Cruising toward Amarillo, TX for Christmas with my wife's family. Speed limit is 75 most of the trip. It's a 12 hour drive one way, so pushing just a bit over can cut off an hour of road time. Kept it pretty close to the limit when I saw a few state troopers with folks pulled over. V1 is kindly pointing them out well in advance. After a stretch of no threats, I kick up the cruise control a couple of notches.
Came over a rise, plenty of traffic around me, and there were two AZ troopers sitting in a ditch. I was running about 82 or so at the time... V1 doesn't make a sound, but one of the troopers starts to roll. I coast down to 75 and put the V1 in the back seat.
Didn't take long for him to catch up. He sat in my blind spot for a bit before lighting me up. I pulled well off the road, opened all the windows and put the keys on the dash. Very young trooper comes up. First thing he says is, "Thanks for pulling so far off the road." Playing the police/military card, I tell him that I was a police dispatcher in the Navy and my officers hated it when drivers left their butts hanging out in traffic. He asks for license, registration and insurance. I tell him the registration and insurance are under the passenger's seat in a black owner's manual binder that kind of look like a gun case. He says, "Thanks for the head's up."
Trooper then tells me that the reason for the stop was that, when I went by him, I had something attached to the windshield. At this point, he's being super friendly, so I just tell him it was a radar detector. Figure best to keep it honest. He states that studies have shown that a device on a windshield can make an 18 wheeler invisible at some number of feet. I tell him I'd never heard that while thinking that, at its former location, the only way an 18 wheeler could hide behind the V1 was if the truck were a mile and a half away and beneath the surface of the earth if all the angles are taken into consideration. After running me through the computer and writing up a warning, he returned my documents and we were on our way.
Be warned, if you're travelling through AZ:
B. Except as otherwise provided in this section, a person shall not operate a motor vehicle with an object or material placed, displayed, installed, affixed or applied on the windshield or side or rear windows or with an object or material placed, displayed, installed, affixed or applied in or on the motor vehicle in a manner that obstructs or reduces a driver's clear view through the windshield or side or rear windows.
My feeling is that this is just a technicality used to pull people over to check them out. Once he saw the dog and the kid in the back seat, he probably wished he'd picked another car.