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Sticky Ticket: Roadside Poll Results
April 12, 2008
It’s your day to drive on a road trip with a couple of friends. You’ve been uncannily efficient, almost superhuman — making no wrong turns, handily navigating unfamiliar back roads, and finding every obscure monument, claptrap snake ranch, and UFO crash site on your list. Your pals are raving about the last stop, music is blaring from the stereo speakers… and suddenly, in the side view mirror, are the flashing lights of a police prowler.
Speeding ticket! But whose ticket, from the group perspective? It’s a road trip ethical dilemma, with no easy answer. So we posed it in our latest unscientific online poll.
“Sharing driving stints with pals, your friend gets a speeding ticket, so you:”
The results are an interesting spread across the solutions we offered.
“Let friend pay whole amount” is what respondents chose the most, at 26% of the total. To us it reflects a range of hard-line sentiments: “Commit the Crime, Do the Time,” like sure, it was nice getting to see so many great places, but that’s no excuse for breaking the law. Or it’s your car, not mine. Or simply, you lose, I win.
“Offer to split cost” was a statistical tie at 25%, and suggests an attitude of shared risk, that you were party to the crime and want no hard feelings for the rest of this or other trips. Even if the driver declines your offer, all is well with your car journey Karma. Note: A traffic citation is not tax deductible.
“Don’t pay, but offer to drive the rest of the trip” garnered 3rd place, with a respectable 20%. After the psychic trauma of a moving traffic violation, the faulted driver may have trouble continuing on to the next attraction. The driver may toddle along 20 miles below the speed limit for an hour or two — because the only thing more humiliating than a speeding ticket is getting two on the same day. Your offer to take on the balance of the drive is a help, like a soldier shielding a wounded comrade from the next grenade in the foxhole, however unlikely it is to be tossed.
“Stare straight ahead, quietly.” Believe it or not, we’ve seen this technique used. 12% of you thought this was either a joke answer, or really understand the true power of denial as a way of life.
“Flip off the cop as you drive off.” 15% picked this one, for comedy, we suspect. But this is also a true scenario, though we can’t recall it happening on any trips since college. The warning or ticket has been issued, the scene is over, and all that remains is to get back on the road — and not give the cop the finger out the rear window. It’s usually a wag in the backseat: “Dude, didn’t you see the trooper behind that billboard? When he laughed at your ID photo you turned soooo red….”
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