Stig

On the way to work this morning, got to the main roundabout before the Motorway. Got stuck at the first set of lights. Lights change to green, I depart on the rear wheel. Got stuck at the next set of lights, I depart on the rear wheel.

On to the slip road and on to the motorway. Two miles later after some deft traffic dodging, leave the motorway. At the end of the slip road the lights are on red. I've stopped waiting for the lights to change, when I car pulls up by my side very sharply and very close to me.

I turn to see what knobber is driving said car and realise that it's Mr police man in an unmarked car. Damn.

He indicates for me to pull over, so I let him know that I am going to negotiate the roundabout and will pull over a little further down the road out of the way of the traffic. He had no problems with this and gives me the thumbs up.

I pull over, take gloves and helmet off and get off the bike. He comes over and we have a chat about my journey from the lights at the previous roundabout to the roundabout that he stopped me on.

He said that he was waiting in the traffic at the first lights and when I shot off on the rear wheel that kind of got his attention, so he decided to follow me.

He commented about my road discipline whilst travelling along the motorway. He said that although I undertook, filtered through two lanes off traffic at speed on the white line, and then went across three lanes of traffic to take the slip road, he was happy that I was paying great attention to the rest of the traffic and was fully aware that I was actually being quite sensible about when and where I decided it was safe to make these manoeuvres.

Because of this he was prepared to ignore the antics at the roundabout, ignore the filtering, ignore the small number plate, illegal can and dark visor and just gave me a ticket for doing an average of 90 mph over the two miles of the motorway.

When I got to work I actually looked at my ticket in more detail. It states that I got the ticket for excessive speed on the motorway, the only speed written down on the ticket says 70 mph. I think this is to indicate what the actual speed limit was at the time. It does not state what speed I was actually travelling at.

Does that mean that I am only looking at 3 points and the fine? Or (being hopeful here) does it mean he has made a mistake when issuing the ticket and forgot to write the speed I was travelling?

Either way, I think, putting it all in context, I got lucky again... sort of.