Freshman and Arrested

In this MyDorms story, we come back to a familiar individual – Anonymous from SDSU recounts another driving story. In a previous article, he shared how a floormate nearly killed him three weeks into college. In this article, we learn that Anonymous is back in a car but this time driving alongside that same floormate! Anonymous, tell us what happened.

“I was out with my college floormates, driving back home down the I8 West. I was in one car with one floormate, and my roommate was in another car close behind. Both being car enthusiasts, we enjoyed taking multiple cars just to caravan. On this night, we were both heading back at speed. I had an old VolvoS60 with an obnoxious exhaust and air intake, the roommate was in a MustangGT. I remember taking a look over to see his Mustang next to me as we entered a bend, and then punching it. While my turbo kicked in and my speedometer rose, I grinned with glee as I watched him fall back behind my tail lights. I continued speeding down my lane, wondering why he was falling so far behind. It was also at that point that I noticed a new set of headlights far in the distance behind me, and closing in fast. I remember thinking to myself wow, this must be some crazy racer going that fast to catch up to me. I went to the right lane to let the assumed hot head racer pass me. You can only imagine my shock as the car slowed and came within a few feet of me, directly behind me. Did I piss someone off? Was this racer trying to edge me on? The flash of red and blue quickly provided the answer to what was going on.

I knew I had to pull over, and the next exit was quick approaching. I took a fast turn to take it, hoping it wouldn’t be perceived as an attempted evasion. As I made it down the offramp, I came to a stop at the side of the road. The office stayed close behind, lights flashing. After a few moments of silence, he came my way and I rolled down my window. My first speeding ticket, I was thinking to myself. ‘How fast where you going?’, he asked me. I feebly replied somewhere in the 80s, knowing that I was well over. He scoffed and informed me of a reading of 114, and proceeded to ask for license and registration, as well as if I knew the other driver. At the time I thought it best to minimize losses, so I said I didn’t know the other driver. He headed back to his cruiser to run my information, and I was mentally bracing for the speeding ticket. When he returned, he asked that I step out of the vehicle. That’s weird, I thought to myself, why do I need to step out to get a ticket? He continued to instruct me to step to the rear of my vehicle and face the curb we were parked against. Only when the cold metal of cuffs touched my arm did I realize what was going on: I was being arrested. My arms were uncomfortably bent behind me and I was placed in the surprisingly cramped back of the police cruiser. Can’t get any worse for me, right? Wrong. The cop went back to talk to my co-passenger regarding the incident. My co-passenger let the cop know that I did indeed know the car I was racing against, and that it was my roommate. They proceeded to search my car to see if there were any suspicious items, and they noticed I had a radar detector. It ironically was not plugged in as it didn’t work at the time, but that didn’t prevent the officers from giving me a hard time for it. When the cop returned to the cruiser, he had asked why I had lied to him. I only had a one worded response: ‘Instinct’.

As the officer pulled away to drive to the station, I saw my vehicle being loaded onto a tow truck. My vehicle was impounded for a minimum of three days with the current license plate at the time, ‘REFLEXS’, mocking me on it’s way to the impound lot. When I got to the station I was placed into a processing room where I was cuffed to a bench and left in a dimly lit room. I learned that the racing (Engaging in a Speed Contest) charges translated into a misdemeanor, and there was a minimum lockup period associated. This is independent of the Reckless Driving charge that I learned I had also racked up. Some time later, I finally was released and had just enough phone battery to call my roommates to pick me back up. I had a clean record until that point, and still haven’t gotten any other tickets at point of writing. I will note that later that year the same car was flipped multiple times and totaled in a car accident once lent to a different floormate, but that’s a different story for a different day. I’m usually the quiet nice guy in the room but hey, that’s an experience not everyone has. And that’s the story of when I was arrested freshmen year.” -Anonymous