Bad Boys, Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do?

I got my first traffic ticket ever this weekend. It was actually a fairly frightening experience. It also made me disappointed with law enforcement.

So, here's the story:

Jake, Jon, Ellen, and I went to Rob's apartment Saturday night because he was throwing a birthday party for himself. I told Jake that I would drive after the party, so I limited myself to a single drink early on in the evening. Everyone else drank a little bit, but not heavily by any means. We got to Rob's at a bit after 8pm and didn't leave until almost 1am. When that time came, Jake and I told Jon and Ellen we would drive them to the Metro so that they could get home.

Coming out of Rob's apartment complex, I wanted to take a left turn onto Seminary Rd., but couldn't because of how the road is set up. I had to take a right. As we approached the first stop light after getting onto Seminary, we all noted that there was a sign indicating "No U-turn". Jake said to me, "Aw, just do a u-turn..." It was late, there wasn't any traffic on the road, and I was eager to shave a little bit of time off of driving home, so I didn't need much prodding. I did a u-turn. Immediately after I pulled around, a police car pulled out from around a corner and the lights came on. Shit.

A police officer came up to the car and said he pulled me over for an illegal u-turn. I said, "Oh...yeah," and gave him my license and registration when he asked for it. A few minutes later, a second police officer came up to my window. He said, "What's your current address?" I told him. He said, "Have you been drinking tonight?" I said, "No..." Everyone else in the car told him that they'd been drinking and I was the designated driver. He said, "Well, I smell alcohol coming out of the car. If I ask you for a PBT, will it come up all zeroes?" I was like, "Uh, PBT?" He said, "A Preliminary Breath Test. Will you blow all zeroes?" I said, "Um, yeah, I guess..." The second officer walked away from our car. A bit later, a squad car pulled out from behind the car that pulled me over. I hadn't even realized until that moment that I had been pulled over by TWO cop cars. I was freaking out. I really didn't want to give a breath test. I knew if they did give me one, it wouldn't come up as all zeroes, but I was definitely under the legal limit. I'd had about four hours of sobering up and I'd eaten food in between as well. The first officer returned to my window and informed me that he was going to administer a field sobriety test to me. I was really nervous. The first thing I was asked to do was recite the alphabet from "I to X". I was not allowed to sing it. I was so nervous that when I got to "S", I said "X" instead. I quickly figured out that that was wrong and corrected myself, but still, I felt like a moron. Then, I was asked to touch each of my fingers one at a time to my thumb, starting with my index finger and ending with my pinkie. Then, I had to work backwards, starting with my pinkie and ending with my index finger. Each finger was assigned a number and I had to say the number as I touched it to my thumb. I had to repeat the entire sequence three times without stopping. So, I was saying "1-2-3-4, 4-3-2-1," as my fingers tapped my thumb. After I was done with that, the officer told me that he was just writing me up for the u-turn and that I was free to go.

Ugh.

The whole experience was just very nerve-wracking.


Don't cops have anything better to do than pull people over for little things like u-turns? It wasn't as if I was endangering anyone or anything like that. Gah, so annoying...