"You Didn't Even See Me"

So, I had an interesting interaction with a State Trooper a few weeks ago. I was leaving home, heading into town on our little two-lane road that leads to the freeway. I was stuck behind a slow person, as per usual, just biding my time until I could get on the freeway and leave them in the dust. Coming in the opposite direction about a mile from the freeway was a state trooper. Now, I don't typically notice cops, and Simon will attest to this, but it was broad daylight and there was no one else on the road besides the slow person in front of me, so I noticed when the trooper turned around behind me. The slow person in front of me (henceforth will be known as Blue Guy, since his SUV was blue) who had been going below the speed limit also noticed, and thus slowed down even more. Awesome. So the three of us enter the on-ramp together at a snail's pace towards town. Blue Guy was maybe going 50mph by the time we hit the freeway, where the speed limit is 75mph. There's traffic going the speed limit, and we're going so slow as we integrate into the stream. So I stay behind Blue Guy, wanting the trooper to make the first move to pass, which he does. I keep my eyes forward as he goes by, while also keeping an eye on my speedometer. I am definitely going to pass the Blue Guy, but I don't want to be speeding near a state trooper when I do it. 

So, trooper gets past me, I put on my blinker and get behind him. He's almost right in line with the Blue Guy when he slams on his brakes, which in turn makes me have to slam on my brakes to keep from running into the back of him. There are also other cars around us. We weren't quite at freeway speeds yet, but pretty darn close; too fast for random slamming of the brakes. The trooper aggressively swerves in behind the Blue Guy, with what I think is the intention to pull him over. I'm obviously shaken up by this, as people don't just slam on their brakes and swerve around on the freeway like that. But he's a cop, so I figure he has his reasons and decide I want to make myself scarce and give him some space to do whatever it is he's going to do. I glance at my speedometer once again to ensure that I'm not speeding, and continue up the left-hand lane. I should mention that none of us are going 75mph at this point, we're all going 60-ish due to the Blue Guy being slow and the trooper slamming on his brakes. There was a little voice in the back of my head saying "Never pass a cop," but I ignored it because I wasn't even close to speeding, I was in my lane, driving with both hands on the wheel. There was no reason whatsoever that I could discern that should prevent me from continuing on my way. As I pull up next to the trooper, he rolls down his window and mean mugs me as I go by. Having just narrowly avoided rear-ending him when he slammed on his brakes, I'm visibly confused, and I raise a hand up in a "what's going on?" gesture. He immediately swings into the left lane behind me and turns on the cherries.

So I pull over. I roll down my passenger side window as he approaches, and I keep my hands on the steering wheel where he can see them. "Do you know why I pulled you over?" he says. "No, I honestly don't." I say. He then says, "I went by you, and you didn't even see me. You were looking down. Were you playing on your phone?" Now, there's no way this man could know this about me, but I am a stickler about not using my phone when I'm driving. I am very aware of how distracting it is, and I want to remain focused on the road while I'm driving. Also, being behind people on the road who are playing on their phones is so incredibly annoying...they speed up, they slow down, they're all over the road...it's so unsafe, and I don't want to be that person. I don't tell him all that, of course, but what I do tell him is that my phone is zipped up in my purse and that I never play with my phone when I'm driving. Again, he says, "Well, you were looking down and you didn't even see me, your eyes weren't on the road. What were you looking at?" At this point I'm so confused that I'm looking around the car, looking at my lap, at the passenger seat, the cup holders, wondering what I could have been looking at. There's literally nothing. No coffee cup, no loose items, my purse is there on the passenger seat. I throw up my hands in frustration, "I don't know, the speedometer? Also, I definitely saw you behind me on Mountainaire Road, so I knew you were there." Acknowledging where and when I had initially seen him seemed to satisfy him, as he then asked for my license, took a quick look at it, and told me to have a nice day. I sat there for a moment after he had pulled back onto the freeway, wondering what in the heck had just transpired. 

On one hand, I guess I'm glad that cops are pulling people over for suspicion of using their phones while driving. We've all been behind those motorists that are clearly distracted, phones or otherwise, and they represent a major safety issue at highway speeds. But...had I actually been playing on my phone, I could have tossed it in my purse in seconds between the time it took me to pull over and for him to get to my window. If I had actually been playing on my phone, was he hoping that I would just confess? He obviously couldn't see whether or not I had a phone in my hand or my lap when I went by him, he just suspected, based on his observation that I was 'looking down.' My phone was no where in sight when he approached my window, and he didn't ask me to show him where it was, so is this some weird sort of honesty policy kind of thing? Who's really going to incriminate themselves over something like this? Or is suspicion of playing on one's phone now just the lowest common denominator to pull people over at random? Did he pull me over simply because I passed him? But then, I wouldn't have passed him at all if he hadn't slammed on his brakes and gotten back in the right-hand lane, so clearly he had intended to pull me over before I passed him. What's also kind of funny, is that he made a comment about seeing me wearing my 'big mittens' as he went by, because I have big puffy down mittens that are glorious on cold mornings; how in the world is someone supposed to play on their phone while wearing mittens like that? Also, since he could see the mittens, he could clearly see that both my hands were on the wheel and not messing around with something in my lap or on the seat. 

The thing I just keep going back to is how he kept saying, "You never even saw me." Like, is there some way that we as motorists are supposed to interact with cops on the road so they know that we know they're there? A wave, a thumbs up, or a salute of some sort? Wouldn't that be considered a distraction? I felt like it was incredibly presumptuous of this guy to tell me what I did or didn't see, as there's no way for him to know what I was and wasn't looking at. As stated earlier, I see cops far less often than Simon, even when they're hiding in plain sight. It's not that I'm unobservant, per se, but more that when I'm driving I tend to look straight ahead and pay attention to the road and the cars in front of and around me; I pay scant attention to ditches and medians because that's not where I'm going. I don't know if that's good, bad, or otherwise, but that's how I drive. If the expectation is that I not only have to notice cops but also acknowledge them as well, that's just another distraction taking my eyes and attention off the road in front of me. I guess I just don't know what to make of this, to be honest. Maybe there's nothing to be made of it. Maybe this guy was just a weirdo. Maybe I should have made note of his name and followed up about this interaction, because something about it just isn't sitting right. At the end of the day, it's probably nothing. 

Anyway, I don't mean for this to sound disparaging toward cops, because I do support the police and I've always appreciated them every single time that I've needed them. They put their lives on the line in more ways than we as regular civilians could ever know. Sometimes I just have to scratch my head over these traffic stops. Moral of the story, if there is one: don't pass a cop, no matter what, because they might just find a reason to pull you over for it.