Bad Experience being Pulled Over

Coincide · 07-08-2025 08:50AM #1

Driving nearly 7 years and just had a terrible experience with being pulled over.

Wont go into too many of the details but I was pulled over for little to no reason, harassed and accused of everything under the sun.

He proceeded to tell me that "obviously" I was on my phone and weaving all over the road which wasn't true as I knew very well he was behind me.

He was extremely aggressive and gave me no time to speak and then at the end he said he was doing me a favor letting me off.

Has me completely shook up tbh, the twat wasn't doing me any favor. He was on a complete power trip making up absolute bullshit in order to intimidate me.

Want to report his behavior because I done nothing other than the crime of driving to my own house yet this c*nt thinks his pathetic existence earned him the right to intimidate and threaten people.

I seen him write down my reg so now I'm concerned he will continue to harass me because we live in a very small town. Makes me not want to drive in case he wants to **** with me again.

Anyone have an similar experiences?

Have been pulled over once before and been threw many checkpoints and all of those where very pleasant experiences. No intimidation just well mannered kind people.

Im really annoyed about this because I just know I'm going to be on edge all the time now.

User1998 · 07-08-2025 09:14AM

You could go to the station and complain but its unlikely to amount to anything

Coincide · 07-08-2025 09:16AM

Yeah thought about that but not going to bother this time.

I have a funny feeling based on his extremely pathetic behavior that this guy will pull me over next time he sees me so if he does then I'm going to go in to complain

mr j tayto · 07-08-2025 09:18AM

By any chance did this happen in county Kildare?

If you feel aggrieved, you could make a report to the garda ombudsman.

Coincide · 07-08-2025 09:20AM

It did.

Im going to let it go this time but if it happens again ill do something about it.

Mainly posted because I feel like I needed.to vent and just wanted to see if anyone else had similar experiences.

893bet · 07-08-2025 09:22AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123702909#Comment_123702909

Give him no reason to pull you over and you be fine. He will have it forgotten already; given he let you go I assume you were relatively respectful which means he won’t remember you.

Be grand. Literally worst case scenario is they catch you on your phone. You get three points and move on with your life. That’s the worse case scenario! Move on and don’t waste any more mental time on it.

BlakeS94 · 07-08-2025 09:22AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123702915#Comment_123702915

Don't let it go, go and make your complaint.

I had a bad experience being pulled over by a snotty guard a couple years ago, I was speeding though 🤷‍♂️

JVince · 07-08-2025 09:30AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123702912#Comment_123702912

They'll say it s not in their remit.

Best way to have something on record is to write (not emial) to the Chief Supt in the area. For Kildare its Chief Supt Michael Buckley, Naas Garda Station.

Keep the letter polite, short and to the point. Date, time and brief description of the encounter.

You will get a standard reply, but you can be sure it will be noted

If you wish you can add a separate longer description giving more substantive details, but the main letter must be on one page, good spacing and easy to read.

steinbock123 · 07-08-2025 09:35AM

Some Gardai get out of the bed on the wrong side, some more often than others.

TerrieBootson · 07-08-2025 09:39AM

I've been driving 40+ years and never been pulled over. Gardai don't do it for the craic. What do you think triggered him? What do you drive? Is it modded etc? Did your car's previous owner use it in a bank robbery?

Coincide · 07-08-2025 09:47AM

He pulled me over because I stopped just at the exit of a roundabout. What he didn't acknowledge was I stopped because there was a van with flashing lights signalling a wide load approaching.

The Van driver signalled for me to wait until the wide load passed because it was a narrow road so if I proceeded further we would have both been stuck.

The garda insisted I stopped to go on my phone and then insisted I was weaving when I started moving again. Both of which are untrue.

He never acknowledged my explanation for being stopped but he would have had to be blind not to see the massive truck taking up two lanes that passed him.

Then again this guy was clearly low on the IQ front so I could see him being that stupid.

I've no problem being pulled over if they have a question or want an explanation but this guy's approach was to accuse me of a million things at once and barely let me get a word in to explain what was already obvious to any competent driver.

He got out of his car with the intention of intimidating me.

He did also make comments about my car and asking me what I do to own it which I told him but tbh that is really none of his business.

He really had the attitude of someone who thinks he actually has the power to do what he wants and to whoever he wants.

I was nice to him albeit flustered by his approach. Only gave him a bit of cheek when he said he was doing me a favor when he so clearly wasn't. Not going to take **** from someone with no respect for other people

GPoint · 07-08-2025 10:06AM

Dashcam with a microphone is a must these days it seems

coolbeans · 07-08-2025 10:11AM

There's a lot of corruption, poor practice and apathy in AGS that's never really been addressed adequately. I'd leave it alone and get on with your life. You don't want to get on the wrong side of them.

Royale with Cheese · 07-08-2025 10:19AM

I got pulled over once for a running a red light a few years back, what had actually happened was I'd entered the junction just as the light turned yellow (and I mean just) and it was a two lane junction turning right. I was in the inside lane and on the outside lane was a large truck that turned in and cut across my lane so I had to stop in the middle of the junction and wait for it to go through, it cleared just in time for a guard to see me drive through and decided I'd just ran the light. I explained this to him and he had no interest, I wouldn't say he was an arsehole but a bit abrasive and definitely had decided his initial interpretation of things was fact and there was no point talking to him about it.

Thankfully my car has a built in dashcam, I pulled up the footage and made him watch and after some initial messing around claiming I'd entered the junction long after the light turned yellow I just rewound and made him watch it again to prove he was wrong. Eventually he reluctantly backed down and "let me off with a warning" or some bullshít like that and I never heard about it again (though I immediately went home and backed up the dashcam footage as I was half expecting something in the post about it 6 months later).

Dashcams ftw.

mr j tayto · 07-08-2025 10:21AM

Reporting it to the ombudsman will get their attention. However they "may" have a problem identifying him and the whole process is time consuming as well as very frustrating. but at least you'll have it on the record if you ever cross paths with him again.

Coincide · 07-08-2025 10:25AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123703098#Comment_123703098

Yeah like some of them are fine but with some of them there is just no arguing with their twisted version of events.

Lie they think they are gods gift to earth and can never be wrong.

The funny one with mine was the wide load also had to pass him so not sure how he could be so stupid as to need an explanation of why I was stopped.

Considering it was so obvious to anyone with a brain I'd be inclined to think he just wanted to **** with someone and I was lucky enough to have the displeasure of that being me.

If I was to a hazard a guess this guy must intimidate people on a regular basis because let's say I was stopped for no reason that's still not a valid excuse to rock up to my window all aggressive and accuse me of about 15 different things in the space of 30 seconds

Comhrá · 07-08-2025 11:19AM

I got pulled over for going through a very late amber light a few years back in Limerick City centre and I didn't spot the Garda car nearby.

He gave me a proper earful, insisting the light was gone to red, which I didn't dispute. He didn't give me a fine though, for which I was

grateful, but I did learn the lesson and I always stop on amber now unless it's safer to proceed.

Sometimes you're better off to take your beating and learn from it, even if you feel a bit hard-done-by at the time.

thebiglad · 07-08-2025 11:23AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123703285#Comment_123703285

An amber light is the same as red effectively apart from you can proceed through it if stopping would be unsafe.

Bogey Lowenstein · 07-08-2025 12:35PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058421416/bad-experience-being-pulled-over

Was the guard alone or did he have a colleague with him?

Coincide · 07-08-2025 12:48PM

He was alone.

Banzai600 · 07-08-2025 01:04PM

@ OP - report this in your local station or another, regardless of what you think may / may not happen down the road. if you dont, you have less comeback - to then say you think the cop may target you specifically in the future ?, thats an issue. ppl might say you are being overreactive, but if you have that doubt………

im not one for garda bashing, but this seems to be coming more of an issue….

i know of one recent, friend of a friend, being pulled over, they were in the wrong, a steady 16 kms appx over speed limit on empty motorway, and the cop went ballistic - he has it all on camera - audio anyway, he wont share but i believe the cop absolutely lost his sh1t. he didnt deny or was being agro with the cop, but it went completely sideways, said the cop went into a fit of complete rage ?

i was pulled in for tax check on the motorbike while scrotes armed with knives and sh1t whiz by in the city centre on stolen motorbikes / scooters, cops turn a blind eye to that, every day. legit bikers being hammered while stolen motorbikes parade around the city / suburbs with impunity - armed thieves. NOTHING is done. its even known now in biking circles around europe how bad its gotten here. Ive been through a lot of speed check points and breath tests etc without issue over the years, but things have changed.

ive been on the butt end of an unhinged cop, but i followed it up, he got a slap on the wrist. i wont go into detail but he was totally ott. i had a witness and also another standing beside him if needed. if he had no uniform id of clocked him on the spot, he was an instigator fanning the flames.

if you get pulled in record the audio / leave your camera etc running. it'll be your word against theirs otherwise. Yes, its came to that now, an indictment of where we are.

Henry Ford III · 07-08-2025 02:03PM

Ignore this.

fatbhoy · 07-08-2025 02:09PM

WGAF 🙄

Coincide · 07-08-2025 02:17PM

Already explained why he did. It was for stopping at the exit of a roundabout. But I had to stop as there was on oncoming wide load so there was no room to pass.

The Van with flashing light that drives in front of the wide load literally instructed me to stop. Had I kept going the wide load wouldn't have been able to pass.

I did the right thing and when I explained that to him he just ignored my reasoning and started to accuse me of different things.

Clearly if I done anything wrong I'd have got a ticket and I didn't so he was just being purposely obtuse to abuse his power.

cheekypup · 07-08-2025 02:19PM

Hi OP, I reckon he understood your explanation and just didn't want to admit he was wrong. He made up all that nonsense(on the phone, weaving, etc) as a defensive mechanism.

If it was me I wouldn't bother reporting him, you did nothing wrong and your conscience is clear. I'm sure the next person he came across and wasn't as polite as you had the book thrown at him and you'll be forgotten about.

You probably feel better now, getting it off your chest, so just enjoy the rest of your day.

Coincide · 07-08-2025 02:22PM

Cheers man. Yeah when **** like this happens a bit of venting usually does help tbh

Have to say this was my first ever bad experience with a guard. Any other time they've been friendly and might ask you a question or something but the way he went about it was just all wrong.

StupidLikeAFox · 07-08-2025 02:30PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123703001#Comment_123703001

What comments did he make about your car?

07-08-2025 02:31PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123702952#Comment_123702952

A friend had just bought a car second hand. Car wasn't taxed but was stopped for speeding which my friend says he wasn't. Similar type of guard.

Didn't get a ticket for anything but the friend is slow to let things lie.

Took the guards name ,asked for and got his superintendent name and station.

Wrote A letter to the superintendent.

Got a phone call from the super a few days later ' apologising for the incident.

Kimbot · 07-08-2025 02:35PM

Guards are human too, they have off days…..

I have experienced a few in my 20+ years of driving, had guards pull me in one day accusing me of been on the phone when I was actually holding my ear cos I was in pain with an infection, after a few minutes of him ranting I just said to him "Guard, both my phones are in the glove compartment there so your more than welcome to look through them for any evidence of usage" (this was prior to smart phones) he had a look and when I explained about the ear infection he was more than apologetic and his tone changed. Never held it against him as I could understand he genuinly thought I was on the phone, met him a few times after at checkpoints and that and he was really sound.

Just move on from it OP, he noted you reg down as he would put it in a report that he pulled in a car etc so its not to get you at a later date its just so his records will line up if ever asked what he did on his shift.

koutoubia · 07-08-2025 02:44PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123703052#Comment_123703052

Both forward facing and driver facing.

A video of you not holding a phone should sort any 'confusion' out fairly quickly.

Of course if you did have a phone in your hand the driver facing dashcam doesnt exist!

User1998 · 07-08-2025 03:02PM

I’ve been pulled over a few times for genuinely no reason. Once in Crumlin because its “an area known for drugs”, and once in Finglas because “there has been a lot of gang violence lately”. Both times I and the car were searched. Absolute joke tbh.

Bad Experience being Pulled Over

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