Riesel, Texas

Riesel, TexasMar 13, 20120 Comments

Everything stated here about Riesel being a notorious speed trap is all too true. In 30 years of safe driving both in the US and abroad, I have yet to see a scam so blatant.

My spouse (ticketless for many years—-until now) and I were headed northbound to Waco on Highway 6. My spouse was driving. It was late evening and moonless. We were the last car in a pretty evenly-spaced line of several vehicles all going 70 (we were on cruise control).

I looked up and saw the sign approaching what we now know as the fine burg of Riesel (you have to see the signage and the town to believe it) transitioning to 55 mph and had literally just opened my mouth to comment on the extreme abruptness when, to our right, I saw a patrol car turn on its lights. I thought–naively!–it was for the 18-wheeler at the head of the line, which was gradually pulling away from the rest of us. Oh—wrong, wrong, wrong.

The car got six inches off our bumper, and we stopped just over the rise he’d been sitting by. The officer came to our window; I seriously don’t think he was 20. He had a baby face, a voice that still cracks, a car that was approximately as old as he was, and he greeted us with a squeaky but stern "Going a little fast this afternoon?" Remember–it was closer to midnight, which tells you how long he’d been out there doing that very thing, and probably over and over and over on that shift alone.

It went downhill from there; the few subsequent things he said to us were straight out of CHiPS, circa 1979.

He asked for a license, which we gave him. He never bothered with our registration, our insurance, or our stickers (which told us all we needed to know about his intent). He went to his claptrap car and was back in 4 minutes flat with a $185.00 citation and no further preambles.

I think our sole mistake was being unlucky enough to be the last duck in the line…nothing more. He was ready and waiting to pick us off. I think on our handful of trips to Waco prior to this, we probably just got lucky by being in the middle of the pack instead. As others have correctly observed, there is little to no opportunity to slow down in time here, so even trying to toe the line doesn’t help drivers a bit. Meanwhile, the two of us driven literally hundreds of thousands of miles over the years without so much as a scrape, let alone a ticket. Go figure.

This really was just such an incredibly bogus charge…zero recourse, and, hello, 8 hours of defensive driving classes!–and it is such an OBVIOUS trap.

Reading the comments here has made me even crosser, but at least it’s confirmed what we felt at the time, especially since on the way back home we passed the same cop with some poor sucker pulled over in the exact same spot. Speed trap, speed trap, speed trap, of the worst kind, and so corn-pone! I kept expecting Borat to pop up.

I can promise you this, as one of the posters below noted, we’ll be taking the bypass around this place each and every time we need to go to or from Waco in the future.

Bottom line: it does not matter if you were observing the posted speed limits, or honestly trying to transition. If you have the misfortune of driving through Riesel, you’re definitely getting a ticket sooner or later.

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