Getting pulled over by police is something that almost certainly happens to most drivers at least once in their lives. Sometimes, you have a dead brake light and don’t realize it. Or, perhaps you’re testing a brand new Chevy Camaro in Virginia and go just a bit too fast. Whatever the reason, traffic stops happen. What’s the dumbest reason you’ve gotten pulled over?
I’m somewhat surprised to say that despite my love for reaching the far end of tachometers, my driving record is largely clean. I like to keep my thrill-seeking vehicular shenanigans away from where others could get hurt, and I suppose that also keeps me out of the spotlight of the law.
Still, I’ve goofed up a couple of times. The weirdest time I got stopped happened to be when I was customizing a 1986 Honda Elite 150D for the Gambler 500. Oh yes, I took the pop-up headlight wonder off-road! I got the scooter for a few hundred bucks because it had a bent frame, no title, and rough panels. It was far enough past its prime that I didn’t feel guilty about beating it up.
I quickly discovered a critical issue with the scooter and it was the fact that it didn’t have a working cooling fan. I fixed that with an oversized fan from a bigger scooter. Then, I added off-road light pods to complete the Mad Max theme I was going for. I left the wiring exposed for that rough look seen in that movie series’ universe. One more repair was to the scooter’s ignition, which jammed and broke the key. One quick detour to eBay later and I was back on the road!
When I was finished ruining this poor scooter, I took it on a test ride. As I said before, the scooter didn’t have a title. The ol’ Vermont trick was still a thing back then, so that’s what I did. But I didn’t want to wait for the plate to come in to take it for a test ride. Instead, I slapped the plate from a Suzuki GS on the back and hopped on. I figured I was just going around the block, so it would have been fine.
It wasn’t. Halfway through the short ride, I got pulled over. Now, I initially thought I got pulled over either because of the license plate or the janky modifications. It was neither. The officer said he pulled me over because I didn’t put my foot down at a stop sign. I knew that in Illinois, stopping a motorcycle technically doesn’t count until your foot is down, but I didn’t think anyone would enforce it. Stopped is stopped, right?
Well, this officer did try to enforce it, but he was amused by my little science project. He found nothing overtly illegal, but he did notice the plate belonged to a Suzuki rather than the Honda. Making matters worse, he stopped me in a dead zone, so my insurance app wasn’t working. The officer explained that a wrong plate, no provable insurance, and no ownership documents were more than enough grounds to send my crappy scoot to the impound.
I explained myself and the officer was nice about everything. I got a warning and my instructions were to head home immediately and that the scooter better not show up again with the wrong plate. No problem! I learned a few valuable lessons that night. The officer informed me that at least in this state, it’s better to run no plates than plates from the wrong vehicle. It also helps to keep a local digital copy of your insurance plus a physical copy.
In second place was the time I was stopped for speeding in one of my Smarts. It perhaps should have been more than just a ticket, but the cop couldn’t stop laughing at witnessing a Smart going so fast. The laugh was apparently good enough to let me off with a warning.
So, those are the dumbest stops I’ve ever had. What about you?
Topshot: framestock/stock.adobe.com
No tag on my 1977 Batavus HS50. But wait, thats valid! Not in this case. I was riding in New York, where moped have traditional license plates. But the bike was registered in Massachusetts, wherw they use a small sticker to denote registration.
Officer got all poopoo’d when he saw I a) knew the laws, and b)was a 25 year old bearded man, not a kid on a joyride thats an easy bust.
These issues were somewhat common- the CT secretary if state drafted a letter for their local moped club after a group was pulled over in a neighboring state during a ride. That state didnt require registration on sub-50cc bikes.
Being brown in a white neighborhood… Multiple times. Turns out I fit many descriptions growing up, who knew that I was actually a chameleon. Haha.
The most ridiculous one is getting pulled over on a morning run a few years ago! It was winter and I was out for a run at like 5:30am. A cop pulls up and asks me to stop running. I was confused and kind of terrified because it’s just me and the cop on a dark road. I complied though because what else am I going to do at that point. He steps out of the car and is questioning me and asking me what I’m doing. I’m wearing a bright, and I mean BRIGHT orange jacket with reflective gear on top with a running belt and water bottles. Gee I wonder what I’m doing officer! I couldn’t say that though so I calmly answered I’m out for a run. He was like are you sure that’s what you’re doing? I was like I’m positive. It basically went like this for 15 minutes. Then he said I was free to go and that he was just doing his job because they had received calls about a suspicious person in the area. I’m sure you guys did.
When I was a kid my dad got pulled over somewhere in I believe Georgia when we were road tripping to Texas because there was no registration sticker on the license plate. Well yea because our registration is on the windshield in NY. When we got to Texas my uncle told us that it’s a drug route so they used the registration sticker as an excuse to pull us over in hopes of finding someone running drugs. Guess they were surprised at seeing a family of 4 just cruising in a minivan.
I’m sure many of us here would echo your sentiment in saying: “All those times I got pulled over because of my skin colour.”
If you know you know.
Oh I’m definitely sure of that, and I bet they could also echo my sentiment of I wish I didn’t know.
The claim was I took a turn too wide. It was a multilane left turn and I stayed in my lane instead of cutting it like everyone else does. I was a designated driver that night so he watched us leave a bar and just pulled me over, he was fishing. I had a nice conversation with the officer though.
My dad got pulled over for “speeding” in a school zone then the lights WERE NOT flashing and it was the middle of summer. We happened to be on our summer vacation.
Also who the heck puts a school zone ON A HIGHWAY!?
I got this one time when driving home from high school, I lived just down the street, but there was an elementary school between the high school and my house. The elementary school let out before ours, and the school zone was for that school, and thus ended 15 minutes before high school let out. So I was going 40 in a 35, but the cop thought it was still a 25 for school time. After he told me why he pulled me over (in my driveway) I informed him that it was no longer school hours. He actually told me to sit tight, and drove to see the sign. He quickly returned, said I was correct, but I still needed to slow down to 35, but didn’t give me a ticket.
It doesn’t help that the highway was 60 ish and the school limit is 15. and we were out of state…
Seriously, whose idea was it to put the school and school zone directly on the highway!?
They are doing that in my area. Schools used to be in neighborhoods and you could walk to them. Now they are on the outskirts of town, only accessible via car and on 2 lane roads with 55 mph speed limits. So every afternoon the roads are jammed with parents picking up their kids because it takes them 2+ hours to get home via bus.
My high school is in a cornfield between 2 small towns in Kansas on a major highway. Busses were getting rear ended trying to turn into the school, so they made a school zone on the highway.
Back when I was in high school in 1997 or so, one day there was a major power outage in my neighborhood at night. Even traffic lights were out and the police had put road flares and stop signs at each intersection. My friend and I were bored and somehow this inspired him to remember that he had road flares of his own, and now would be a good time to play with them. So we got them and drove to the parking lot of a nearby park in the dark. Neither of us had used a flare before so we were sitting in the car for a good 10 minutes reading the directions and figuring out how to light them. Right about then, 4 cop cars swarmed behind us with lights flashing and we were told to get out with our hands up over a loudspeaker. We did, and were handcuffed and put into the back seat of a car. The cops asked what we were doing and we told them the truth. They responded “No way, we’ve been watching you and this is a drug deal.” We proclaimed our innocence and after they had inspected our car and possessions they finally concluded we were telling them the truth, which shifted the mood resulted in a lot of laughs. One of the officers even showed us how to light the flare. I’ll never forget the look of annoyance on his face when he tried to put the flare out several times but couldn’t, much to the humor of me and my friend.
Bonus, dumbest reason actually ticketed for was a busted license plate light. But in reality I got pulled over for doing a FWD burnout around a corner in my 1985 Dodge Omni GLH and basically driving like a hoon. When the cop got to my window he saw the boost gauge on the A-pillar and asked what it was for. I told him the car was turbo, pointing to the “GLH TURBO” lettering on the side. He looked around the car, came back, and gave me the license plate ticket. As soon as I got home I checked the car and the light was working just fine, but I was thankful to only get a fix-it ticket that cost $15 to get written off. It also resulted in this fun memory:
https://www.ltdlx.org/albums/Omni/Ticket.jpg
The LTD LX is cool but I’d much rather have your old Omni GLH – although I recently did spend an inordinate amount of time helping an LTD LX fan correct the production numbers in Wikipedia.
2015 was my senior year of college. I had gotten a job offer in SE Michigan to start a month or two after I graduated but was given the opportunity to go out and tour the building I’d be working in before I start. So I rented a car for the drive because at the time I only had a Miata and I didn’t want to drive that on the highway for 8 hours.
Coming up 75, somewhere between Toledo and the metro Detroit area, I got pulled over by a statey. When he asked why he pulled me over, for once I legitimately had no clue because I was following the speed limit and doing everything exactly as I should. Then he said he pulled me over because “I passed that 18 wheeler too closely” and didn’t elaborate, I still don’t know what he meant by that because while I did pass an 18 wheeler, I certainly wasn’t too close to it while I did.
Then I quickly realized the real reason why I got stopped once he immediately started grilling me on my out of state driver’s license and why I’m here and why are the plates on the car from a state different from my license. I think he saw a younger guy in a brand new at the time car with out of state plates and made a BS reason to stop me just to see if he could catch anything. Once I told him that it was a rental and the paperwork was on the passenger seat all in my name, he immediately gave up and just told me to go.
That wasn’t the first time I got stopped for no real reason at all in MI while driving a car with out of state plates and from talking to other coworkers who also moved from out of state here for work, they all got the same sort of treatment too
Dumbest experience with a legitimate traffic stop:
I was speeding and a Fort Lewis cop caught me. I pulled over and I gave him my license and then told him I had a firearm in the car and handed him my concealed carry license. He started scolding me that I needed to tell him that first (there was no obligation to disclose, so I was just being courteous). He called for backup.
He then told me to exit the vehicle. Once I did so, he asked if I had any weapons on my person. I indicated my pocket knife clipped to my pocket. He said, “This is Fort Lewis, not Fallujah,” and took it off me. Backup arrived and he told the other cop there was a gun in the center console, so keep an eye on it. At this point, I’m at the back of my car, there’s no one else in the car, and the other cop is looking annoyed and bored.
While I was at the back of my car, the first cop asked if I’d been drinking (it was like 3 pm), but clearly didn’t think I had. I think he just had to hit the usual questions. He then went back to his car and printed my speeding ticket and sent me on my way. Nice thing was that it never showed up on my driving record. I guess military bases are the place to speed, if you don’t mind the hassle.
Going to High school in 1982 one morning in my 72 AMX, of Various colors, I noticed a cop following me. I drove well, and was surprised that the rollers come on. I asked why I was pulled over. ” The expiration Sticker on your license plate is upside down” I put the 2″ by 1″ sticker on the plate myself upside down.
I explained my little brother put it on the plate, and they let me go. Had they not seen the sticker, walking up to the car, not sure what the “Excuse” was going to be for pulling me over.
It probably doesn’t sound stupid honestly, but…..
I was pulled over for an expired inspection sticker on a van I was driving…. to pass NYS inspection for a customer.
Full work outfit, cop comes right up to me, tells me why, and I told him why I was driving it. Handed over the RO for the van, & my license. Minute later I’m handed back both, given an “alright, thank you, you’re good to go”, and before I even get my seat belt on the cop is storming away in this small-town cop car.
It was wild. Beat’s the time before and after I got pulled over for speeding!
Dirty license plate. I deliver mail over 120 miles of gravel, 6 days a week. It’s pointless to wash my jeep, everyone knows the mail carriers in out area and understands why our vehicles are always dirty, but every time we get a new cop they seem to think they need to teach us a lesson.
My two favorites came in my 1968 4-4-2:
There was a parking garage at a mall which has a spiral ramp from the top level to ground level. Being in 16 or 17 years old, my buddy and I thought it would be fun to go down a fast as we could like going down a spiral slide. I was driving a green, ’82 volvo 240 wagon so we were not going too fast.
We head down, tires screeching all the way down 4-5 levels laughing the whole time. At the bottom of the ramp is a cop waiting for us. He pulls us over and gives us a good tongue lashing, but he lets us off with just a warning. I’m not sure if he wanted to give a ticket for doing 15 in a 10 mph zone. Well worth the fun!
Had a similar incident in high school. Cop gave us a ticket for goofing off in a closed mall parking lot at night for reckless driving. ( donuts, burnouts and the such ) I told him I will see him in court as this is not a public road. Judge and prosecution threw the ticket out just for that reason.
back in 99′ I was driving a 96 Maxima. If you turned the headlight switch in just the right way, you can actually turn off 1 headlight. So, I would bait the cops by driving around with 1 headlight and get pulled over and act oblivious. I would tell him he was mistaken and when he went to look again, I would turn on the “bad” headlight and flash the high beams to show him he was wrong.
We did so many things to annoy the local PD back then.
Dang. I got a serious urge to install a switch in my dash for one of my headlights now.
At a stop light a friend in town pulled alongside me on the right. I unbuckled my seat belt to slide over and roll down the window for a greeting. The Los Angeles Police officer sitting behind me then lit me up, pulled me over and ticketed me for not wearing a seat belt.
With all the endless griping about racial profiling, I can accurately say that in my town, all younger people were treated the same. It was as if they wanted you to despise them.
When the cops don’t have enough minorities to keep them occupied, young people form the next target.
I got pulled over for going 72 in a 70 zone. It is the only time I have ever been pulled over for speeding. In the officer’s defense, I was driving a rented cargo van a few miles from the Mexican border in west Texas. The officer walked up to the van, looked through the front window and saw I was hauling a few furniture items, and then said I was going two miles over the limit and he was giving me a warning. We then talked about football for 10 minutes or so. I don’t even think he asked for my license.
I guess I look so boring that no one thinks I could possibly be involved in anything illegal. I could be a good drug mule, I guess?
We got pulled over by a state trooper during the blizzard of ’03-’04 in Colorado in an RV covered in snowboard company stickers to warn us that we were going towards the blizzard.
“WE KNOW, WE THOUGHT IT WAS GONNA HIT THE SOUTHER PART OF THE STATE BUT DIDN’T, PLEASE DON’T SEARCH US FOR WEED THANKS”
Failure to stop twice while exiting a driveway. According to the officer I was supposed to stop at the sidewalk (which I did, to watch for people) and then again 1 meter later at the road (which I didn’t do since there was no traffic on the crossroad). Of course the ticket was only $150 if you didn’t dispute it, needed to fill their quota I guess.
I got nabbed for that once, my alley there is a stop sign mounted on a building where you are supposed to stop, but you can’t see the road from that spot so you have to drive about 10m till you get to it across a large sidewalk. I got pulled over for failure to stop. That was $375 and a pile of points so I went to court. The cop actually showed up and said he was stopped at the light and saw me- I had photos and video proving that you cannot see the car in the alley until you are basically right in front of it due to the buildings and signs and a restaurant patio. The cop tried to argue that he saw me after he left the light then but the judge tossed the ticket. now there are two stop signs there, I understand the first one as there is a sidewalk but the second makes no sense as legally you have to stop when leaving an alley.
It was like 1am, I was heading home from my then girlfriend, now wife’s home. I had an 02 Trans Am with a loud exhaust, so it was a noticeable car and got unwanted attention. I saw the cop follow me onto the freeway so of course I had the cruise set at precisely the speed limit, he followed very closely for a good 5 miles before finally pulling me over. Supposedly I rolled through a stop sign leaving her neighborhood, a full 8 miles before where we stood talking. He also informed me that I had water in my taillight, the housing had cracked and I was previously unaware of it. He was cool, didn’t write me a ticket or anything and didn’t keep me too long so it didn’t bother me much, but man it was a weird encounter.
The dumbest reason would be the license plate light being out. No ticket or anything but it was still dumb.
The dumbest thing I did to get pulled over was pass a RV towing a boat when there was a trooper camped out at the base of the hill that I didn’t see until I was right there. As soon as I saw his lights I started kicking myself and pulled over and waited for him to show up. 83 in a 55, not my brightest move.
For me it was in my ’91 Eagle Talon TSi AWD with the pop-up headlights (that’s important). There was not-that-common mod among us on the DSM owners group where you could turn on the headlights but not pop them, this way they stayed down and illuminated the flash-to-pass lenses. This didn’t provide enough light to drive by but it looked cool I guess. Anyways, I took it a step further and got some translucent blue pencil holders which I cut up and placed behind the lower lenses. Now when the headlights were on and down I had blue lights and when I pushed the button to pop them up I had regular white headlights. I thought this was incredibly cool and referred to my car as the “Blue Light Special”. (It was the early 90s and “motion neon” was a thing I couldn’t afford.)
Anyways, the blue lights were for offroad use only and I was always careful to pop up the white headlights before pulling out on the street but one night I was pulling out of a parking lot and still had them blue, a cop pulled in behind me, and before I pulled out onto the street I popped them up white but the cop was behind me and couldn’t see that. Sure enough, he pulled me over. He started giving me the bit about blue lights being illegal and when I pointed out that I popped them up to white before pulling onto the street he yelled at me for “talking back” to him. He then went up front and only saw white headlights and said he was sure they were blue. I tried to explain to him how they worked and that I only used them offroad and he then called me a liar. Saying I “knew how to work on computers” (I was still wearing my work shirt from the computer store I worked at) and didn’t know about working on cars. However someone makes that logical leap. Anyways, I managed to talk myself into a warning instead of a ticket but this remains the stupidest thing I’ve been pulled over for that I’m willing to disclose on the internet.
No brake lights on a 1970 Westphalia, which is a legit reason to get pulled over. What makes it stupid is that I had no brake lights because my horn was stuck and I had pulled the fuse. Yes, the brake lights were on the same fuse as the horn.
I popped the fuse back in, the brake lights worked again, and the cop didn’t write me up. And, happily, the horn didn’t immediately go off again.
It did later, so I isolated the horn.
I got pulled late one night for no taillights in a ‘59 Morris Minor convertible. Valid, and I’m mentioning it because the officer was really cool: he stayed with me—put headights on the rear for me—while I fixed the issue. He hadn’t heard the old ‘Why do the British drink warm beer?’ trope, and was pretty impressed when I showed him the size of my collection of electrical stuff I always carried in that car. I asked if he was going to write me a ticket: he laughed & declined, saying I was pretty much only a menace to myself and he just didn’t want to see me run over in the dark.
Dumbest reason? No reason.
I was driving with friends, I was pulled over, the cop looked at me, said “uh sorry we were looking for a car matching this description but it’s not you,” I was let go.
He was very surprised to see a white guy in his 30s, I tell you.
I grew up in a very small town surrounded by bigger towns, the cops in that small town would frequently pull us over with that same excuse, “We have an APB out that matches this car.”
First of all, there’s only 2 cops in this town so might as well call it a 2PB. Second, you pull me over all the damn time and know my car. Just last week the same cop stopped me walking down the street and asked me where my “little black sportscar” was. Just be honest and admit you wanted to shine your light in my car to see I didn’t have anything illegal.
Good ol’ small town cops.
My nephew has a bright yellow Mustang and was rude to a cop once so he was pretty much pulled over daily.
In 1985 I got pulled over and left to sit on the side of the road for a while because the taillights on my 1969 Galaxie 500 were too dim. When I was allowed to leave I asked if I should get them looked at or fixed the officer said no, no need.
For “Driving Like A Jerk” from the Mariemont Police in the empty high school parking lot one night after a worthless (to me) band recital after finding out I got rejected by UC because my class rank wasn’t high enough.
I was heading to a fast food place one night when I was in college. I signaled, changed lanes, then saw that Burger King was closed. So I signaled, changed lanes, and prepared to turn into Jack in the Box. Cop pulled me over because I’d been all over the road. He admitted I had done everything properly.
Also, I was once pulled over when I was briefly a youth pastor. I had the pastor’s Suburban full of teenagers and the cop pulled me over because “the vehicle matched a description.” He didn’t even bother to elaborate. Every vehicle matches a description. He really just wanted to see if we were a carload of drunk teens, of course.
And one time I went (safely) through a yellow (permissive yellow laws here, so perfectly legal) and was pulled over for it. Told the cop I went through on yellow. After he saw that I had. I guess he just hoped to smell alcohol or something.