I ruined one of the world’s greatest drives with an embarrassing mistake

The lights were flashing in the rearview mirror, as they had done for a good few kilometres. I turned to my wife in the passenger seat and said: “Do you think he’s forgotten to turn them off?”

Utah’s Highway 12 is one of the most spectacular drives on the planet. It passes through strikingly stark, epic landscapes, combining desert colours and mountain contours. It’s very easy to get wrapped up in the scenery, tootling along in awe and not paying all that much attention to the police car behind you.

Watch your speed while you’re watching the scenery in Utah.Credit: Visit Utah

The carefree joy of life on the open road, it seems, can lead to a series of poor decisions. The first was assuming the police car might just be warning of something coming up behind. Or chasing a criminal. Or just testing the lights.

It took a good 10 minutes before I realised those relentlessly flashing lights were for my attention, and that I’d probably been a bit of a naughty boy. Eventually, I pulled over, and the traffic cop came walking towards our car.

Being pulled over by the police for the first time is a strange experience. There’s a whole routine of etiquette to go through, and the inexperienced don’t know all the steps in the dance. This is particularly the case when you’re pulled over by the police outside your own country.

Illustration: Jamie Brown

Anyway, it turns out that the one thing you definitely don’t do when approached by an American policeman is try to open the car door so you can get out for an amiable chat.

“STAY WHERE YOU ARE, AND DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR, SIR” my new friend shouted. It was at this point that I remembered that American cops routinely carry guns, tasers and – probably – intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Chastised, and firmly seated, I lowered the window. The officer, showing an admirable lack of exasperation, asked the time-honoured question. “Do you know how fast you were going, sir?”

Armed police are a major cultural difference in the US, compared to those in my home country in the UK, but a perhaps more salient one at this juncture is that they use miles rather than kilometres. What’s more, if you’re using a GPS, it’s wise to switch the settings from km/h to mph (despite living in the UK, I’m more used to using GPS in Australia). Otherwise, you might end up saying something extraordinarily stupid like “about 70” when asked what speed you were doing on a 40mph road.

After an excruciating, panicked and flustered attempt to explain that I meant kilometres rather than miles, we all started doing the mental arithmetic and realised that it was still comfortably over the speed limit. Whoops.

Having your details taken by a police officer abroad is scary. You don’t quite know what it’s going to lead to. Is it a fine? A day-ruining trip to the police station? Prison? Deportation?

There was a sickening, increasingly nervous silence as the cop wrote in his notepad and the intense flapping inside my brain accelerated. Do points penalties incurred abroad go on my licence? Will this affect future visa applications? Will I be allowed to leave Utah to carry on the holiday?

After seemingly hours, the officer put down the pen, and bent down to talk to me. “Watch your speed sir,” he said. “And enjoy the rest of your vacation.”

The hapless, befuddled tourist act doesn’t always work. But it does give you a fighting chance in scenarios where, on home turf, you might not have a prayer. The downside, however, is that you might spend the rest of one of the world’s great drives cringing and wanting to gnaw your own fist in embarrassment.