An Encounter - why not?

[desert_porsche]

A couple of years ago I was driving from Tucson to Las Vegas in my 2012 Audi Q5. There is a couple hundred mile stretch between Wickenburg and Kingman which is almost completely straight and flat, but has a 65mph speed limit.

At one point, a Dodge Charger goes blasting past me, and I decide that I'll go ahead and follow behind him. In my brain I was thinking I could argue I was going "the flow of traffic" if I got pulled over.

The driver of the Dodge understands what I'm doing, and for the next 50 miles, we trade off being the "lead car" doing over 90mph in a 65.

At one point we crest a small hill and boom, highway patrol. He gets behind me with lights on, and the Dodge also pulls over even though he easily could have "escaped". The patrolman could have only pulled one of us over and would have lost sight of the other.

At this point I remember that speeding greater than 25 over is considered criminal speeding. The patrolman would have been well within his rights to arrest me, impound my vehicle, etc.

He comes to my car first and asks for my license etc. The encounter is very brief and I could tell the patrolman was pissed.

He then goes to the Dodge and spends a long time talking to the driver. After he is done with the Dodge, he comes back to my car and says "Yeah, that other guy is active duty Marines and I'm ex-Marines. I let him off with a warning. It wouldn't be fair to ticket you and not him, so I'm going to give you a warning as well. Be careful". Patrolman drives away and that's it.

Moral of the story: It's dumb stupid luck whether you get ticketed or not.