An arresting attitude

I read today that former television presenter Esther Rantzen saw her attempt to overturn a £60 fixed penalty for a minor traffic offence issued by traffic officer Sergeant Kevin McKeown fail.

Sergeant Kevin McKeown, a traffic officer, was behind Rantzen's BMW 750i on a police motorcycle, in central London last June when he saw her drive over the crossing, causing two woman pedestrians to "slow down".

She told the court: "I was distressed because his tone was so antagonistic and bullying. This is why I'm here."

Now, I can empathize with Sergeant Kevin McKeown, I too would be infuriated by this kind of thing. Apparently, Rantzen was distracted by her daughter reading poetry.

For the life of me, I fail to see how the hell that could be used as an excuse. It’s more weight to the case against her. She as much as admitted she wasn’t paying: “due care and attention” to the road in front of here .. a road soon to be populated by pedestrians.

However, my inevitable behavior against Rantzen -- had I been the officer in question -- would have underlined one thing: I’m not police material. Whatever is happening around you, as an officer of the law, your feelings and opinions are irrelevant. Your job is to match your observations against the various statutes of law. If you bring emotion to a scene, you do so at the expense of logic and risk inflaming a situation further.

I’m reminded of an incident in 1995 when I too was stopped and fined. However, the incident was much different to that which saw Rantzen fined.

I’d recently broken up with my girlfriend and my mind was a bit of a wasteland. I was on my way home from work; I was working in Leeds at the time, and I was just getting onto the newly-completed M1 / M62 link road, the M621. Essentially, it’s a stretch of motorway, so normal rules apply .. don’t they? Apparently not.

I was caught doing 80 miles per hour while performing an overtaking maneuver, which is allowed so long as you decrease your speed to 70 miles per hour as soon as you have completed the maneuver. Unbeknownst to me -- and everyone else on this stretch of road -- was that the speed limit of 50 miles per hour.

So, when I was eventually ‘pulled’, I was asked to step into the patrol car -- As a side note, the traffic officer was driving an unmarked Vauxhall Astra .. an Astra! The ignominy was beyond belief. Now, if it’d been a Volvo T5, I wouldn’t have minded as much, maybe.

Anyway, I digress. The point is, his attitude was pretty shit. He was jumping to all kinds of conclusions, being condescending and otherwise not very professional.

This royally pissed me off, so I fitted him up. My reply went something like: “Hey! As much as you’d like to think I’m some kind of boy racer, I’m going to have to disappoint ye, mate! I’m a graphic designer, I’ve just finished with my girlfriend and I’ve got a lot on my mind, but not so much that I didn’t know what I was doing. And if you check your records, you’ll not find a single mark against my name or my driving record. And that’s not because I’ve been lucky enough not to get caught before now, it’s because I’m a bloody good driver and it’s something I'm damn proud of.”

He was pretty stunned and he just didn’t know what to say. He began fidgeting with his pen and he was clearly rattled. I don’t need a bad event in my life to set me off, so it’s a bad idea to get in face when something has.

“And, do ye wanna tell me where I can find a sign telling me this stretch of road is fifty miles per hour? There certainly wasn’t any sign getting onto the motorway, and I don’t see any now.”

There wasn’t any signs at all. But this didn’t cut it. Apparently, as drivers, we must be psychic and just know the speed of a particular piece of road. I pointed out to him that in the time we’d be sat there, four cars had thundered by doing at least ninety, while I was actually slowing down when he pulled me.

I paid the fine, but I stood my ground, and that made me feel proud enough to stomach the fine and points on my license knowing I’d done the right thing.

But this wouldn’t be the last time I stood my ground, dug my heels in and made it difficult for the authorities...