The World According To Alan

Revenue Collected

Well, Monday I stopped by the Arlington Municipal Courthouse. The ticket said 11am, I got there 10:30ish. There was a court in session and they said "we'll see if she'll take you now" and she did. Very young judge I thought --- early 30's. I thought she did a great job though --- for example, someone got hit for open container after he'd gotten stopped for speeding or something and went to get his registration out of the glove box and one of those little tiny liquor bottles fell out. You couldn't get drunk on one of those if you tried. She didn't dismiss it entirely, but said she'd look at the police report and make a determination, but it was clear that if he was telling the truth, he'd get off. This is the way courts are supposed to work, though it would have been better if the cop had had more sense in the first place.

Oh, and when I came up, I explained that I'd been experimenting with running with the cruise control off, as it seems like it gets better gas mileage if you don't use it, but since this Escape drives so much better than my Explorer, 80 feels the same as 65-70 did in the Explorer. Since I get considerably worse gas mileage at 80 though, I've gone back to using the cruise control. All of which is true.

I said that to show that I was unlikely to be a repeat offender, though her comment was "at least you're honest" and gave me the minumum fine: $180. For a $240 ticket, that paid for the trip, and I was out of there by shortly after 11am, so I'm as happy as I can be.

I hear there's a move afoot to raise the speed limits again though, and I do hope they are successful...