Funny you should say that.
My wife and I were driving north on I-95 through Bridgeport Connecticut a couple years back. It was the middle of the day, and traffic was moving bumper-to-bumper at about 75 mph.
All of a sudden, the two cars right in front of me swerved, and before I could do anything, I ran over a 4 x 4 in a cinderblock in the middle-of-the-road.
For split second, I wondered if the car had been damaged, and then the wheels began vibrating badly. I had blown out both tires on the left side of my wife’s 1985 Toyota Corolla.
I could barely control the car, but what made it worse was the fact that there was no breakdown lane, and I was heading around a curve and there was a high retaining wall where the breakdown lane should have been, so I had very little visibility on what was coming up behind me.
So, here I am struggling with the steering wheel that’s going wildly side side, and I look up and see cars coming up behind me around the corner in my rearview mirror, breaking hard, and trying to swerve out-of-the-way. Then I saw an 18 wheeler coming up. The whole time, I was barely looking ahead of me except to make sure I did run into the back of somebody, and I had my eyes glued to my review mirror. My wife kept saying “what’s wrong? What’s wrong?”
I eventually got to an exit, and pull down onto the grass right off the highway ramp about 100 feet after the exit. Interestingly, there happened to be a tire repair place within sight up the road.
How curious.
So my wife and I left the car and walked down to the tire place. They said they would send a tow truck up. While I was waiting, I remembered I wanted to get something out of the car. When I walked back up there (literally within 10 minutes of leaving the car there) there was a tow truck hooking up to the car with a good-sized Connecticut state trooper standing there supervising.
I ran up and said “What are you doing? I have a tow truck coming up here right now to get my car to repair it!”
The cop said “sorry. There’s nothing I can do. Once we hook up to the car, we have to take it…”
At that point, I heated up really quick, and I said “No Effing way that you are taking my car. I am going to lie down the road in front of the car, and you’re going to have to run me over to take it!”
I reached a boiling point nearly instantly, and I meant every word I said, and even started walking in that direction. The cop said “Sir, calm down.” He told the guy to unhook the car just as the tow truck from the tire company came up.
I think if I had got up there even one or two minutes later, I would’ve had no idea where my car was.
The whole thing reeked of a scam. If not a scam involving the tire company throwing debris on the road, a scam involving the state police and the tow truck company.
In retrospect, I always have to remember that when a state policeman tells you to calm down after you use profanity… Even if you are right, it is probably a good idea to do as he says. I figure I must’ve been pretty close to getting tasked and cuffed.
I got pulled over in a small town speed trap in Florida once while visiting my in-laws. I was told by the original officer to pull into a hotel parking lot directly across the street. I did as asked.
Then an obviously lesbian officer drove up and demanded my wife get out of the car. She was instructing my wife to bend over and reach under my car to pick up a beer can I had not seen while parking. My wife refused and the lesbian became irate and told my wife that she saw her throw it out of the window. My wife denied it and the lesbian told her that she had it all on dash-cam.
At that point I lost my effing mind and started yelling at the lesbian to “PLAY THE G*D **** TAPE!!!” She tried to speak but by this time I was interrupting her by yelling the same statement at her over and over. I never left my seat or unbuckled. She pulled her pepper spray and approached when luckily the orginal male officer that pulled me over stepped in and defused the situation.
It was real close and destroyed my trust in those who protect and serve.