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No Passing on U.S. 14
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No Passing on U.S. 14
Gus Philpott
Woodstock Advocate
March 27, 2008
If you've been reading The Woodstock Advocate for a while, you already know that I dislike speeders. I really dislike tailgaters, and I hate those who tailgate, speed AND pass over the yellow lines of a no-passing zone on a two-lane state highway!
OK, well, it happened again this afternoon, as I drove from Crystal Lake to Woodstock. The driver of the red GMC Jimmy (Illinois license 416 4417) followed me in the 50MPH zone from MCC. At Lily Pond Road there was gap in oncoming traffic, so he dodged out of the lane behind me and passed me in the no-passing zone.
And he really saved a lot of time, because he caught red lights at Doty Road, Lake Avenue and U.S. 14. Guess who stopped right behind him, without ever driving over the speed limit (which increases to 55MPH near Turning Point).
I mean, some people are just stupid.
Naturally, the thought occurred to me to call the Woodstock Police Department and ask if an officer could intercept him and stop him. But I learned about 15 months ago that, even after incredible difficulty in getting WPD to locate and cite the driver, the case was lost in traffic court due to loss of my prepared statement and the unwillingness of the prosecuting attorney for the City of Woodstock to talk to me before the case was called.
I remember cases a few years ago, when a different prosecuting attorney handled Woodstock's traffic cases. He would talk with the defendant before court and make a deal for a Guilty plea. Even when I testified, we had a 100% conviction rate. And that was a long winning streak over ten years, until the case last year.
And we would have won last year, if the case had been well-prepared and if the attorney had been at all interested in gedtting a conviction. The other driver and his passenger perjured themselves in court, and they even prepared their perjury before court with photographs of a different stretch of roadway where the driver said he had passed me.
