On cops and stop sins, as a young man in Capetown a traffic cop nabbed me for not stopping, when I had slowed down my motorbike to near-standstill, and I quickly proceeded because there were no vehicles to stop for. Also, I was aware that a traffic cop going in the opposite direction had turned his motorbike around on seeing me earlier, and I was trying to avoid him checking my claptrap motorbike, which had a Bechuanaland Protectorate licence plate, in spite of me never having lived there (my father lived there), and the motorbike had never been there. I got the licence by mail without any inspection required.
The cop who was some 100 yards behind me stopped me soon after that, and he said that I did not stop at that stop sign. I said I paused. He then pointed to the stop sign, and said, in a thick Afrikaans accent, "That says S T O P, not P A W S.", and he wrote out a ticket. The road-worthiness of the bike and the illegal registration matter was not discussed, so I got off fairly lightly.
I invented the P A W S bit for comic effect, I think he said "pause", and did not spell it.
Regulations in Bechuanaland (now Botswana) were very loose in those days. There was no policing of the border, just a sign to say it was illegal to bring in liquor and guns. The sign was well peppered with bullet holes, to let the authorities know what some people though of their regulations.
