[marlin]

Having long been aware of just how seriously the French police ( and French motorists ! ) view any driver foolish enough to cross a soilid white line in order to overtake, I damn nearly fouled myself last week, when having done exactly that , two gendarmes jumped out into the road from behind a lorry parked in a layby and flagged me down. It was, though, clearly a set-up, inasmuch as coming off a roundabout and being faced by a very long stretch of perfectly flat and straight road and in a visibility that I could see for miles, I then went over the solid white line in order to overtake a 2CV puttering along at zilch miles an hour. Of course, my Aston ( a DB9 Volante) just zoomed past in the winking of an eye with absolutely NO danger to anyone.......... until, that is, the two cozzers jumped out from behind a lorry parked in a layby about 200 yards ahead and then nicked me for both speeding and crossing the white line. It cost me 180 Euros, 90 for each offence. At no time did they have a camera or radar gun, so I guess that they just guestimated my speed. but at least there are no endorsement points !

 

[Andrewjn]

I DIDN'T get nicked...

... driving past a cop car at 135 mph in my red '07 AM Vantage.

Southern California has a lot of wide-open roads. I'd had the car 3 months and needed to go about 400 miles one hot day so I opened it up on a long straight stretch of the Soutbound 57, in a big straight "dip" that stretched maybe 2 miles from the tip of one hill to another. I was going so fast I didn't even SEE the black and white till I passed it.

I crap my pants and lift off the gas... and he pulls over to help a motorist with his hood up and engine steaming.

65 mph the rest of the way.

If you want to spot a lot of nice parked exotics, go about 10 miles South of Las Vegas and sit by the highway. Lambos, Astons, Ferraris... they've either just won or just lost a lot of money and they can't help opening it up on that salt-flat-like stretch of the I-15. I once saw 2 Ferraris pulled over within a half mile of each other.

But me: 36 years driving and never a ticket. Knock leather.

 

[marlin]

I spent three weeks in L.A. and San Diego last year and didn't see a damn thing of interest other than an Alfa Romeo 166 3 litre "Super", which are quite rare even here in the UK, although I have one. Las Vegas had plenty of exotica, though, and I rented a Murcielago via the concierge of my hotel, the Wynn. I did see a black DB9 coupe in Tijuana, though, which surprised me. I should have looked at it registration plate to see where it came from, but I didn't. A bunch of US lawyers I got talking to on the train back to San Diego ( one of whom owned a DB5 Volante ), told me that it was unlikely to have been Mexican registered unless it was owned by a crime warlord !

The year before that I was stopped for speeding in Maine. I was driving a hired Mustang convertible. I had left all of my identity papers etc. back in the house we had rented and the policeman was a bit unhappy about that (plus the fact that I had been speeding ! ). We got talking, though, and he was a first Gulf War vet, and I since I did a tour in 'Nam attached to an Australian armoured unit way back in the day, he let me off with just a gentle chewing out, so it could have been worse !