‘I Have A Question’: Cop Gives Mustang Driver Ticket For Suspicious Modification. Then She Asks Him To Prove It
"She took my ticket to the judge."
An Oklahoma driver pulled over for a modified exhaust on her 2013 Mustang GT recorded the entire roadside exchange after the officer wrote her two tickets for “defective equipment” and a modified exhaust without going under the car. When she asked how he knew the exhaust was modified without inspecting it or measuring the noise, the officer told her he could tell “by the decibels that it’s displaying” and by “my observation and experience.”
According to the creator, a court dismissed both tickets. The video has drawn more than 222,000 views.
Cheyanne (@tcheyanne), an Oklahoma-based Mustang owner whose channel mixes car content with assorted moments from her life, posted a follow-up the next day, replying to a commenter who asked outright whether her exhaust was modified. In the follow up she apparently admits, with a wink, that the exhaust is in fact modified. The follow up has racked up roughly 10,000 views.
What Happened When Mustang Driver Got Pulled Over?
The video opens with the officer reading out the tickets. “One for defective equipment and one for a legally modified exhaust,” he says. Cheyanne interrupts him to ask, “On the modified exhaust, how do you know that it’s modified without getting underneath the vehicle?”
“You don’t have to,” the officer says.
“But you do have to,” Cheyanne replies.
“By the decibels that it’s displaying, it is loud,” the officer counters.
Cheyanne pushes: “Do you have the decibel thing that shows?” The officer falls back on his judgment: “I can tell you by my observation and my experience, this exhaust is…”
Cheyanne interrupts. “Loud to me, sir?”
“It’s not loud to you.”
“Listen, I’m telling you…”
“No, I’m asking for the equipment to be ran right now.”
The officer refuses, tells her to argue it in court, and walks off. Cheyanne signs off with: “Have a wonderful night, you [expletive].”
What Does Oklahoma Law Say About Modified Exhausts?
The rhetorical move worked, but there’s more to the officer’s argument than Cheyanne’s response might suggest.
Oklahoma’s muffler statute prohibits exhaust modifications that “amplify or increase the noise emitted beyond the manufacturer’s original design” and does not set a specific decibel threshold.
Enforcement, as World Law Digest’s explainer puts it, “relies on officer discretion regarding whether noise constitutes a disturbance.” There is no requirement that the officer carry a sound meter, and there is no legal standard against which a meter reading would be compared.
That leaves the cop’s case resting on his testimony alone. Useful, but not strong. Commenter zsx720 identified himself as a professional audio engineer. He flagged the standard defense angle if a meter ever does come out: police-issued decibel meters need to be calibrated on a fixed schedule, used on the “C” weighting setting, and operated by someone trained on the device. If the officer can’t articulate that they were, “it’ll get thrown out.”
A handful of other commenters with their own modified-exhaust traffic stops described the same dynamic. “My husband got pulled over for a modified exhaust,” wrote Melissa Randol. “He told the officer you might want to look under the truck because you will be surprised. The officer crawled under it, looked, got back up there, and was pissed he didn’t have anything to write a ticket over.”
A 1971 Chevelle owner described a stop where the officer’s meter actually said the officer’s own car was louder than his. The pattern is consistent: without measurement or a physical inspection, subjective assessments of loudness might not hold up in court.
What Happened In Court?
Cheyanne’s account of how the case ended was buried in a reply to a commenter asking for an update. “I showed up to court,” she wrote. “He wasn’t there. It’s a small town so the clerk or secretary goes around asking everyone why they are there and if we are fighting it. She took my ticket to the judge, they rolled their eyes, and told me both were dismissed.”
That tracks with the widely-expressed claim in the comment thread that officers routinely don’t appear, leading to automatic dismissals. The actual legal picture is more complicated, however.
As Virginia traffic-defense attorney Andrew Flusche writes, the idea that traffic cases are automatically dismissed if the officer doesn’t come to court is a “traffic defense myth.” The rolled eyes in Cheyanne’s case suggest the judge took a dimmer view of the underlying case than of the officer’s absence specifically.
But Was The Exhaust Modified?
The follow-up clip resolves the only mystery the original video left unanswered. Asked in a comment by a user named Tross “your exhaust is definitely modified, right?” Cheyanne posted a seven-second response—footage of the Mustang’s loud engine note, captioned “Replying to @Tross I’m just the queen at gaslighting cops.”
Motor1 reached out to Cheyanne via TikTok direct message for additional comment. We’ll be sure to update this if she responds.
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