From The Car Guy - Dec 09
“Karma Triumph”
By Lance Lambert
The sun was out, the road was straight, and my 1959 Triumph Bonneville motorcycle was running perfectly.
I was going up a long stretch in Tacoma, WA that provides the transition from the once bustling downtown area to the beginning of T town’s east side residential neighborhood. The speed limit was 25 miles per hour, and on that road, on that day, while riding that motorcycle, I turned into what can best be described as an over zealous law abiding citizen.
As I was accelerating up the hill, I glanced down at my speedometer and realized that I was traveling at over 80 miles per hour. Common sense, up to this point being totally absent, returned, and upon cresting the hill, I decided to slow down. This was a good decision considering that, much to my surprise, parked several blocks ahead was a radar equipped police car. At that time, the
I downshifted the Bonneville, applied the brakes, and, upon approaching the officer’s vehicle, pulled directly in front of his car, parked, and walked up to the officer’s window. He was not worried or apprehensive; he was amazed. Not only was he not going to have to chase this small town Evil Knevil, he wasn’t even going to have to get out of his car! “I’ve never seen anyone do this before.” he said. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing this before, and I’ll never see anyone do this again”. He was dumbfounded that a speeding motorcyclist would not only hit the brakes upon spotting him, but would actually pull over, stop, and turn himself in. Why would I make absolutely sure that I was going to get a ticket?
You won’t find anyone that respects police officers more than I do. Day after day, they have to deal with life’s tragedies, angry citizens, people that don’t like them, and people that are scared of them. There was no question as to what his purpose was for being parked there and, as a result, a speeding ticket was going to be issued. It was his job to provide me with an experience that, hopefully, would in the future cause me to not travel at more than three times the speed limit. By pulling myself over, I showed him respect and, perhaps more importantly, showed him that there were a few citizens, even ones on motorcycles, that would like to see a police officer’s day go just a little bit easier. I was putting out a little bit of “good karma” which it turned out, came back to me immediately.
He took my license, checked to make sure that there were no outstanding felony warrants (hey, I watch COPS and I know the jargon) and then, here’s the good karma part; wrote a speeding ticket for ten miles over the limit. It stated 35 in a 25, not the actual 80 that I had been traveling when cresting the hill. This was several years ago, and the radar equipment didn’t permanently record my actual speed; it just let that officer know how fast I was going when the radar system caught me in it’s beam. There would be no “Lucy, you got some ‘splaining to do” back at the station. And yes, I know, he was, in some people’s opinions, breaking the law by giving this citizen a break; however, his gesture likely expressed his appreciation for showing him some respect.
Try it sometime. Not the speeding, just the effort to make some local officer’s day a little easier.
