Because humor is funnier when you know it's true.
Speed demons
Some friends and I were speeding out on the country roads in South Jersey when we noticed the lights of a police car behind us. We were pulled over and told by the officer that, per his speedometer (not radar), we had been driving at 60+mph in a 50 mph zone. We couldn’t afford the cost and points of a ticket, and so we swore to the officer, with all of the fake sincerity we could muster, that we were absolutely sure we had been driving at “only 50 mph."
Our acting performance caused the young officer to doubt himself as he admitted that lately he had been questioning his speedometer’s accuracy. And so we offered to drive our car at "50 mph" and have the policeman follow us to calibrate against his speedometer. We told him we'd signal out the window when we achieved we previous 50 mph.
Of course, we actually took the car up to 60 mph before signaling to the officer. Once he saw how "far off” his speedometer was at our “50 mph” speed, he waved is on, and turned his attention to getting his speedometer “fixed.”
- John Van Orden