It's the drivers in Illinois all in a hurry to go nowhere. It drove me nuts till i pulled the pin and retired now i think like this. They are all jealous of the many Prii owners and think if they get close enough some of that Prii mojo will rub off onto their vehicles or mpgs. While on the job i never got mad just wrote alot of tickets and the excuses were worth writting a book about LOL.
So how often do you guys write speeding tickets to Prius owners, if at all And have you guys pulled over Prius owners and let them off the hook or were nicer to them since they are fellow Prius owners?
I must note that in addition to pedal mapping, the modes seem to impose different time filtering. ECO mode has a low pass filter, so quick twitching is filtered out. This inherently imposes a time delay before the engine responds. While PWR doesn't provide any more power, it does spin up sooner. I believe this has something to do with how 'responsive' it feels to some people. Drivers with a continually twitchy pedal foot are far more likely to notice this than are those who apply the pedal slowly, then lock it in place. As Jay Leno often says, "How fat are we getting?" American's vehicles have ballooned even faster than their butts and bellies. My Prius is much larger than the Honda Accord Hatchback it replaced. It even has a larger cross section than our Subaru Legacy GT Wagon. But many folks have short term memory incapable of reaching back to those 20th Century models.
I once had a Police Officer pull me over - I was driving my 2005 Prius - because I had a tail light out. I thanked him for letting me know and promised to get it fixed right away (which I did). But I think the real reason was to ask me about my car. He was thinking of buying one himself, you see. He asked me lots and lots of questions. To this day I wonder if he was laying in wait for a Prius owner to drive by.
"When I drive my work vehicle (police vehicle), I could be going 5mph BELOW the posted speed limit and no one will come near me. I have the plauge, apparently." Or maybe it is because you are in a police vehicle.
Which drives me CRAZY! Sure...don't speed past a police car, but if the police car is driving slower than the speed limit...pass it! It's crazy what stigma a police car carries!
It drives me crazy too. Everyone gets scared. I just pass them even going +5 over the speed limit, but I don't go over 5.
Police officers in other countries are allowed to pull people over and perform arrests even off duty as long as they are able to present their badges. If people are too aggressive and endangering others in traffic, I see no reason to not to have one of those stick-on magnetic blue lights and pull them over. It helps a lot when people can't completely feel safe being douche bags just because there is no police cruiser around.
There's no way we would pull over for an unmarked car due to safety concerns. In fact, police officers say not to do this and if you do see an unmarked car following you it's best to keep driving directly to a police station.
While it's true that other drivers don't crowd me as much when I'm in my truck, they still see me as slow and try to get around me as quickly as they can. I surprise them regularly with my V10, and leave them hanging in the wrong lane. A cheap smile for me, and a sanity check for them. I have also found that it isn't so much that I'm in the Prius, but they tailgate the next guy too. And the guy after that, and the guy after that. It's just how they drive. I don' take it personally, and it's over in a moment. I expect it, dial in windage for them, and get back to what I was doing.
Not sure how the unmarked cars are in the US but up here, they're properly equipped with police lights behind the grille, bar on parcel shelf and the headlights and taillights are equipped with strobes. Some may have the large flood lamp by the driver's side (which makes it more obvious) but otherwise, they're almost always painted grey with the same steel rims as the regular police cars.
There are highway patrol cruisers with lights inside the car (rather than on the roof), designed to catch speeders by not making it too obvious that they're police cars from behind, but they're still marked on the side and share the same colors as regular cruisers. The unmarked ones typically have one or two lights behind the rear window. In the US, unmarked cars don't typically pull people over (obviously by policy).
I have an NRA sticker on my short rear window, above the Prius badge. Last week I looked in the mirror while stopped at a traffic light and saw a guy in the minivan behind me pointing the sticker out to his wife and laughing.
Ahh ok. Ours really are stealth then (the grey ones) and can pull people over. Those that are other vehicles of other colours (e.g normal-looking cars) are typically traffic or neighbourhood patrols and I don't think they have the authority to ticket or pull anyone over. Also we have both local police forces and the RCMP and different proviinces/territories have different levels of authority for the RCMP over the local police force IIRC.
Police: Phony officer could be killing Mississippi drivers - CNN.com Killings lead to question: Can you wait before pulling over for a cop? – This Just In - CNN.com Blogs
