Secret of the century: It's okay to pass a cop.

I'm tooling along, doing 55 in a 55 on a 4 lane highway. Well in the left lane is a cop. I'm catching him pretty quick. That's pretty unusual. Cops around here normally do the speed limit. I decide to slow down and take in the situation. So now I'm doing 50.

I look at his car and see no lights or even turn signals. The cop is looking straight ahead. I look around and see nothing out of the ordinary. I wait another few seconds, and then gun it. Back up to 55. As I start to pass him he speeds up and pulls even with me.

I can see out of the corner of my eye that he is looking me over. Probably thinking what crackhead passes a cop? A crackhead that wants to do the speed limit. I just keep doing what I normally do: look straight ahead and do 55 in the 55.

We hit a red light. It has been red for quite awhile, not a situation where I could have had it green if I had been doing the speed limit. (More on that some other time.) The cop is in the left lane, there's a guy in front of me in the right. The light turns green the cop takes off, then the guy in front takes off. And we ever so slowly get it up to 50. It's like that for about two miles. Slowpoke on the right has his front bumper about half car length behind slowpoke cop's back bumper. Meaning there's now way for me to safely pass them.

Police officers are just like everybody else. They are required to follow the law and do the speed limit while not on a call. If one is doing five, ten, or fifteen below pass him. As long as the law is on your side. I'm not going to get into a what if scenario about getting pulled over. This rant is getting long.

Would I pass a cop doing 50 in the 55 on a two lane road? No of course not. Five miles per hour isn't worth it. Ten or fifteen? I would think long and hard about it. Probably would.

The cop I was talking about earlier does a u-turn and speeds back the other way. I don't pass the slowpoke in front of me, because a block later I have to make my turn.