Speeding ticket stories

[TB Tabby]

http://cheezburger.com/6403357184



I couldn't find the "good" story in the archives, but as one of the commenters pointed out, "better" and "best" are listed as Cuff Linked and Great Balls of Misfire.

[Don Enrico]

The second story reminds me of a legend about Till Eulenspiegel, who stayed in an inn to have a drink and get warm. When he was about to leave, the innkeeper wanted to charge him for the smell of the roast hanging over the open fire. Till Eulenspiegel took out a coin, let it fall on the table, pocketed it again and told the keeper that the sound of the coin was his payment for the smell of the roast.

Don "not the real McCoy" Enrico

[snopes]

Comment: I heard someone got a speeding ticket in Texas in 2003 for going
272 mph in a 75 mph zone. I found several mentions online, but I can't
really find a source that seems reliable. Is this true?

[Singing in the Drizzle]

My class mate received a warning ticket in Arizona for going 160mph in a 55 mph zone. I did see and read the warning ticket.

Then I received a ticket here in Washington for Violation of Basic Speed Code for doing 45mph in a 55mph zone. A generic ticket the officer can give just because they thought you were not diving an appropriate speed for what ever reason they decide.

[Richard W]

Originally Posted by snopes

Comment: I heard someone got a speeding ticket in Texas in 2003 for going
272 mph in a 75 mph zone. I found several mentions online, but I can't
really find a source that seems reliable. Is this true?

I think it's supposed to be 242mph, not 272mph (supposedly in a Koenigsegg CC8S during the Gumball Rally in 2003). It's reported in various places online ("citation needed", says Wikipedia), and the claim was supposedly made on Top Gear (according to a different Wikipedia page which doesn't give a citation either).

I can't find an "official" list of the cars that entered the Gumball Rally that year, although Wikipedia does say that a Koenigsegg CC8S was in it. The seemingly official Gumball 3000 page is no help at all - it's basically an advert for various fast car brands, and its "heritage" pages only have a row of pictures on them, although the "2003" page does show a picture of a Koenigsegg.

http://www.gumball3000.com/rally/#/rally/heritage/2003/

Unofficial Gumball pages all seem to be copying the Wikipedia pages (or perhaps the other way round) and have the same claims.

242mph appears to be only about 3mph less than the quoted top speed for that car, and there are at least some skeptics:

http://www.gtspirit.com/2009/07/10/w...eeding-ticket/

We’re pretty sure that the Koenigsegg CC never got the rumoured 242mph ticket on 2003 Gumball 3000. Perhaps then, we are now looking at the worlds fastest speeding ticket? 210+ mph in a Bugatti Veyron is pretty fast.

(That site has a reproduction of the claimed 210mph Bugatti Veyron ticket, although they don't insist it's real.)

I don't know which episode of Top Gear the original claim comes from. The episode in which they first reviewed the Koenigsegg CC8S was from "new" series 2 episode 7, broadcast 22nd June 2003 - the clip is here, and it's obviously the first time they've mentioned Koenigsegg at all:

http://www.topgear.com/uk/videos/segg-way

Jeremy Clarkson doesn't mention this although this episode would have been broadcast just after the Gumball Rally in May 2003. (I don't know what the recording schedule is like, though.) For comparison, the infamous clip in which The Stig crashes the CCX is here (series 8 episode 1, from May 2006) - no mention in that either. (Here are the search results for Koenigsegg CC on the Top Gear web site if anybody wants to go through the rest, but I couldn't see anything that looked a likely place for this claim.) Top Gear seems rather ambivalent about speeding these days - a couple of Jeremy Clarkson columns come back on that search, but neither are about the fastest speeding ticket.

It might well have been mentioned as an aside in an episode of Top Gear, but I can't even find that, let alone where Top Gear would have got it from.

[Meka]

Something Top Gear does mention (with regard to the Bugatti Veyron, though one would expect it to apply to other similarly fast cars) is just how quickly the Veyron will both run out of fuel and render its tires unusable when driven close to its maximum speed. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I seem to recall that the car would have to stop after as little as 10 minutes at speed - fairly counterproductive for an endurance race. If nothing else, I guess it explains how the police were able to actually catch the car in order to give it a speeding ticket.

[overyonder]

Some say that the Bugatti Veyron does in the vicinity of 3 MPG (US) at top speed. If we assume a capacity of 26 gallons, that means a whopping 78 miles per tank.

At 240mph, a tank would be burnt in (70/240) * 60m = 17.5 minutes. That's excluding acceleration and whatever other factors that might affect it. This, of course, assumes that you're running at WOT (wide open throttle) the entire time. Hardly feasible in a non-track, non-linear environment.

It gets an EPA estimate of 14mpg (US), which is probably done somewhere around 55 mph.

OY

[Beachlife!]

But it would also be more than 60 miles down the road in that time too.

[Meka]

Thanks for the number crunching, OY.

I found the Top Gear clip I was thinking of here. Around 6:30 the host mentions that at top speed the Veyron will run out of fuel after 12 minutes, while the tires will only last 15 minutes.* So while the car could be up to 60 miles from where it was first spotted speeding, it's also going to be stationary for a while until the gas tank is refilled and the tires are changed. Not to mention those tires would pretty much have to be cached by the driver every 60 miles prior to his or her run, since at about $10,000 each, it's not like Bob's Tire is just going to have a set laying around.

* I did think he said 50 minutes at first, but the numbers correspond with other sources here and here. The second source also gives conventional fuel economy figures for the Super Sport variant - 6.32 mpg city, 15.8 mpg highway.

[Barbara]

Originally Posted by TB Tabby

http://cheezburger.com/6403357184



I couldn't find the "good" story in the archives

It's mentioned halfway through this article of ours.

[Hero_Mike]

The Bugatti has a "high speed" mode which has to be deliberately activated by the driver (definitely at a low speed, and perhaps even while at standstill), which allows for full speed driving. Otherwise the top speed is governed. This mode is automatically disabled when the brakes are touched, or if the steering wheel is turned more than a certain number of degrees - in other words, it is designed for a few high-speed laps, and only on a sloped track. There may be sections of road straight and flat enough for that, but they'd be hard to negotiate, and nearly impossible to drive at night - you'd outdrive your lights. My recollection of car magazine reviews of the Bugatti during top speed testing on a track, certainly implied a very intense experience. Considering that many of the writers for these magazines are amateur or former-pro racers, it'd be something that your average joe couldn't accomplish, or couldn't accomplish successfully.

At 240mph, that's 4 miles per minute or one mile ever 15 seconds. (That's 352 feet per second, or more than a football field for every heartbeat.) Passing a stationary police cruiser, the driver would be at least a half mile down the road before the police car could even be brought to "pursuit speed", and out-of-sight (as in over the horizon on flat land) in less time than it would take to make a radio call. I'd be amazed that the driver of such a car could be identified and caught.

[Richard W]

It would be pretty easy to find the car and owner, I'd have thought - how many Bugatti Veyrons can there be in any given area? And they're not inconspicuous. The only hard part would be proving who was driving, and that can be an issue for any speeding ticket that's not the result of being pulled over in person.

[Meka]

Originally Posted by Hero_Mike

The Bugatti has a "high speed" mode which has to be deliberately activated by the driver (definitely at a low speed, and perhaps even while at standstill), which allows for full speed driving. Otherwise the top speed is governed. This mode is automatically disabled when the brakes are touched, or if the steering wheel is turned more than a certain number of degrees

You're completely right about the special key. It does have to be inserted while the car is stationary, and between what I've read of its location and the brief glimpse in the Top Gear clip, the driver's door may actually have to be opened to reach the key slot (it's on the floor between the door and the seat.)

That said, top speed without the key inserted is only 233 mph.

At 240mph, that's 4 miles per minute or one mile ever 15 seconds. (That's 352 feet per second, or more than a football field for every heartbeat.) Passing a stationary police cruiser, the driver would be at least a half mile down the road before the police car could even be brought to "pursuit speed", and out-of-sight (as in over the horizon on flat land) in less time than it would take to make a radio call. I'd be amazed that the driver of such a car could be identified and caught.

I was going to suggest that the officer could call for a helicopter, but at that speed, the car could easily outrun most, if not all, of the types commonly flown by police departments. Heck, even if the department in question had a fixed wing aircraft, the car might still give it a run for its money.*

On the other hand, that brings us back to fuel consumption and tire wear. If the car is consistently doing those kind of speeds, it will have to stop for service often and (at a minimum) for as long as it takes to change 4 tires and fill a 26 gallon gas tank. Unless this guy has his own pit crew waiting for him, he's going to spend at least as much time stationary is he is tearing up the highway - and that's assuming he's thought ahead and actually has a fresh set of tires waiting for him.

So while the car would disappear before an officer could even radio it in, it's also going to be a sitting duck while stopped - and as rare as these cars are, it'll stick out like a sore thumb.

ETA: Partially spanked by Richard W. He's right - there aren't even 400 of them in the world, so as likely as not, the next Veyron a cop sees will be the same one that blew past the radar checkpoint several miles up the road.

*ETA2: Actual traffic stop of a motorcycle clocked at 205. Even if you can outrun the air unit, it can still track you for a lot longer than an officer in a car.

[Beachlife!]

I'd imagine that someone planning to outrun a cop in such a car would have some kind of plan for where he was going and how he planned to get the car out of sight.

I don't think there is any possibility that he'd make it ten miles without getting stopped up by traffic on the freeway regardless. Unless he was driving at night in which case he probably wouldn't survive very long.

[ganzfeld]

Originally Posted by Richard W

The only hard part would be proving who was driving [...]

The person I saw was definitely Justin Bieber — not one of his friends!! (Sorry, a little celebrity news joke. It won't happen again. I promise.)

[Hero_Mike]

When a car passes an unwary person at 240mph, how sure can they be of what it is? At that speed all of the cars capable of that speed will look alike. Wide, low to the ground, without a lot of unique character. Even the colour - if it's a dark colour, will be hard to discern because of how much of the car is dark to begin with, especially from a rear profile. Not that there are so many candidates (cars) which can go that fast, but there would likely be uncertainty. Which is not to say, also, that someone could have taken their race car on a public road, and a non-road-going race car is much easier to find than a "production" car which can go that fast.

[Beachlife!]

As a fan of open wheel racing I can tell you that it is sometimes hard to tell exactly what color a car is at that speed, much less who is driving.

[overyonder]

Originally Posted by Meka

*ETA2: Actual traffic stop of a motorcycle clocked at 205. Even if you can outrun the air unit, it can still track you for a lot longer than an officer in a car.

This bit bugs me:

A search of speeding tickets written by state troopers, who patrol most of the state's highways, between 1990 and February 2004 shows the next fastest ticket was for 150 mph in 1994 in Lake of the Woods County.

Having been 155 mph+ once and without trying that hard, I'm surprised that their highest was only 150mph.

[And that was on the autobahn, if anyone is wondering].

OY

[Beachlife!]

Most cars won't do 150 and if they do it takes a lot longer to get up to that speed. Not to mention that it can be quite frightening for anyone who doesn't drive at that speed normally, which is most people.

The cars that will do 150 easily are usually very expensive and the possible loss of the car is not worth the attempt. Additionally, at those speeds it is far more than a speeding ticket one would get. Wreckless driving with out a doubt, I'm not sure where it might go beyond there, but I suspect it might be more than a traffic ticket.

[overyonder]

Originally Posted by Beachlife!

The cars that will do 150 easily are usually very expensive and the possible loss of the car is not worth the attempt. Additionally, at those speeds it is far more than a speeding ticket one would get. Wreckless driving with out a doubt, I'm not sure where it might go beyond there, but I suspect it might be more than a traffic ticket.

Chevy Camaros, Ford Mustangs, and Dodge Challengers are all capable of 150+ mph, as are Nissan 370's. I wouldn't quite call them "very expensive" but they're more expensive than your average Honda Civic.

The Camaro ZL1's max speed is 184mph.

OY