Police stop procedures

[CJ3cyl]

9 hours ago, maximNikenGT said:

Just out of curiosity, in almost 29 years of riding motorcycles, I've only been pulled over once on motorcycle, and that was because I was riding a dirt bike with no tags on neighborhood road to get to some dirt trails. 

When I introduced myself to my local BMW Motorcycle Owners Association (when I had an R1150R) a few years back, I was roundly boo'ed (good naturedly) for having zero tickets. 

On average, how many times have you folks gotten pulled over while riding your motorcycles? 

A lot, but mostly they let me go or just wrote me a warning. I'm very polite and respectful. Only a few times I've had to pay a fine. 

[CJ3cyl]

I pull over to a safe spot as soon as I can. Turn the bike off, stay on it, and wait for the officer to approach me. When he starts talking I explain I have ear plugs in and need to take them out. When he says okay I take the helmet off and the ear plugs out. Then it's license, insurance, and registration. I explain I need to get under the seat to get the registration and insurance card. When he gives the go ahead I do it. Basically, I tell him/her everything I need to do and wait for the officer's okay.

 

[koth442]

12 hours ago, maximNikenGT said:

Just out of curiosity, in almost 29 years of riding motorcycles, I've only been pulled over once on motorcycle, and that was because I was riding a dirt bike with no tags on neighborhood road to get to some dirt trails. 

When I introduced myself to my local BMW Motorcycle Owners Association (when I had an R1150R) a few years back, I was roundly boo'ed (good naturedly) for having zero tickets. 

On average, how many times have you folks gotten pulled over while riding your motorcycles? 

I haven't had a ticket on a motorcycle since I started doing trackdays 11 years ago.

*knock on wood*

[jetpilot5]

Pulled over three times over the years. No tickets so far.

[WastedMind3500]

Same here, 3 times, no ticket.

[Wintersdark]

On 4/10/2021 at 5:09 PM, WastedMind3500 said:

Each encounter is different.  I do not live in the USA, but I do ride there often (well up until last year... covid...).

I was pulled over 3 times, 2 were super friendly, and a conversation followed when they noticed the Canadian license plate.  These were both for weird turns, or maneuvers.  The confused tourist excuse got me out of the tickets.

The 3rd was awful.  The female officer got out of her car, pulled her gun and started walking briskly towards me and my friend, screaming.  I was seated on my bike, modular helmet up, with my hands visible and open, on top of the hand guards.  I did not believe my b***hole could crawl up so far!  After a couple of "Yes officer, no officer", relaxed and slow non threatening responses, she holstered and calmed down.  I got off with a warning for speeding.  I will never know why she was so hyped up...  Life lesson here, don't argue with a .45!  De-escalate!

I was never pulled over in Canada, so I cannot compare.  But I have never heard of anyone having a discussion at gun point on the side of the road around here.

 

I had a state trooper do that once when I was driving with my wife in Washington.  Approached with gun drawn, scared the shit out of me.  I wasn't even speeding; all I can assume is my car matched a rough description of someone else they where looking for, but yeah, same deal.  Gun drawn, shouting, absolute terror.  Took our ID's, asked what we were doing in the country(going to jack in the box, ironically, one of those "hey, lets go do this silly thing" trips), went back to his cruiser, then returned them and sent us on our way.   Said nothing about what it was about, and I wasn't really interested in asking because dude clearly was not in a chatty happy place, just wanted to get out of there.  Remains the only time I've ever had a loaded firearm pointed at me, and it wasn't a good feeling.  Good long time ago now, though... 20 years or so?  

I've been pulled over here a few times over the years, but it's always been pretty relaxed and pleasant.  Usually just warnings, a couple tickets (once for running a stop sign, in an otherwise completely empty mall parking lot, at 3am - I mean, really, come on).

 

@maximNikenGT Hmmm.  In the last 9 years (since moving to Alberta), over my XJ750, MT07, and now the GT: Twice, one warning, one ticket.   This is actually pretty surprising, because I'm a bit of a hooligan.  And as I ride nearly exclusively(on account of not having a class 5 (car) drivers license), I put a lot of commuting miles on - and those commuting miles are virtually never at the speed limit.

[maximNikenGT]

On 4/12/2021 at 10:20 AM, CJ3cyl said:

A lot, but mostly they let me go or just wrote me a warning. I'm very polite and respectful. Only a few times I've had to pay a fine. 

What do you consider "a lot"?

One of the posters in this thread mentioned he has been pulled over 30x+ which is what kinda caused this thread of discussion to get very lively. To me, I thought getting pulled over 5-10x is a lot, but when I saw 30, it had me wondering if I was somehow just lucky or am I way outside the normal distribution for getting pulled over on a motorcycle? 

[CJ3cyl]

On 4/14/2021 at 7:33 AM, maximNikenGT said:

What do you consider "a lot"?

One of the posters in this thread mentioned he has been pulled over 30x+ which is what kinda caused this thread of discussion to get very lively. To me, I thought getting pulled over 5-10x is a lot, but when I saw 30, it had me wondering if I was somehow just lucky or am I way outside the normal distribution for getting pulled over on a motorcycle? 

Over 40 years of riding? 30x seems reasonable. 😎 

[CJ3cyl]

Let me just say it's not like they nailed me at 120 MPH. These are like 15 MPH over the speed limit, maybe 20.

[CJ3cyl]

Now that I think about it if they did write me a ticket they wrote the speed to less than 20 over if they caught me at 20 over or a little over that.

Edited April 17, 2021 by CJ3cyl

[maximNikenGT]

On 4/12/2021 at 1:04 PM, koth442 said:

I haven't had a ticket on a motorcycle since I started doing trackdays 11 years ago.

*knock on wood*

I found that when I take my car to autocross events my drive home afterwards is  the  most relaxed and sedately drive I do in a vehicle. Trackdays I'm sure would do the same. 

[i_ride45]

On 4/14/2021 at 4:33 AM, maximNikenGT said:

What do you consider "a lot"?

One of the posters in this thread mentioned he has been pulled over 30x+ which is what kinda caused this thread of discussion to get very lively. To me, I thought getting pulled over 5-10x is a lot, but when I saw 30, it had me wondering if I was somehow just lucky or am I way outside the normal distribution for getting pulled over on a motorcycle? 

Allow me to clarify, I have only been stopped about 4 times on motorcycle in 10 years of riding. The rest of those times were in a vehicle, but I was just speaking of my general experience with US cops. Also, most of those times were in my early 20's, driving rather flashy vehicles, in a  small town, late at night with not many other cars on the road. In other words, I was almost asking for it.

One of my motorcycle stops was after a CHP chopper spotted me doing 160+ on my R6 and called in the ground units to catch me at a stop light. They were very grateful I did not run and only wrote me a ticket for 100+ when they could have easily taken me in.

My second helicopter incident my buddy and I were riding our DRZ400 Supermotos on some twisty mountain roads passing many cars over double yellow lines. They followed us in the air for 13 minutes without us knowing and ground units had a mini road block set up when we pulled into town. Again, they could have taken us in but only gave us a reckless driving ticket. That video is fun to reminisce but I have since learned my lesson and toned down my street riding quite a bit.

The other 2 times were mild infractions and I was let got with no tickets.

Edited April 19, 2021 by i_ride45

[angrygirafe]

11 hours ago, i_ride45 said:

Allow me to clarify, I have only been stopped about 4 times on motorcycle in 10 years of riding. The rest of those times were in a vehicle, but I was just speaking of my general experience with US cops. Also, most of those times were in my early 20's, driving rather flashy vehicles, in a  small town, late at night with not many other cars on the road. In other words, I was almost asking for it.

One of my motorcycle stops was after a CHP chopper spotted me doing 160+ on my R6 and called in the ground units to catch me at a stop light. They were very grateful I did not run and only wrote me a ticket for 100+ when they could have easily taken me in.

My second helicopter incident my buddy and I were riding our DRZ400 Supermotos on some twisty mountain roads passing many cars over double yellow lines. They followed us in the air for 13 minutes without us knowing and ground units had a mini road block set up when we pulled into town. Again, they could have taken us in but only gave us a reckless driving ticket. That video is fun to reminisce but I have since learned my lesson and toned down my street riding quite a bit.

The other 2 times were mild infractions and I was let got with no tickets.

And I thought I was lucky for just getting yelled at for doing 85 in a 55 construction zone while lane splitting at night. 
 

 

[maximNikenGT]

On 4/19/2021 at 11:07 PM, angrygirafe said:

And I thought I was lucky for just getting yelled at for doing 85 in a 55 construction zone while lane splitting at night. 
 

 

For a 65 in a 55 I had to go to driving school. I was in there with folks who were in there for All kinds of motor violations: a car salesman who was demonstrating the top speed of sports car for a potential buyer (supposedly clocked at 130mph in a new Toyota Supra), truck drivers, but the guy that took the cake was the one who showed up to driving school intoxicated smelling of alcohol.

He had lost his license because of driving under the influence (DUI), and actually volunteered to demonstrate the drop in performance of visual cognitive skills after drinking alcohol in comparison to a sober skill test (which was how long it took someone to point out numbers in numerical sequence (1-12) scrambled on a grid. Needless to say it took him considerably longer than a sober person to do the same test. 

So when you mentioned  aerial pursuit helicopter involvement I thought the same..😳 

Edited September 9, 2021 by maximNikenGT

[maximNikenGT]

On 4/8/2021 at 2:17 PM, nigel5 said:

Assume this applies to USA, in England our police officers tend not to point a gun at you if you reach for your wallet😂 there are exceptions!

Last time I got pulled was because a copper pointed a hair dryer at me, apparently I was doing 70 in a 60, actually I was doing 90 but I braked sharply when I saw him😉

Do they pull out their batons instead?