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111 mph: Brevard Deputy of the Year avoids arrest under Florida ‘Super Speeder’ law
(www.clickorlando.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2026
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Somehow read this that he avoided arrest because of the “Super Speeder” law. Like if you speed fast enough, it’s so impressive, they let you out of the ticket. Didn’t realize this was NOTtheonion. Made for an interesting interpretation on my first read.
That’s exactly how my brain read the headline.
So once upon a time, a long long time ago (well past all applicable statutes of limitation) I noticed a pattern when people would get pulled over for speeding. If they were speeding a little, it was a speed trap and the cop was there to write tickets, it would take a whole lot of charm and luck to get let off in that situation.
If they were speeding a lot, like a whole lot, they'd get pulled over by officers who were more interested in where they were going in such a hurry rather than handing out tickets. Having established that the driver isn't fleeing the scene of a crime or something like that, they'd generally be let off with a warning - often just a verbal warning, but even sometimes a written warning on the official forms.
Is that really why they ask where you’re going? Like coincidentally they think they are also going to solve some massive crime? Like “I’m in a rush to get to my drug deal! Oops.”
I've had luck with "I really really need to go to the bathroom!"
Before I was old enough to drive, I once was riding with a friend who'd recently gotten food poisoning and who really needed a restroom. He was speeding to get there and, when he got pulled over, told the officer so.
I don't remember the exact words, but after issuing the ticket, the policeman basically said "just pull over and shit on the side of the road if you need to."
Hey it was worth a shot. I'd ignore that advice because the next cop will brand you a sex offender for it.
As far as I'm aware that depends on the state; few states have the "peeing in public = sex offender" laws. Mine certainly doesn't.
Not aware of a "pooping in public = sex offender" law, but they might be covered under the same statute in the states that take issue with it.
If it were me, I'd respond: "Okay, I'll follow you to the nearest public bathroom, but you're still getting the citation."
Someone pulled that on me once, but I saw them pass a few public bathrooms as they cut around a line of cars in traffic to get to the turn lane a bit faster by going down the wrong way of the roadway, so they were obviously lying.
You might have more luck with your lie among lazier/less discerning/dumber cops, it's true.
- Ex-cop
Oh, I wasn't lying.
Fair enough, it looked like you were implying it was a trick you're passing on to others.
Obviously it doesn't matter either way and I can't prove or disprove what you're claiming now.
Yeah I'm suggesting they say that if needed, but lie convincingly.
Right, and I'm suggesting it's one of the older tricks in the book that only dumb/lazy cops would fall for.
But how would they know if someone just did the same stuff but was lying
They wouldn't need to know, as I described above.
The thing is, smarter people think better than to speed while carrying a body or a kilo of cocaine in the trunk, but smarter people tend not to commit crime as often, on average.
So as much as it makes no sense to you, it does when you factor in common criminals. Supervisors monitoring your KPIs don't care if the arrest was made on a dumb person or a smart person.
- Ex-cop
Well, I think the first clue is when they put their lights on and tell you to pull over, if you don't then they have reason to call in the cavalry and "maintain order and justice in the land" by forcing you to stop, comply, lie face down while they cuff you first and ask questions later.
If you play nice (darn) then they ask the questions politely first and look for "tells" - you know: blood dripping from the trunk, piles of loose cash in the floorboards, a dark complexion (driving while black) - all the "usual suspects'" signs - probable cause. A remarkable percentage of actual criminals are not stone cold liars who are able to cooly answer the questions and act like nothing unusual is going on.
You're basically talking about the difference between traffic cops and regular patrol.
More pedantically, it's "Traffic enforcement unit cops" or "Cops who went out of their way to take a speed measurement certification course and get issued the equipment and thus are expected to use them or lose them" vs. "Cops who didn't."
As you can imagine, the latter doesn't care nearly as much about traffic enforcement.
- Ex-cop
Ironically enough, I am pretty sure I got let off by traffic enforcement units a couple of times when I was far enough over to qualify for "the expensive ticket", but very rarely when it was just 12-15 mph over. Also, even though I tend to drive about 9 over most of the time, I seem to get an awful lot of tickets for 15 over - where the fine takes a bump up... Their word against mine...
In my area (HCSO, PCPD) you could tell by their boots: jackboots = traffic enforcement.
Of course there's also FHP, who are basically an entire agency of only traffic enforcement.
I'd recommend getting a dash cam and your speedometer calibrated, just in case you got a wheel resize or gear configuration change that made your speedometer inaccurate. We were required to calibrate our patrol cars every year if we used it to measure speed, but there is zero such requirement for random motorists. I think the LIDAR and RADAR guns were yearly too, but I never applied for the class required to use one so I'm not sure.
I "calibrate" my speedos vs GPS every so often, they're reasonably close (+/- 2mph at 70).
I waffle about the dash cam, of course I'll want it after something happens and I don't have it, but on the other hand I also hate the thought of a protracted court fight for what?
There are tons of nightmare scenarios you can avoid by having a dashcam including the police lying about something you did while driving, which could lead to all sorts of awful things for you.
For $50, it's a no-brainer to me.
Yeah, and I've faced a couple of those potential nightmares... unfortunately, my experience has been: the cops act a lot worse when you have "anti-cop tech" visible in your car, for instance I got the most bogus speeding ticket of all time when a radar detector was visible. Times I've been "at their mercy" where they could plant anything, claim anything, do anything, no witnesses around just me and them, they've always been more decent - almost never wrote anything up, just waved me on about my business after the stop.
For awhile, I ran around with 10 old registrations in the trunk but "couldn't find" the most recent one, even though the sticker on the tag was updated. I must have gotten 3 written warnings for "no valid registration" when I thought I was going to get a speeding ticket. They got a free look inside my trunk, got to write something up, and didn't have to hit me with a speeding fine. It's far from ideal, in the ideal world everything is on audio/video record and we base everything on the actual truth, but cops being human (and subject to human pettiness) sometimes having that record just makes them want to show you everything they can do to you without you being able to effectively fight back - including dragging your ass in to court for no reason whatsoever, they don't even bother to show - or maybe they do and they lie when they get there and they know (and in some towns are related to) the judge... If they know they have nothing of substance to present in court (like that radar detector cop) they just don't show up.
A radar detector is very different from a dash cam, including in law depending on your area.
I think you're just doing mental gymnastics to make a reason for not getting one. Just be honest with yourself and say "I don't feel like it."
It reminds me of the people who point out that seat-belts trap people in cars so they won't wear a seat-belt. They don't think rationally about the very remote odds of that, they just latch on to it as an excuse to do what they were already going to do.
Agree to disagree. I have all kinds of tech from GoPros with mounts for the car to phone holder that can make my phone serve as a dashcam in 5 seconds flat. I also have several exterior facing cameras around our home, and the software ready to switch on and archive all the footage, and multiple 2TB drives laying around doing nothing at the moment. If I wanted to record looping video at the house I easily could - and do what with it? Fight in court. Do you enjoy fighting in court? I don't. I'd rather not do things that encourage fighting in court, and so I don't record the video. It's a deliberate choice - maybe "I don't feel like it" - but not because I can't push a button on Amazon and get one delivered.
I'm not saying I like going to court. I'm saying losing in court is worse than winning in court.
Staying out of court is the real win.
You seem to think that's more likely without a dash cam. I don't.
I agree to disagree - most times I have ended up in court I could have made choices to stay out, on balance I feel that even when I have won in court by preparing and going I still lost overall and so, most times those were bad decisions to go, fight and win.
Sounds like you've had unusual experiences with the courts. I can't force you to base your opinion off of more typical experiences, in large part because you haven't lived other people's lives (or looked into their court cases).
Back to my metaphor, if a seat-belt trapped me in my car, I wouldn't decide that must be normal and I should never wear a seat-belt again.
I agree about seatbelts - though if I lived 3 or 4 near-death experiences where seat belts made my outcome worse instead of better, I'd probably say to hell with the odds...
I know a lot of people who have spent time in the court system, other than ambulance chaser backed situations, I don't know many happy with the outcomes.
I'm not saying you don't have cause to be a bit silly about this, I'm just trying to get you to realize you're being a bit silly about this.
Not only the courts, I find many areas of life where "right and wrong" are best treated as a sort of ideal, aspirational thing, not something to invest a lot of energy in upholding - if you're interested in overall quality of life. Especially when dealing with our (disabled) children and the school system, but also medical malpractice and other situations, there are fights we could have taken to court, fought hard - at great personal expense not only of legal fees but also time and emotional energy - and won the court case, but lost overall in terms of achieving the things we really cared about - that time and money was put to much more productive and life enhancing uses than "making a stand and proving the injustice." You can argue that we "shirked our duty to society" by allowing the injustices to continue, I argue that society shirked its duty to itself by making tthe injusticies so individually costly to expose and correct.
I don't know what to tell you other than that we live in a brutal, unfair universe and are forced to do our best.
The only thing worse than having courts (which by nature of being comprised of human beings, often get things wrong) is not having courts.
I agree to that, 100% - they do make life overall better by their existence. Where I disagree is: they don't usually make individuals' lives better by participation in them. There's a certain "civic duty" aspect to participation in the system, but I strongly believe that taking cases to court, and winning the trial decision, but failing to make a real difference to society going forward - failing to ensure that the injustice will happen less in the future - is just a waste of time and irresponsible enrichment of lawyers.
I guess you may not know that court can still levy judgements against you ex-parte (generally, civil), or just put a warrant out for you to force you to come (generally, criminal).
"I don't want to go to court" is like saying "I don't want to pay taxes." The government doesn't really care if you want to do it or not.
Yes, not putting your matches next to your lighter fluid is a great idea (we should focus on "making a real difference" to prevent needing court), but you still need fire hoses for when you get unlucky and you have to fix a problem outside of your control (court).
But that's all just fluff if you think that cops seeing a dash cam will make them want to take you to court. I really think that's an incredibly rare cop that feels that way, and you seem to really think that's very common; I suspect if I polled a hundred cops I'd get roughly 0 that feel that way, but you'd probably insist those were an unusual 100 cops, or the ones in your area are different. I can't reason you out of a position you didn't reason yourself into.
Of course all those things are true, which is why you generally want to live your life in such a way that doesn't get you dragged into court by others, either.
However - should you ever consider dragging anyone else into court and getting a civil monetary judgement against them, you may also want to consider that an awful lot of the type of people who go around doing things that would make such a judgement relatively easy to obtain, also live their lives in such a way that collecting any actual money from such judgements is exceptionally difficult. Again, making court a waste of time and energy.
You're missing a subtlety here... cops don't take you to court, they send you (or your lawyer) to court. Rub a cop wrong and they give you a bogus citation which all they have to do is get a tsk tsk about not showing up to court for, but you either A) pay the citation, or B) pay a lawyer to show up to court to fight the citation for you, or C) spend your time and effort going to court yourself to fight it. Option B being more expensive than option A and option C being most expensive of all if you value your time in the least.
Well, I've been around since the 60s, and interacted with a few cops over the years, and most of them have been pretty great people on the whole, the vast majority I'd say, on duty and off. Still, I have interacted with several who did get petty and vindictive and have been tweaked by signs of "anti-cop-paraphernalia" in one's possession, and I suppose when you offset those against all the "good cops" I have interacted with, I get that feeling that "anti-cop-paraphernalia" really does piss them off. All the online videos of cops in the 2000-2020 era trying to beat up people filming them with cell phones doesn't help either.
Likewise.
"Only poor people commit crime or injure others."
Nope.
You start off by puffing out your chest in an attempt at pedantry and then just use synonyms in this context. Besides, literally none of that contradicts anything I've said and just largely ignores it.
Neat anecdotes, but nobody should be convinced by anecdotes.
For the dozenth time, you are generalizing from a very small data set and acting like that makes you wiser; it doesn't.
See if this makes sense to you:
"I crossed the street and stubbed my toe, therefore crossing the street results in stubbed toes, so I don't leave my house any more."
You don’t have to be poor, you just have to have your assets legally protected from seizure via civil judgement. Cross the wrong line in the woods and a wildlife officer can confiscate your boat and the truck and trailer you brought it in on. Do all kinds of terrible things ending up in judgements of virtually any amount, and if your primary residence is a million dollar mansion, the courts can’t touch it. I rented a room in a very nice compound while at University, paid $400 per month to the landlord who lived in “the big house” - turns out they only still had the house because it was protected under law from seizure - dad was in jail for fencing stolen cars, my rent, and the two women who rented the tennis cabana… free and clear to the family.
Life’s a bitch, and then you die. Your superior data set, you got provenance on that data? You trust it implicitly beyond your personal experiences? That’s a comfortable place to live, until it isn’t. My parents both taught science for 40+ years at various levels. They quit counting the number of times that “facts” they had been taught were overturned by newer, better, more solid findings - after less than 10 years of teaching. That’s the nature of science, and life. Data surrounding public safety officers has been, in my personal life experience, of wildly varying quality but almost always slanted in the direction of improving trust in our sworn officers of the law - improving it beyond what it actually merits.