It's better to be lucky than good.

I was sure my days without having ever been issued a traffic ticket were over on Friday. I was on I-70 East driving back to work from my orthodontist appointment, when I found myself stuck in the left lane behind an ancient minivan with visible exhaust fumes. The discharge from the car was so bad that I had to turn on the air recycling option on my air conditioner, thereby closing the outside vents. Fed up, I zipped by the minivan on the right as soon as space cleared up. As I returned back to the left lane, I reached the peak of a mini-hill, while traveling at somewhere between 70 and 75 mph (in a 60). On the other side, a police officer stood next to his car on the emergency lane to the left of the regular lanes with a speed-detecting device (I think it was a laser gun, but I couldn't really tell). As soon as I saw him, I froze...by then it was probably too late to try to slow down anyway. I thought I had been caught, as the gun seemed to be pointed right at me. I maintained my speed, maybe slowing down to about 70 even, as I passed by him while eyeing my rearview mirror and expecting him to hop in his car and turn on the lights. To my great relief, he didn't make a move, and I went on my merry way...though not in as much haste as I previously was.

Even though I drive on the fast side, I would say I'm a pretty observant driver, and can spot most cops trying to catch speeders. When this fails, though, I tend to get lucky. When I'm going really fast, there always seems to be someone else occupying the cops...and they get pulled over minutes before I drive by. The other time that I was basically caught speeding, the police officer stuck her hand out of the window of her car, which was sitting in the median, and made a motion as if she was firing a gun at me...it was kinda scary, but kinda awesome. But I'm sure this post has just jinxed all my luck...