Well, having known a few highway patrol and police officers over the years, I
can honestly say, that's a bunch of Hooey.
The real point is what pretty well trained means. The highway patrol takes 2
days of driving instruction, 1 of which is partially in car (It may sound like
not very much, but think about all things that they need to be trained for, how
long can they really afford to train on each subject?). Certification must
be redone every year, with a 1 day refresher course. After a few years, an
officer can go through a half day course with no in car. Almost all of the
local police require even less.
I rank the level of skill of the average highway patrol officer right up there
with the average talent, put-upon spouse of a neophite auto-xing speed freak.
They went to one school, make one event a year, and may or may not like it, but
they put up with it cuase they have to.
Put these people in an still-overweight behemouth stripped down, lap-belt only
luxocruiser, with the JC penny super saver super life tires, from the factory
maintenance, and a badge. You can't tell me that it's safe for them to chase
me down doing 120mph when I'm in a factory race car, with Ultra high
performance tires, maintained to the highest levels possible, doing 70mph. To
top it off, with their training, I have more classroom time than all but the
veterans of the force, and more at-the-limit seat time than they will ever
have. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there that can say that.
It's just another one of the inequities that is built into our traffic system
that we all just get to live with.
But dang it, I'm a proud card carrying member of the SCCA, and they can have my
gas pedal when they pry it off the bottom of my cold dead tennis shoes (they
make great driving shoes)
O
(12 months before I can take drivers school again. 74 in a 70)
In a message dated 6/29/2000 10:31:38 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
nasa-va@juno.com writes:
While I can't argue the rest of the post, this part bothers me. I think the
officer is probably pretty well trained to pursue you (I can make a fairly
good point for most trained experienced drivers being safe up to 100 or so)
and pull you over with little danger to the rest of the public. And if he
couldn't, then we would all be fairly free to do whatever we wanted with no
fear of being caught, and that of course, leads to mayhem.
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