Sixty years without a ticket

There are about 196,000,000 licensed drivers in the United States. Approximately one out of every five will receive a traffic ticket within a year. In 2018 alone, over forty million traffic tickets were issued by law enforcement agencies.

Speeding tickets have been around since May 20, 1899. The first speeding ticket was in downtown Manhattan in the Supreme Court of New York. A driver was speeding 12 miles per hour in an 8-mile-per-hour zone. He was arrested and imprisoned and released a few days later.

Catching speeders and driving violators was important to Mayberry Deputy Barney Fife and Sheriff Andy Taylor. They gave tickets to a vital newspaper publisher and an attractive woman from Washington D.C. Andy arrested the son of an important man in the state for leaving the scene of an accident. Barney patrolled Highway 6 with his motorcycle, ticketing truckers for exceeding the speed limit by five mph. He also gave the governor’s chauffeur a ticket for illegal parking.

I received my first driver’s license in September of 1962, and my wife received her license in February 1967, meaning she and I have been driving for a total of 115 years. And in all those years, neither of us has received a speeding ticket. Neither of us has ever received any traffic ticket. Does this mean that we are excellent drivers, or have we never been caught? Or does it mean we are fortunate not to have been driving through Mayberry? Perhaps it is a combination of all three.

My wife and I are cautious about obeying all speed limits. I must confess that does not make drivers following us very happy. Living in Eau Claire means college students are driving, and I have discovered that many get impatient when they are behind us. We are just one of a few who obey the 45 mph speed limit on the main thoroughfares in Eau Claire. We have been the recipients of horn honking and obscene gestures.

I have discovered that the easiest solution to this dilemma is to avoid the main thoroughfares altogether. I use many alternate routes where I will not slow down other drivers. This practice prevents a lot of aggravation for both me and those following.

I must confess that a county deputy did stop me for speeding shortly after getting my license. A group of us were returning from a dance at the Owen-Withee High School. I was driving my mother’s little Corvair on Highway 29 and ignored the speedometer because we were laughing and talking. However, the deputy who stopped me was very understanding. He explained the importance of obeying the speed limit. He let me go without writing up a warning ticket. That experience had a significant impact on my future driving habits. I am just glad he wasn’t Barney Fife.

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