Caravanshaka

Reminds me of a time I was driving to school in my old 240sx (1990, real cwest body, 300 whp sr20det in it). It was about 7am and I had picked up my girlfriend and was cruising down a 4-lane road with a 40 speed limit and was going about 43 mph in 5th gear. All of a sudden a work van pulls out in front of me in the right line when I was about 50 ft from passing the street he was pulling out of. My choice was to swerve around him or slam on my brakes and hope he hit the gas as hard as I hit the brakes. So I decided to swerve since there were no cars in the other lane...It was a quick move as to not hit him, went around him and got back in the right lane and got up to the next light.

After driving through the intersection when the light turned green a city cop came flying around the van in the middle of the intersection and flipped on his lights as he got behind me, and I was thinking "what the heck is he pulling me over for?".

I pull into the parking lot and the cop comes up to the window and asks me to step outside, so I did. He says "what the hell do you think you are doing driving like that?" so I asked him to explain what he meant since I generally drive on the slow side for an 18 year old on a 300hp sports car (25 now, this was a while ago). He says he was in oncoming traffic when he saw my car fly across the double yellow line in a fish-tail and nearly hit him. I was like "WHAT??" (let me add, I had 10" wide wheels with 275's in the back of this 240 with 50/50 weight distribution going only 40 mph and didn't even accelerate once I got into the left lane). I explained to him that I was avoiding an accident by swerving around this van that cut me off, and that I never once lost control of the car. He says he should bring me in for reckless driving and blah blah blah.

Another cop car shows up about that time, which turns out to be my neighbor (who has ridden in my car before, and is a real nice guy and has helped me work on it a few times in the past) so he asked the officer what happened then pulled me aside and asked me what happened. My neighbor told the cop he was being ridiculous and that he knows I am a good driver and such. He still ended up writing me 3 tickets, one for "unsafe lane change",one for "failure to maintain lane", and one for "Failure to use turn signal". My neighbor told me as I was leaving "come see me after school and we'll take care of it"

He brought me to the city judge and we explained what happened. She dismissed the turn signal ticket, and cut the fines on the other 2 tickets to 1/4 of what they normally are and gave me deferred on them. Ended up not going on my record.

What was up that cops ***, I don't know...but I was a teenager in a sports car driving to school and avoided an accident. I have driven like an idiot a few times in my life, and would be more than willing to own up to it if I got stopped for it...but this was definitely not one of those times.

Oh, and to this day, no tickets on my record, and I'm not sure about the 1 time I got rear-ended in my wifes car if that is on my record or not, but I wasn't at fault so no real accidents there either.