Originally Posted by goober

Well, stories like this make me glad I live in Massachusetts, the state with the lowest rate of issuing tickets.
I once ran a red light, looked over and saw a cruiser, and the cop just looked at me, extended his index fingers and rubbed them together. It's like he understood, I was running late, there was a detour, I didn't see the red light until I was in the intersection, I didn't have to tell him this, he knew, and he knew I knew I made a mistake, so get on with life. Boston cops are the best, when they are on their game, they are the finest public servants there are, and they walk that line so well, they always give you a hint at how to avoid the problem, and they are the most reasonable law enforcement people I've ever run into, if you decide to ignore the hint, and to be unreasonable, they can handle that too.

I haven't paid a ticket in decades, and when on occasion I do get stopped, they tell me what I did, and then move on.

Once, I was approaching an upramp to the expressway, and a guy cut me off, I had to jam on my brakes to avoid an accident.
There was a cop on foot on the upramp, and traffic was slowed down, but the cop couldn't stop the guy without messing up traffic, so as the guy approached the cop, the cop motions for him to roll down his window, and as he passes the cop, the cop shouts "you're an asshole", then he looks and me with a half smile and a shrug as I go by, as if to say "that's about all I can do", I thought it was brilliant.