I recently returned home from a flight at 12:20AM. Upon entering my vehicle I had a clear goal to get to my home promptly. As you might imagine, traffic was very light and as I cruised down the last main stretch towards my home, I tried to maintain a speed of approximately 12-13 MPH above the posted speed limit. As a reference, in my community, it's a two-point violation for speeding 15 MPH above the speed limit and it appears per GA code that in order for a radar device to be used against you in a court of law you need to be exceeding the posted speed limit by more than 10 MPH. Therefore, all things being equal, you're probably pretty safe doing 8-9 MPH above the stated speed limit, and if you want to push your luck a little bit, as long as you're doing less than 15MPH above the speed limit, it won't count against you on your driving record, so that is the mindset that I have while driving.
As I finished that stretch and pulled up to the stoplight I then saw the strangest thing. A cop on the opposite side of the street had turned right and then stopped his patrol car almost parallel to my car. He didn't have his flashing lights on, he wasn't moving, and it was just plain weird. I didn't see that as a good sign but he did drive off and so after the light turned green, I was really eager to get on home, lest this madness catch me. As I drove down the street I noticed that there was a car trailing behind me, not on me, but I could catch him in my rear mirror, I turned right and sure enough there he was again. I was still speeding but I was keeping it under 10MPH above the limit, finally I turned down my street to my house and this car was still on me and although it was dark out and I could not see the outlines of the vehicle I was pretty much convinced that this had to be 5-0. Sure enough, he turned his blue lights on, about 50 feet from my driveway. I pulled into my driveway, press the button to open up the garage door and put my vehicle in park. I slowly reached over to my wallet and pulled out my driver's license and rolled my window down.
The cop approached my car and before he could even say anything I just handed him my license. "You live here," he said. "I sure do," I answered. Then he wanted to talk for a second, saying that his radar gun had me going 100 MPH on the original main stretch that I had been cruising down on. The fact that he would even say that was beyond absurd. It was just not the type of road that you could open it up to 100 MPH, even if you were intent on doing so as that road had too many dips, too many curves, and occasionally too many deer. I answered him by looking him straight in the eye, and stating, "I definitely wasn't going 100 MPH." He admitted that he thought he had a false positive but he never did show me the radar gun, or perhaps it was all a pathetic ploy to get me to incriminate myself. "You been drinking?" he asked. "No," I responded, and he didn't take that thought any further. "Where you coming from?" "The airport, I just got back from Las Vegas." "Is your bag in the trunk?" "Nope, it's right here by me, in this backpack." He didn't seem to believe that and so I proceeded to tell him that I pack light, which in fact, I do. He then told me that he had me going 50 MPH in a 40 MPH zone which I didn't respond to and a couple times he excused himself to check on whatever.
I had several factors in my favor. I was the same race as the officer. I was approximately the same age as the officer. I hadn't been drinking, there was no traffic on the road, and the weather was clear. Also, I drive a really nice car and live in a really nice neighborhood and despite his trying to pin some bogus 100 MPH claim, he didn't have me for excessive speeding, even the so-called 10 MPH above the limit, was probably not supported by the radar gun. So all is well that ends well. But how if I was: a different race, lived in a worst neighborhood, drove a beat-up car, or my record wasn't clean, or had a drink or two. How then would it have played out?