You are driving down the road when suddenly those dreaded blue flashing lights appear in your rear view mirror. You may be thinking “Wait, what have I done wrong?” Once you have a chance you pull over and the officer approaches your window. Likely you are so nervous you are not sure what to say and do not know how to react to this police officer who is now speaking to you. Well as a former police officer who spend a lot of her time conducting traffic stops I am going to give you the best advice I can on how to respond to the situation.
It is likely the officer is going to ask you for driver’s license and registration first off. This is rather standard and the best thing to do is hand it to him. Once he has your information he may start to ask you questions such as if you know why you have been pulled over or what are you doing today. If you are the driver within that instant you are trying to think of the best response. So here is the thing….It depends. If you know why you have been pulled over such as you know you were speeding or you know the registration on your car has been expired for months my advice would be to be honest. Don’t get me wrong, don’t confess every single detail, but honesty is going to take you a long way. On the other hand if you really do not know or are not sure say that. Do not admit to anything you are not sure of but it is best not to bluntly lie either if you know what you did that caused the stop.
Why you ask? Good Question. There are multiple reasons. From a police officer’s point of view , the more honest you are the more likely his is willing to reduce the citation he is going to write or perhaps not even write one at all. I know in my experience I have let people off with a warning if I could tell they were being honest and as a human being I felt it was an honest mistake for which the driver was willing to admit up to. If you end up going to court because a citation was written I have found that judges are more lenient with people who are honest and respectful. On that note it is always better to be respectful to the officer who pulled you over despite how you may feel at the time because many times when deciding how to rule a judge will ask the officer how the driver acted when he/she was pulled over. The phrase we have all heard “you can attract more bees with honey than vinegar” applies in this instance. I say do not say too much when you are pulled over because if you do not know why you have been pulled over than don’t start rambling off things you might have been pulled over for. Just say you don’t know.
