Driving down the interstate at 65mph got me thinking... How many speeding tickets have you gotten driving your Prius?
It'd be the perfect driving oxymoron. Cop: "How fast do you think you were going in your Prius?" Me: "Not fast enough. You still caught me."
Coming into Greenville you slow from 65 to 45, going out you only speed up to 55. My fault but not a horrible assumption.
My only modern speeding stop was on a bicycle. On level ground, not a hill. No ticket. Seattle-region cyclists familiar with the Burke-Gilman trail can probably guess where.
At times, driving a Prius can be more of a challenge than other cars. In most other cars, all I have to do is to lift my foot off the accelerator pedal to maintain speed after I come over the crest of a hill and start on the downhill grade. However in my Prius, that technique doesn't always work. There have been many times where (on a downhill grade) I take my foot off the gas pedal and the car will still increase in speed. Consequently, I have to lightly apply the brake pedal and/or "shift" into "B" mode. Keith
I have gotten three tickets in my Prius in the last couple of years. The last one I got was for doing 88mph on a 65mph zone on highway 287 in Colorado. I have to admit I was just dying to get home. I had spent the last ten days in california visiting 8 amusement parks in 10 days, and my plane landed in Denver at 1:30 in the morning. I then got in the car and headed home, in Keller, TX. ( I was just ready to go to bed). P.S. The reason why I landed in Denver rather than DFW was because I was going with a group of friends from Denver. It was less expensive for us to book as a group, that meant leaving from the same airport. I also got a ticket for doing 48mph on a 45 mph zone and another one for doing 77 mph on a 60 mph zone.
Okay...I'm talking Honda Fit..but the psychology is similar. I've commented in other threads that I think some people aggressively pass Prius and "My Fit" because they "assume" I'm going slow just because I am driving a compact hatchback. IMO the positive converse to this? Police seem to totally ignore me, making the same assumption. I would usually get about 1 or more speeding tickets per year, with just about everything else I've ever driven. My Honda Fit? I can zoom past police and they just sit there. It's almost like they are embarrased to fire up and pull me over. I take it as an advantage. Year and 1/2...no speeding tickets. Either I really am slowing down, and I don't think so...or there really is something to driving a vehicle people attach a "slow" label. PS. Obviously I won't vote. Because my application isn't Prius.
More important than getting no speeding tickets is the complete freedom from cop-watching. I also used to be bad at not wearing seat belts. The Prius chimes so I've made a habit to strap one on!
I got one in my 2000 Honda Insight for 48 in a 35. The officer was asking so many questions about the car that I thought I had a chance. Nope, not one mile taken off. Since the ICE turns off when you stop, he assumed that the vehicle was an EV.
Regarding getting ticketed for going only 3 mph over the speed limit, I've found that frequently they catch you going a lot higher over the limit but are conservative in their estimates when ticketing you Technically you can be ticketed for going even 1 mph over and it's less likely to be disputed (e.g., "Your honor, I wasn't going that crazy fast as the ticket claims.")
Heck, the only time I ever got a speeding ticket was in 1974 while driving a 1965 Corvette coupe. I took it to court and beat it. Remember, cruise control can be your friend.
None in either hybrid. Hypermiling has reduced speed traps from a panic to mere curiosity. Saw an article about radar detectors that link to smartphones to tell you where speeding traps are and just laughed. Now there's a chunk of technology I don't have to pay for or fuss with! Back in my wilder days I got three tickets on my bicycle: running red lights (twice, one of them just by a whisker) and running stop sign (once). I can remember just 4 speeding tickets (1 of them on a motorcycle) but have been stopped many times without getting a ticket. Three memorable ones: - When I passed an unmarked in the early morning (very little other traffic), speeding, with a bagel in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. He really should have ticketed me! - Second was when I was lanesplitting on a motorcycle eastbound on one of the parkways on Long Island. On the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, solid cars stopped or just creeping along, I was lanesplitting through the mess at maybe 20-25mph. Cop car comes flying down the grass in the median to pull me over. I think my gray hair saved me. Or perhaps the fact that we didn't have the screwdriver needed to get the registration out of the tail section? - Third was on a motorcycle in Japan during National Safety Week (doh!). PSL was 30km (18mph) in a mountainous area, I was doing about twice that, and another bike had just passed me when we came to a radar trap. They confiscated the other guy's bike but let me go, maybe because I'm a gaijin or because my bike was borrowed from Honda??
It would also be interesting to see what color car the speeders own. I've heard that white is the lowest and red the highest.
When I had my green Seville, the cops never even gave me a second look. With the yellow Corvette, I always got the fisheye, even when I wasn't doing anything.
Remind me please, in depth What's anyone's opinion about the speed you're traveling as you approach a higher speed limit sign?
