasoning behind this. It was not my intention to create an "US vs THEM" thread but it appears there is a clear line of thought here between the posters who are obviosuly coppers and those who are not. I think that is a shame. It's a shame the BiB here clearly think black and white and jump to defend their colleague. I see less of a PH spirit in this section, from BiB and public then any other forum section. I think the whole thing is a shame. Mr_annie_vxR you are ofcourse right, 71mph IS an offence, but I really think your black and white view of this is exactly what gives the police a bad name. Not the officer stopping me, he couldn't have been nicer about it and had a lot less attitude than you are giving me. My whole point is what was the thinking behind it. Mr_annie_vxR is simply giving me a negative impression that I didn't have before this thread! If your attitude is actually the thinking behind why I was stopped then I find myself drawing the conclusion that maybe some police are narrow minded.

Once again apologies my intention was not to have a go at the police or create a division between public and police.

Right.

Since you have decided to highlight myself.

What attitude am I giving you exactly?

My comments where nothing more than observations to explain what the officers reasoning was as to why you got pulled. I thought that was why you came on here? Otherwise why did you post? I then answered other peoples posts, yet you are now claim I'm "giving you attitude"


From asking people why he pulled you over you have then decided to attack me based on my observations of his thought process and declare that I give a bad impression of the police due to my black and white views of the law.

Since we are clearly in the bounds of drawing conclusions. I conclude you were doing a damn site more than 70 before he pulled you, no doubt slowing down as he came down the slip road. No-one drives at 70-71 on the motorway. You then overtook him and had a misplaced number plate. You attracted his attention.

Me, I've let people off with warnings at 130. I would never give a ticket for less than 90, indeed probably not for less than a 100.

You've created a division about officers jumping to defend their colleague and the for the record I think you will find that actually very few of the posters you think are police officers actually are. No-one has defended him other than to explain the possible reasons for the pull in the first place. Since when did his actions (of letting you off two offences by your own admission) and him being nothing but polite require defending?

You clearly have no interest in the thought process (which has been explained) as when its mentioned you start accusing people of having an 'attitude' when they are offering their thoughts about what happened.

I wouldn't have even pulled you over.

Edited by Mr_annie_vxr on Friday 7th May 18:54

You make a fair point, I was just asking for the thought process and you gave me that. Taken on baord. Maybe I was unfair in highlighting your comments, wasn;t my intention to single anyone out. You;re right I asked what people were thinking and you told me, fair enough I should accept that, thanks for sharing I guess

I guess you've already touched on the strangest thing of the event. I may have been doing quite a bit more than 70 maybe only 10mins prior to this, was actually running on fumes and reading 1 mile less than the range to the petrol station so 70 seemed sensible. It genuinely is strange to me that at the time I was actually only doing 70ish and this should happen.

As for the plate, I do around 35k a year and not once been stopped once for it. Maybe I should be greatful for that rather than shocked it did happen.

Apologies for the singling you out, you gave me what I asked for, I should be man enough to accept people have different opinions, so genuinely where as I might not agree thanks for sharing.

35000 miles a year in an M5, and you spend most of that doing "quite a bit more than 70"? How much does that cost you in fuel!

[Odie]

Sometimes the police get it wrong, its like any job, people make mistakes whether this was a mistake or not is a matter of opinion.

Ive had various different experience with the police, all the officers have been pleasant and professional, some have got things wrong or made a mistake in my opinion, but these things happen.

Only the other day I stopped to let a policeman (a traffic officer on foot) direct a car across my path to pull it over (anpr checks or something similar I guess), I wasnt expecting any thanks, but i received a smile and a thank you wave. Which was nice of him.

[M5 Russ]

Nothing annoys me more than a row of sheep all doing 59 on a motorway behind a BIB because they are too scared to overtake.

I always slip past at 75ish and have never ever been stopped for it.
As for a wrongly spaced number plate - that will always get you a tug - just buy a proper private plate