What not to do when you get stopped

I yelled at a cop. Yep. His tone and approach with me from the start were way out of line.

He pulled me over because I was (unknowingly) driving on a road I was not permitted to be on with my size trailer, and he let me know it in a dozen different ways, and he'd ask me accusatorily what I was doing there, and as soon as I'd start to respond he'd cut me off as if he had no interest in finding out and as if it were irrelevant to the legality of the situation, which it were not. My frustration level rose quickly from 'severely annoyed' to far beyond until my blood was boiling and it became irrelevant to me that he was an officer of the law and I was a truck driver at his mercy; I was only aware of the fact that he was a man treating me badly, and no man gets to treat me badly. It wasn't something I thought out: really, I lost my head there for a minute. I hit my boiling point and I let him have it:  "Are you giving me a hard time?"

I don't recommend smarting off to a police officer. It's unjust but true that if I were a male driver my situation most likely would have gone from bad to far worse right then. I'm still a little surprised at what happened: First, probably a bit shocked that this little young woman stood up to him, he pointed out that he was a police officer and a DOT officer and I needed to respect him. But then he started trying to let me know that he wasn't a bad guy. He asked the young officer who had meanwhile pulled up for backup to let me know that he was a good guy. Later on in the stop, he apologized for the way he acted in the beginning and he thanked me for being cooperative. And I apologized and said I was already frustrated because I got bad directions from a customer and didn't want to be on that road in the first place.

He let me off with a warning, for which I am extremely grateful. I am also now intimately acquainted with New York State law governing truck travel. Ask me anything you want to know. Life is good.