These Are The Dumbest Things You've Ever Been Ticketed For

A noise violation ticket for an, “illegally modified exhaust.” The FIAT 500 Abarth has a factory straight pipe... There is no muffler. To add one would be modifying the exhaust.

Submitted by: OutForARip

Love telling this story:

High school me, driving my 2005 Chrysler 300 that I purchased with some inheritance money (Thanks Aunt Mary!). Get pulled over in a residential area.

Cop asks if this was my car I was driving. I show him the registration and insurance (all under my name). Cop says “You don’t look like you should be driving around in something like this” Whatever the hell that means. He runs my name through the system, finds nothing. Comes back to the car and says “Well I can’t let you go without a ticket, so I’m gonna write you for speeding”

The speeding ticket? 38 in a 35.

Submitted by: i86hotdogs

Undertaking (passing on the right), to get around a car brake-checking me @ 15 mph under the posted speed limit.

I felt so protected and served.

Submitted by: Bruce Steever

A loud exhaust on the Charger.

Back when the Charger was my everyday car, I lived in the state of Virginia six months too long. Moving away, so about to be gone for good when VA cops had a roadblock set up. And ker-ching! written up for a loud exhaust despite six months of no hassles till then. Eff ‘em—gone for good to never return, so that was a fine they never collected.

Submitted by: the1969DodgeChargerFan

Following too closely. The context is what makes it dumb.

On the interstate heading out of the Chicago metro area early in the morning on the way to a construction job. I’m going 75 in a 65. There’s a car ahead of me in the middle of three lanes going slower than me, so I do the normal thing and pull into passing lane with like about 50-60 yards between us. Before I can get to actually passing him, some idiot in an Altima (because of COURSE it’s an Altima) comes up doing 90, and shoots the gap between us into the passing lane while there was only some 15 yards between me and the slower guy.

And then, lo and behold, there’s a cop in the median like another 1/8th mile up. Dipshit in the Altima brake-checks me down to like 55, and I drive by the trooper right on his bumper. After the whole sequence, Altima guy pulls all the way to the right and I’m so annoyed that I punch it and get back to just below 80. The cop runs me down for tailgating the Altima, claims he had to do a 95 to catch me. He gives the written warning for speeding, and the ticket for following to close. Had I not cruised away after the whole thing, I might have gotten off without the ticket. But there was salt on the wound for two reasons:

1. about another half-mile up was when the highway went down from 3 to 2 lanes and the speed limit went up to 70

2. my ticket equated to one full days pay at the job.

Fuck you Altima guy, wherever you are.

Submitted by: Mosko

I didn’t get a ticket, just a warning but still got pulled over. I got pulled over in a ski hill parking lot. Apparently it’s a one-way loop around the parking spots and I went the wrong way out. The cop acted like I was a dumbass and was saying how they clearly marked everything with signs and marks on the pavement so I should have known. I look around and, one sign at the entrance facing away from me. And, guess what, since it’s winter the lot is covered in snow so you can’t see the markings! Guy must have assumed I was high because snowboarder and was hoping to give me a ticket, but when I pointed out the one sign and snow covered lot he realized I wasn’t just being stupid and let me go.

Submitted by: give_me_a_manuel_alpha_romero_you_cowards

Virtually all the tickets I have received have been earned, and the cops have almost always knocked the speed on the ticket down a bit to make the financial hit a bit less painful. One incident, however, presented an interesting “lesser of two evils” thought experiment. I decided that speeding was safer than remaining in the traffic situation I found myself in, which I suppose was arguably dumb.

I was on a two-lane artery in my city, in very light traffic, with a posted limit of 60km/h. There was a woman in a minivan ahead of me who was either drunk, on her phone, or both as I approached from behind. She was traveling well under the speed limit, wandering between lanes, and even clipped the curb at one point. I was in the left lane trying to get around her but she kept drifting over, preventing me from getting by. When I finally couldn’t take it anymore (I had a meeting to get to), I downshifted in preparation for a fast overtake. I waited until she started a drift to the right, then punched it and got by before she weaved back to the left. Of course, before I could slow down, a cop standing on the sidewalk tagged me with a handheld radar.

I turned in to the side street where the ticketing crew were waiting for me, and I tell them I need to explain that my speeding was “in the interests of safety.” To their credit, they actually listened, but wrote the ticket and told me to “tell it to the judge.”

I did tell it to the judge (magistrate, actually), and when she pulled up the ticket report, the cops had written out my story word for word. She said “they went to a lot of trouble to write this up, they must have believed you”, and she quashed the ticket. So, while my move could certainly be called dumb, it was also validated by both cops and magistrate.

Submitted by: Muqaddimah

When I was young, my family would spend 2-3 weeks camping on the beach at Camp Pendleton marine base in SoCal. In college, I had work commitments that made spending 3 summer weeks there impossible, so I would drive down on what days off I had and spend as much time as I could.

Headed down I-5 about a mile from the Basilone exit and a lug nut comes off the car in front of me. It bounces up and hits the lower left corner of the windshield and a 4" crack is produced from the impact. Crap! BTW: I knew it was a lug nut because it landed in the bed of my pickup thus saving other road users from this hazard.

I pull up to the base entrance and have my ID, registration, insurance and a copy of the camping reservation to show the guy on duty. He looks over everything and says: “Everything looks in order. When the gate arm goes up, pull over to the guard post and we will get you a vehicle pass for the campground.”

When he hands everything back, “you know you have a crack on your windshield there?”

“Yes, it just happened on the freeway.”

“Okay, come on through.”

I park and walk into the guard house to get the pass and he says, “now that you’re on base, I am going to have to cite you for the broken windshield.”

He proceeded to flip through the big binder of offenses he had to find the right one. As he flipped through, I did notice one page had a marker on it. Public Drunkenness was a $10 fine. That one must get used a lot. #Marines

Broken windshield was a $40 ticket.

I actually came back another weekend in the same vehicle (windshield still cracked) and the guard said nothing.

I am guessing that the guard that cited me had just been chewed out for something stupid by some officer that had rolled through before me. Shit rolls downhill.

Submitted by: soloyosh

Second was my mom and THIS one is a stupid ticket. Turning from a main road to a cross street in her Suburban, rear passenger tire TOUCHES the line while turning, she gets pulled over and ticketed for failure to stay in her lane. It was that day she understood WHY I hated the cops in that town.

Submitted by: liffie420

Passing a car under the speed limit. Driving to a wedding in CT in 2006. My wife is in the passenger seat, attempting to pump breast milk for our very premature twins who are in the NICU. It’s I-95 N through central Connecticut. There is a car doing 5mph under the speed limit in the left lane. There is also a police car behind me. Other than that it’s basically as empty as I-95 ever gets.

I get tired of going 50mph on I-95, signal, switch lanes, pass the guy on the right, get up to the speed limit, and immediately get pulled over by the cop. It turns out that in CT it is illegal to pass someone on the right if the freeway you are on only has 2 lanes in each direction. I told the cop that I obviously knew he was there, he followed me for 10 miles, and he saw the guy in the left lane going under the speed limit. Didn’t matter, I passed on the right. Fuck Connecticut, fuck the CSP, and fuck their stupid law that basically allows one asshole to set the speed on 50% of I-95.

Damn, 18 years and I’m *STILL* salty about this one.

Submitted by: Arolpin

That would be my ex-wife, who was pregnant with our first child at the time. She was driving, and she pulled into the Walmart handicap parking lane. I told her she couldn’t do that because she was not handicapped, but she insisted she was and had every right to do so. I hurried inside to get back quickly in case something happened.

I was right. She was crying when I came back. A police officer had apparently seen me when I went inside and came over and gave her a ticket for parking there. He wasn’t buying her “I’m handicapped because I’m pregnant!” excuse. Neither did the judge, who made pay a $100 fine. He refused to let me pay the fine, because he said I didn’t commit the crime-she did.

Submitted by: IDM3

Got wrote up for:

CVC 22107

No person shall turn a vehicle from a direct course or move right or left upon a roadway until such movement can be made with reasonable safety and then only after the giving of an appropriate signal in the manner provided in this chapter in the event any other vehicle may be affected by the movement.

And my girlfriend got a ticket for:

CVC 21701

No person shall wilfully interfere with the driver of a vehicle or with the mechanism thereof in such manner as to affect the driver’s control of the vehicle.

Submitted by: Clay_T

Driving on the shoulder for 20 feet in order to make a turn into a gas station.

This happened on Rt. 70 in Jersey, in the Cherry Hill area. Traffic was backed up, and my fuel gauge had been on empty for about 60 miles with the low fuel light on. Was about 20 feet from the gas station, so I pulled into the shoulder to turn right into said station. Cop was behind me and gave me a ticket for that move, even after I tried to explain the situation. Oh well.

Submitted by: nanxun

Talking back to a cop. I was on a 2-lane road outside of a small town in Delaware and I flashed my lights to oncoming traffic to warn them of a speed trap. Unfortunately for me I didn’t notice the other police car up ahead. He pulled me over, asked if I knew why, and I said “I was just trying to alert other drivers of the danger ahead.”

Submitted by: ReluctantFloridaMan

I’m in the passing lane of a two-lane road (right hand lane, it was in England), passing slower cars while staying very close to the speed limit. A marked police car comes up behind me, so I sped up slightly to pull into the left lane so they can get past. They pulled me over for speeding :-(

Submitted by: bashful