When the policeman is passenger...

As we saddled up in the Chronicle parking lot, I held out my hand and was surprised to see it wasn’t visibly shaking, since I’d been nervous about it for days.

Then I drove my van maybe 15 feet, and Kienlen said, “here’s your first violation.”

I hollered in disbelief, “No! We haven’t even left the parking lot!” I’d stopped before entering the roadway, which is good, but after rolling entirely onto the sidewalk, which is bad. He patiently explained, over my salty venting, that when you stop before the sidewalk, “you don’t cream pedestrians.”

With that ridiculous start, we hit the road. I soon learned jaywalking isn’t a violation, but you also can’t amble across the street in front of a driver, like one lady did to me. “That’s a violation,” Kienlen said, in what would become a common refrain. That one’s called impeding traffic.

Within three minutes, I had my second violation: Not signaling a turn soon enough. It’s supposed to be 100 feet prior, I was probably 30. Kienlen generously gave it 50. “You got halfway there,” he said.

I insisted that I actually obeyed all traffic laws, to which he replied, “the ones that you remember. And that’s the way most people are. They think they’re driving by the letter of the law, but the problem is they don’t know what most of the laws are.”

Then he said, “there’s another one.” I was alarmed, but he said, “No, not you. That guy was on his cell phone.”

Those are the drivers who get most of Kienlen’s attention. He said officers constantly see violations, but he’s focused on the ones most likely to cause accidents or injury: Cell phone use, speeding, improper lane use, and no seat belt use.

He’s found a big trend of teen drivers not using seat belts, which surprises him. That is also the demographic he’s unlikely to just give a warning to. If they’re speeding, running a stop sign, on a cell phone, or not wearing a seat belt, “they’re getting a citation because they’re at the point where they need to learn this now. The top cause of death for teens between the ages of 15 and 19 is car crashes.”

People also constantly create their own turn lane on the one-way streets downtown, pulling in where the curb is painted yellow. That’s improper lane usage. They also constantly turn into the far lane on the one-ways, when they should turn into the near lane.

But what’s surprising is what isn’t illegal: changing lanes in an intersection. It’s discouraged in driving school and the driving manual as not being a safe practice, but there’s no law against it, he said.

At one point, I speculated that I might be driving better because he was sitting there, to which Kienlen replied, “except you’re speeding again. You’re doing 27 in a 20.”

I pointed out the 25 mph sign a ways ahead. He explained the speed limit takes effect at the point of the sign, not when you first spy it from a distance.

So, I slowed down, to below the speed limit. Turns out he pulls people over all the time for that too, which is called impeding traffic.

There are plenty of places where driver’s speed, but on West Sixth between Webber and Hostetler, for some reason people go well under the limit, which is 35 mph and 40 mph. It’s wide and almost bone-straight, but sure enough, I got stuck behind a driver going under 30.

Eleven minutes into our ride, at a four-way stop, he noted what was by then my fourth violation: “You just rolled that stop sign.”

I protested. He spelled it out for me. “Stop means no more movement.”

I let loose the famous line from the movie ‘Clueless’: “I totally paused.”

He said, “Most people, when they come to intersections, if there’s nobody else there, that stop sign turns into a suggestion.”

As I sped along East Scenic Drive, Kienlen said being a passenger in a civilian car was “more relaxing. It gives me the opportunity to just observe and see a lot of things that I don’t necessarily see when I’m behind the wheel.”

I carp about how I’ve noticed in recent years that people stop well before a stop sign at an intersection. He’s seen it too, but figured it was because he was in a patrol car.

Often, he can be the last person to pull up to a four-way stop, “and they’ll just stare at me. No one will go.” They wave for him to go, but he won’t, reasoning, “You were here like five seconds before I even showed up.”

We pull into a parking lot, where I learn that many, if not most, license plates — including my own — are in violation of law. License plate frames commonly, and improperly, obscure the state name on the plate, and can also obscure tabs. Mine did both. It’s a $115 ticket.

“I could stop cars for that all day long,” he said. It’s also a violation to have a plastic cover on a plate.

I did one better on the car tab situation. I told Kienlen that years ago —turns out it was 2007, he looked — I accidentally put the year tab over the month tab on my front plate. He said when he sees that, it’s usually an elderly driver, and he sees it as a sign they maybe shouldn’t be driving anymore.

“If they can’t figure out where the year sticker goes, do they need to be operating a motor vehicle?” he said.

I said, “You get that I just told you I did that myself.”

“I know.”

We left it at that.

Kienlen said people can get upset or even offended when they get pulled over for violations but when someone is stopped for one, a lot of times it’s because police are looking for bigger problems, like arrest warrants, suspended licenses, drunk driving, or drugs.

If no problems are found, they’re usually sent on their way — the department gives more warnings than tickets, he said. And as for minor violations, he can’t think of even 10 times in his 23-year career where someone got a ticket.

I have a habit of pulling right up to a crosswalk. My family thinks I roll into it. At one such intersection, Kienlen hopped out to take a picture to see who’s right. I gloated when the image vindicated me.

Except at an intersection a few minutes later, he said I was probably in the crosswalk. I rolled on before he could gather photographic proof.

Then I headed down Brewery Grade from Ninth, where Kienlen noted that I failed to signal the “turn,” which doesn’t feel like a turn.

I said, “nooobody signals that turn.”

“I do,” he replied.

In the roundabout, I didn’t signal when I entered, but did when I left. I was correct, but it was no thanks to Kienlen, who kept mum on what to do when I asked for advice. “I’ll just tell you if you screw it up.”

Toward the end of our ride-along, I asked him if I’d make a good Uber driver. “Hmmm,” he pondered. Then, to my relief, he decided, “We’ve driven around for an hour, I’m still in one piece, there’s no damage to the car and you haven’t gotten pulled over. And I haven’t seen you do anything really dangerous. So, yeah.”

Of course, a few minutes later, a half block from the Chronicle office, I would commit my final violation. By then they had become so commonplace that Kienlen just worked it into the conversation.

He was talking about how, frankly, there are a lot of violations he wasn’t necessarily aware of himself until he became traffic officer — “like you just running that yellow light.”