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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2026
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No Stupid Questions
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No such thing. Ask away!
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Man I'm pretty sure there's been at least one or two times where if I'd followed shut the fuck up Friday, I would've gotten a fine at least. Of course I do live in a different country (very important point I'd say. Cops here are fairly friendly when in a good mood and don't really get to shoot people).
There was one time when I got stopped because I didn't have inspection or insurance on my car as it had been sitting for a while. Got away with just having to renew insurance as I told them I was just going to my workshop to get the car fixed for inspection (slight lie, woops - think I was driving it to the family farm to store it there long-term as I had another car I was driving actively) and had forgotten to renew insurance since the car had been sitting with no insurance for a while. It's legal to drive your car to/from inspection and to/from a workshop for repairs without active inspection here.
Then another time when on that exact same car, IIRC the speedo didn't work properly (or maybe I was just in a mood to listen to the inline 5 purr) so I went what must've been about 65 km/h in a 50 zone at night and just told the cop that the speedo had just stopped working a few minutes ago. Car was about 25 years old at that point so entirely believable too. No fine or anything, got told to just go fix it and drive carefully in the meantime.
The common theme of course being that never have I been accused of doing anything that would get me prison time or something. It's been fairly tiny traffic offenses that they already got on video anyway (police cars have dash cameras after all), those fines don't cost a lot if you don't go to the court to argue. And it's not entirely impossible that I've been blessed with the gift of gab because while I'm nearly incapable of straight-up lying, I am very capable of bending the truth just right to make things sound better for me. For small, offenses, cops have discretion to let you go if you don't piss them off and to give you a fine if you play hardball.
Pretty similar to my experience in the US.
Generally, a 15km/h speeding won't even get you stopped. Once I got pulled over ostensibly for about that much over, but it was 2 in the morning on a weekend on a country road so I'm pretty sure the officer was just using the speed as a fishing expedition, and came up with nothing worth the paperwork over.
Another time got pulled over for ostensibly speeding, and when the officer asked if we knew how fast we were going, I started tapping on the screen to try to pull up what would have been dashcam footage, and the officer fairly quickly decided to leave us with a "you just be careful now".
Like you said, at no point did I get particularly pissy, on the first I was a teenager who had never been pulled before and was just being super deferential, and even with the dashcam I was genuinely checking if I had such a thing because it was a new car and I wondered if I could access the camera recording (I heard that in a crash it would have recorded something, but evidently without activating or crashing it, it wasn't there). But never said that I doubted him, just that I was going to see if I could see how fast I was going.
If the whole scenario is low stakes and the officer is not stressed, my experience has been like yours. Only time I personally witnessed a pissed off cop was when I got rear ended by someone going about 90kph when I was in a traffic jam and the officer was very pissed at the person ramming a stopped car.
Of course the challenge is that it might be high stakes without your knowledge.
This still works in the US too but... And it's a big BUT! ...but it entirely depends on the cop, the mood they're in, and how their sex life is going. I've had times where I've been high as a kite and been given a warning or been driving 20 mph over the speed limit and got a warning.
I've also been on a bike and nearly hit by an off-duty cop, the cop was angered by this and chased me down the highway at bike speed (<15mph, uphill) while the road is posted to be 50mph. I called the police, fearing for my life, and when police arrived I spoke with them and they said I had nothing to great from this engaged motorist because they were also a cop. Then I was given an indictment (a court date) for public disturbance because the cop lied and said I, a trans person, called him the F slur. It was dismissed in the end (first amendment rights and all that) but I was punished for riding my bike along the bike path by being legally ordered to go to court and explain that I was terrified and had shouted at the crazy out of control person chasing me: "If you follow me I'm calling the cops!" The cop had no repercussions!
Anyway, my point is, you can get lucky either way but when your luck turns they hold all the cards and your only rights become what they decide you get.