I am not a policeman, but I do have experience where I'm pretty sure one saved my life.

I used to live in New Hampshire, and drive to Boston a right. I would always know when policemen had speed traps. I would find myself thinking about police for no good reason. I'd slow down, and up ahead there would be a speed trap, an officer with a radar gun or someone one on the side, obviously looking for speeders. When I decided I didn't want to slow down, I would get boxed in. There was only one time in the two years I lived there than I didn't slow down and didn't get boxed in, and that time there was a speed trap on the opposite side of the freeway.

I moved to California after my time in New Hampshire, I moved to San Jose California. I was driving out Highway 101 from San Francisco to San Jose late one night. I was pretty down. The stretch of road I was on had a 50 mph speed limit, but I was going between 65 and 70. The stretch of road went down, snaked to the right and went under an overpass at the same time it snaked back to the left and then went up again. It dark in that area.

As I approached that area, I noticed I was thinking about police. I knew that CA didn't fund radar equipment at that time, so I thought it was weird to be thinking of police. All of the sudden I was overcome with the idea that I could die that night. My immediate, intense and visceral reaction was "NO!!!" Within a minute I saw a policeman come up on me from behind. I was in the inside of the two lanes. He pulled in front of me, and I was pretty sure I was caught fair and square. He was slowing down, but made no effort to pull me over. When he got down to about 25 MPH, he put on his lights. However, he made no effort to pull me over. At about that point we went around the spot where the road snaked to the right as it went down. It then wound to the left. At that point the officer was down to about 5 MPH. I looked in his headlights, and there, stopped squarely across the inside travel lane (the one I was in) was a dark colored station wagon. It had no lgihts on whatsoever. I would have been moving too fast when it came into view to stop in time.

He waved me around the car and I continued on home, unhurt.

Kee Robinson