At 05:39 PM 01/27/2003 +1300, Peter Gutmann wrote:
That's because non-US licenses constitute automatic permission for minor
traffic law violations. The scenario is something like the following:
[Driver gets pulled over].
Driver: "Gidday mate, hows it going?"
[Cop asks for license, looks at it]
Cop: "Ahhhh, screw it, too much paperwork. Don't do it again. HAND".
The being-a-foreigner trick worked for me in Canada
(the fact that I was driving a rental car helped.)
A friend of mine back in NYC used to respond to traffic stops
by speaking German to the cops and saying things about kilometers
and the cops were generally already somewhat off-balance when dealing
with him because he's got a mechanical arm and an eye-patch.
Eventually, however, he encountered a German-speaking cop,
and the nicht-spreche-das-Englishe jig was up.
