Technology makes getting stopped not so painful

He said I was going 66 in a 55. I was in a hurry and there was nobody around, on the straightaway on State Road 67 coming into Switz City from Worthington.

You come off that hill at Pioneer and there's nothing until you get to the curve, except cornfields. I thought there was no good place for a trooper to hide. And it was early on a Monday morning -- you'd think they'd all be taking a day off after a hard weekend.

They came out of nowhere -- two of 'em. Geez, suddenly, there was one behind me and one coming toward me and the red and blue lights are flashing. I think they all really like to do the light thing.

It must have been my red car. Studies show vehicles that are red are stopped more often than any other color. Studies don't show whether that's because troopers are attracted to the color red, or because people who like to buy red cars are the kind of people who like to speed. It's probably the latter.

So the one coming toward me does a U and comes to get me. Shoot. I was minutes away from a deadline but it wasn't a news deadline. I had to turn my hours in by 9 a.m. or I wouldn't get my paycheck that week. And you know how long it takes them to run all those checks and write out the ticket. I just knew this was going to take way too long and all I could think about was how I was going to get through the next two weeks without my paycheck.

I thought about saying, "Look, I'm in a hurry, could we make this fast?" but decided against it.

In the end, I made it to the office in the nick of time and that's the whole point of this story -- you would not believe how fast these guys can write out a ticket these days!

The Indiana State Police have a new computer system installed in all the cars and the troopers have been trained to use it.

After they pick up your driver's license and get back to their car, they now run it under a scanner that reads your numbers and quick as a wink, the computer returns all your vital information to the trooper. The officer then inputs the info about he violation he wants to hand out to you and pushes the print button. The cars now have printers on board.

In record time, the trooper re-appeared back at my window with a standard 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper with all kinds of info -- state, county, township, name, address, race, gender, height, weight, eye color, hair color, driver's license number, date of birth, expiration date followed by the further details about the vehicle, the offense committed, and the officer's name and badge number -- all readable. If the trooper had to write all this stuff out by hand -- I wouldn't have gotten my paycheck.

He stopped me at 8:45 a.m. I made it to the office by 9 a.m.

Print quality was excellent.

The trooper was Byron Goodman. His requisite "You need to slow down" lecture was short and to the point.

I thought he was a very nice trooper -- he only gave me a warning.

Whew, that was close!

Anna Rochelle is a staff writer for the Greene County Daily World and can be reached by telephone at 847-4487 or 1-800-947-4487 or by e-mail to indianarose@fastmail.us