From another nessage board

[JamesL]

"I was pulled over last night by a copper who'd followed me for a
couple of miles and breathalysed. Bearing in mind I could barely stand it was no surprise to find I was massively over the limit. This was particularly disgraceful as I had the missus and kiddie with me in the car. I was arrested and read my rights. It was all a very salutary experience, especially when the copper got shirty because I found the whole business side-splittingly funny.

His mate,whilst the arrest took place went and had a good look round the car,came back and started whispering to the other copper.

They are whispering frantically at each other and neither of them look very pleased. Copper turns to me and starts accusing me of wasting police time,he calls me a tw*t. I point out he's just sworn at a member of the public, in front of an 18 month old child and that I'll report him for conduct unbecoming.


Plod get back in their car and drive off,with the copper who'd had a look round my car laughing his head off.


And the moral of the story for the police is...

Always check whether a car is left or right hand drive before breathalysing the guy in the right hand seat"

[ja17]

Great story Tosh!
I can appreciate this story greatly after having driven my left hand drive Mercedes in Austraia for a week! Bank and fast food drive thru lanes are all on the passenger side!


Joe Alexander
Blacklick, Ohio

[hands_aus]

Hey Joe

Are you going to tell us any anecdotes of your drive down under?

FIA posted daily results and pictures of rally cars.

I hope you survived unscathed driving on the roads here.

Bob Smith (Brisbane,Australia)
RHD,1967 early 250 SL, auto

[Mike Hughes]

I've had a right hand drive MGB for over 25 years.  When we had a great dane, I used to ride him around in the passenger seat with the top down, but I digress.

One cold February morning I was driving my wife to the local Metro stop.  An officer was staking out a school zone.  It must have been a slow day because he pulled us over and started to give my wife a citation, not for speeding, but because the state inspection sticker was on the "wrong" side of the windscreen!  (In those days the state inspection and local tax stickers were supposed to be placed on the passenger side of the windscreen so that they would not impair the driver's line of sight, so naturally they were not on the normal side on this car.)  I got out of the car to tell the officer that he was giving the ticket to the wrong person because I was the driver.  He told me that his business was with the lady and ordered me (not very pleasantly) to shut up and get back into the car.  So I did.  The officer wrote my wife a ticket for failure to properly display an inspection sticker.

We went to court over a $20 ticket.  The officer told the judge that he had observed a vehicle not properly displaying the required stickers.  Then the judge asked my wife if she had anything to say.  She told him that she didn't feel that she, as a passenger in the car, should be ticketed at all.  The judge asked the officer why he ticketed a passenger.  He said that he ticketed the person in the driver's seat.  My wife pointed to me and said that the car was a right hand drive British car and I was the driver and then related what happened when I tried to tell the officer that he was ticketing the wrong person.  The judge asked me if this was true.  I said it was and offered to show him some pictures of the car.

After the laughter died down the judge dismissed the case, invited the officer to join him in his chambers and called a 30 minute recess.  I would have given anything to have been a fly on the wall in those chambers!

- Mike Hughes  -ô¿ô-
  1966 230SL Auto P/S
  Havanna Brown (408)
  Light Beige (181)
  Cream M-B Tex (121)

[Mike Hughes]

Toll booths are fun, too!

quote:Originally posted by ja17

Great story Tosh!
I can appreciate this story greatly after having driven my left hand drive Mercedes in Austraia for a week! Bank and fast food drive thru lanes are all on the passenger side!


Joe Alexander
Blacklick, Ohio

- Mike Hughes  -ô¿ô-
  1966 230SL Auto P/S
  Havanna Brown (408)
  Light Beige (181)
  Cream M-B Tex (121)

[France]

Hi guys.

Imagine our bringing back the RH GT40 from the UK to France... here's my recollection:


Our morning wakeup comes at 6 when the steward walks in with breakfast.  I mean walks in without address or ceremony.  We go downstairs with our little bag now bulging with wine and dirty socks, strap ourselves in, and wait for the big trucks to roll out so we can depart with the motorcyclists.  We leave Le Havre at 8 a.m.  Two hours later we have cleared the congested Paris peripherique (ring-road) and are on our way to open sunny Champagne country.

After a pleasant lunch in Champagne (more gawkers and questions in several languages), we hit a long section of tollbooths.  This is a problem.  How to get a RH-drive car through a LH tollbooth?  The car is so low that you can barely see the cashier, and the driver is on the wrong side anyway.  You can’t roll down the windows—this is a racecar.  You can’t open the door without hitting the sides of the narrow toll lane, and because it is cut into the roof, you would have to swing the door wide in order to even put out a hand.  The answer lies on my side of the car.  I open the tiny plastic window that’s set into the door window.  It’s just wide enough to admit a woman’s hand.  Clutching the quickly and carefully counted-out money, I strain upward, and the cashier strains down to grab it.  The gate goes up, and we’re through!

Unfortunately we congratulate ourselves too soon.  After about five or six of these tollbooths, which occur with depressing regularity, we hit an unmanned one that wants us to pull in and take a ticket.  Well, the machine only issues a ticket when the car pulls into the lane, but the ticket machine is way higher than my little window.  The chute is so narrow that it’s too late to open the door.  The answer is again—me.  T stops dead in the entrance of the lane, I get out.  He drives into the lane chute to activate the machine, while I stand on the island next to the lane and grab the ticket.  He pulls out into what looks like the Bay Bridge Maze at rush hour, I jump into the car, and we speed off.  We make our way across the breadth of France and are home by late afternoon. As yet another big American engine howls up the driveway, the neighbors cross themselves and know for certain that we are really completely out of our minds.


Trice
1968 280SL US, signal red/bl leather, auto, kinder