I was driving on the parkway as I’ve have been doing nearly every day for the last 20 years, just another day. I was soon to pass the State Trooper’s favorite hiding spot, and like always, I ease back to 55. V1 religiously alerts me to his presence.
Normally I get a heads-up a half mile or so before I’m see him. After I passed at a snail’s pace and the V1’s beeping slowly subsided, I gave it the gas and resumed my daily average speed. But this time I said to myself, well, why not push this scooter a little, a new M4. The time was still early AM, hardly anyone was on the sweeping four lane.
Out of nowhere I hear V1 beeping, quicker and quicker until it was pinned at full bar strength, one bogey behind. My first thought: some civilian closing on me and setting off a false alert. But with V1, that’s extremely rare. I decided to cut back to my snail pace just in case. Sure enough, that same trooper had pulled out to run down my clean white ticket magnet. He must have been coming at me at well over 100MPH because he caught up so fast and careened right past as he attempted to get behind me.
But for what, doing 55 in a 55? As he approached my door he said, “Hi, sir, where’s your front plate?”
In my mind I murmured, “Thanks, Mike, for the brilliant V1, which just saved my butt from an OMG ticket. Front plate tickets are government’s joke on us and kind of the least bad outcome. If it were not for that arrow pointing to the predator, I wouldn’t have slowed and moved to the right as quickly as I did.
Philip DeFranco
Roslyn, NY