Originally published at: Lady in Prius contests speeding ticket | Boing Boing
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I love her reaction when he tells her the name of his segment. Although any impact apparently was very short-lived given her subsequent behaviour.
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“I have a friend who’s a dentist” LOL
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She’s probably awful in her everyday life about anything that interferes with her wierd expectations.
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I’m disappointed she didn’t attempt the “it’s a Prius, you can’t speed in one” line of BS. It’s categorically false, one does not drive M-14 (outside Detroit) at less than 80 MPH, my Prius handles it just fine. It also does not seem to be governed, I really don’t know what it’s top speed is, but I’ve heard (wink, wink) that it can definitely go 105.
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What an awesome person you are not.
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We’ve achieved peak Karen, right here.
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OK but why does the make of the car matter? I can’t help feeling this is a poke at “elitist libs” or whatever
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I’m also not a lawyer, but I believe California (where KRON news is based) is an all-party consent state for recording conversations. So while the news reporter is correct that they can photograph people in public, recording audio of her conversation with the officer without her consent may be illegal. I suppose there may be exceptions for news gathering, but I’d hardly call this incident newsworthy. I’m sure hundreds of people try to talk their way out of speeding tickets every single day.
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Talking your way out of a ticket is one thing, but following the cop around and trying to argue your point again and again is quite different.
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That only applies to confidential conversations. She’s in a public setting speaking to a cop, so she has no legal expectation of privacy. Nor can she claim the press was “eavesdropping” given that they were in plain view the whole time and she clearly knew they were there.
More info: Is it illegal to record someone in California? A lawyer explains - Shouse Law Group.
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No doubt, she was a “people behaving badly,” but I’m not sure what she did was really deserving of a public shaming on local TV news.
They may have a technical right to film her, but I’m not sure that makes it morally right. When she asked for them to stop filming, stopping would have been the decent thing to do.
I have to wonder, whether she would have kept trying to press the issue after the traffic stop if she hadn’t known she was being filmed. I suspect this may have been a (misguided) attempt to prove she was right to defuse the public shaming (though that clearly backfired, since she wasn’t right).
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I had a bumper sticker on mine with the text:
50MPG @ 80MPH
I might make another now that gas is around $4 a gallon.
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Weird how it gets its best mileage at a speed well above the posted speed. 
Got my best running mileage driving to Cleveland with the cruise control set at 80. Must’ve been a good tailwind, because I got 65 MPG. 
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When I drive to Minnesota via Ohio and Indiana, I also get 65 - 75 mpg. When I drive up to PA/NJ I get the 50 mpg. For me, its whether the route is flat or hilly. 
East West is pretty flat, North South takes me through the Appalachian foothills.
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I don’t know, this feels really shitty on the part of the reporter. What’s the point of recording someone committing a fairly minor traffic infraction? Sure, she gets belligerent and obnoxious, but not overly so and a good deal of that was likely exacerbated by the camera being unnecessarily present. I’m all for publicly shaming of bad actors, but this just feels like exploitative Karen hunting. We’ve seen so much bad behavior that you could fill an entire newscast with videos of assholes; this just feels icky.
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I got 60 MPG driving to the Twin Cities from Detroit (I-94. the whole way). But of course, one does not drive faster than 75 in Wisconsin, and I think that’s where I lost out. That or the damned toll booths in Chicagoland. (I have an EZ Pass now, thanks MA for having the least sucktacular terms!)
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It might take a while to get there, but it’s designed with such low air resistance that the Prius is fast and efficient.
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The cops are impressively calm, reasonable and patient with her, but I guess that’s what happens when you’re a Middle-Aged White Lady and there’s a camera present.
I share @WedgeAntilles’s reservations about the need to film and broadcast this, though. There’s something pretty questionable about our societal addiction to bite-sized helpings of outrage. What does it say about us that we have to get our dopamine reward by gloating over people’s minor acts of jerkishness? Maybe we’d be happier and better people if we could learn to curb our appetites for this particular form of smug voyeurism (and yes, I clicked the link and watched this, so I’m not claiming to be better than anyone else in this respect).
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We’re really blurring the line between outing people for the awful things they do and say and someone just having a bad day and taking things too far. Nazis, insurrectionists, people who accuse Black children of stealing phones, people who commit assault in Starbucks? Absolutely out them and prosecute when necessary, but I agree; we don’t gain anything by this.
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