Did You Ever Get a Ticket for Speeding?

Post Reply New Topic

Did You Ever Get a Ticket for Speeding? Don't answer that. This thread is not a tell-all.

I read an article that talked about a woman who received a speeding ticket in Italy. They ended the story by adding in a completely unrelated story. So I decided to take their two stories and add a third.
-------------------------
Story #1
An Italian woman driving a Ford Focus down a coastal highway received a ticket for going 703 kmph, or almost 437 mph.

A Ford Focus, really!! !! !! !! !! !! !!



That is right, the car above and not the car below.



As a result she received in her mail a speeding ticket – which placed 10 points on her license and carried a fine of 850 euros, or just under $1,000.

It turns out that her speeding incident was captured by an automatic speed camera which was malfunctioning and police failed to pick up on the error.

Giovanni Strologo, a transportation spokesman for the community of Offagna, in Ancona province, where the incident happened, advised the driver to appeal to the local government for compensation, according to the report.

In a Facebook post, he noted that police should have checked the details before sending the driver a ticket and joked that “even with a missile” the car could not possibly reach speeds that high.

----------------------------------

Story #2

During this pandemic the roads across the U.S. have been fairly uncongested. Maybe there is a better term for that . They are more like ghost towns. Individuals with fast cars that always dreamed about opening up their vehicles to see what they can do, have been taking advantage of this great once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. So there are more than the usual number of speeding tickets for individuals driving fast and I mean really fast.

The New York Post reported in April that speed cameras in the Big Apple [New York City] led to 180,000 tickets over a two-week span – even with the city’s streets seeing only a fraction of their usual traffic during the coronavirus outbreak.

[Why are these two stories connected. It probably has to do with automatic speed cameras. People just love to hate speed cameras - and with good reason.]

Source: Malfunctioning speed camera clocks Ford Focus going 437 mph, driver ticketed over $1,000, report says
--------------------------------

Story #3 [This is my story. I believe it is true but you never know!]

Back when I was a mere whippersnapper [that is a long time ago because I am 71 years old], I heard a story about three young men who enjoyed driving down the road with wind in their hair at high rate of speed. In California in the deserts the roads are empty and some of the small towns do not even have a stop light. Well outside this one town there was a large billboard and that is where the policeman always hid. It was the local speed trap. Well these three young men knew that and decided to outrun the cops.

Their parents lived on a military base and these young men swiped a JATO bottle from one of the hangers on the base. A JATO bottle is a Jet Assisted Take Off bottle that delivers immense thrust for a few seconds. It is used on Jet aircraft to provide added thrust for takeoff on short runways.

Well the young men attached the JATO bottle to their car. They drove down the deserted street speeding as they passed the local cop. The cops pulled out to begin pursuit. Both cars were speeding down the road at over 100 mph when the hot rod car that the boys were driving just disappeared. The police were baffled. It just up and disappeared. The mystery was solved a couple miles down the road when the police observed a car which was dangling from a telephone pole. I don't think the boys survived.

Last edited by jimmy m on 11 Jul 2020, 11:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

The first one is pretty funny!

Re the second one - how would they attach the JATO bottle so that it works as planned? - does it have to be somehow attached to the petrol tank to give it that VOOMA? - being non technical I'm just curious to know how it would work to give that "boost" that launched them practically into space.

Thanks for always being entertaining!

Wikipedia list this as an urban legend. But I wouldn't be too sure about this. As I remember the story, they somehow attached the JATO bottle to the trunk. As I recall, this occurred perhaps in the 1950's or 60's. It took place outside China Lake, California which is a military base that flies aircraft. There were a lot of genius level people working in China Lake and I suspect their offspring could have figured out the engineering aspects of making it work.

That reminds me of my first year of college. I was in a car pool with two other guys. I drove a Ford Falcon, which by the standards of the day was a fairly light car. I was meticulous about always locking my car. After school I went to my car and it wasn't where I parked it. It disappears. First thing I thought was my car was stolen. I was wrong. The car was still in the massive parking lot but about 100 yards from where I parked it. My carpool buddies had arrived early to the locked car and decided to move it as a prank. They enlisted the help of several football players who were walking by. They simple picked up the car and move it.

This was probably due in part to the fact that I always locked my car and they always didn't. They did not want to wait outdoors after classes were over. It probably also has to do with the fact that a week earlier, I had by myself moved their car several feet. I simple got inside because it wasn't locked and released the emergency brake. And I rolled it several feet. Stood back and watched the episode unfold when they arrived.

All accounts you read and hear that involve guys putting jato bottles on their cars are iterations of the same old urban myth. Never happened. Mythbuster did a whole episode both exploring the origin of the story, and trying to duplicate it (if it were true).

The common version of the story is that some guy in Arizona stuck a jato onto his car to see how fast he could go, but... forgot to consider the problem of stopping the car.


Then one night he stuck it on his car and fired it up, and he sped down the highway at some three digit speed, but then saw a curve in the road and tried to stop. He ended up going airborne. The next morning the cops found a mile long black streak on the road from him applying the breaks in a vain attempt to stop. And then they found his corpse and his wrecked car a hundred yards off the road. I read that story in the "Darwin Awards" as true. Then I saw the Mythbuster guys do that show about it. The Mythbusters found that the Arizona highway patrol has no record of the incident.

They also concluded that the story had its origin in Mario Andretti doing something LIKE that on the Bonneville Salt Flats, and surviving. Some rocket propulsion on a car, but not a military JATO. But that seems to have been the germ from which the tall tale grew over the years.Your version adds that detail about the teen guys having parents on a militray base- so that atleast would explain how they might have been able to steal a JATO, but that just makes it a tiny bit more believable. But it doesnt make it true.

Anybody can move a car that’s placed in neutral.

Jimmy M. - Do you have any speeding stories to tell of the 1970 Hemicuda you used to own back in the day? Please share if you can, as that would be interesting to hear about. My ex-drag race Plymouth has just sat in a barn since I got it, so no speeding stories with that one yet. Maybe someday...

I’ve never gotten any kind of ticket, been stopped twice by the same Trooper, once for expired tags and for being too short.The Trooper was exceptionally good looking and nice so it wasn’t a bad experience.

I bought the car from a friend. His first name was Bruce and he was going to Cal Tech studying physics. I asked Bruce if he ever got any tickets in the year he drove it before he sold it to me. He said NO! He said he received many warnings but no tickets. He told me one time a cop pulled him over on the freeway. The policeman asked Bruce if that was a 426 Hemi under the hood. Bruce said YES. He asked Bruce if he could see it. Bruce opened up the hood so he could see it. The policeman spend the next half hour giving Bruce a full course in how to spot policeman and avoid traffic stops. Then he gave Bruce a written warning.

In the three years that I drove the car, I found that generally to be true. Only one ticket but many, many warnings. I probably have many stories but none to share over the Internet. Only to say the car was fast and I mean really, really fast. Like riding in a rocket ship.

That is indeed true but it took my carpool buddy a few minutes to figure that one out.

The university I went to the first year was an engineering school. One year, the head of the university walked into his office and his car was next to his desk. The students had disassembled the car brought it into his office one piece at a time and them perfectly reassembled it. That is what engineers do!

Like one of those model ships in a bottle things writ larger.

Much like what happened to Kent in the movie Real Genius, except that they put an air bag under it to make it appear as if it was sleeping in his dorm room. Yes, engineers tend to make good practical jokers.

Thank you for sharing the information about the previous owner. There was a good reason why those cars were built, to go really fast in a strait line a quarter mile at a time. Unfortunately, many new car owners were just not skilled enough drivers to keep that much horsepower on the road. Any high performance car can have that problem. I personally saw the aftermath of a Porsche 928 hitting a bridge support at 100+ mph when I was in college. Not much was left of the driver, the passenger or the car. The driver was found to be very high on drugs.

I got a ticket once for making an illegal U-turn, which was forced to make because there was construction on the road, so I didn't know where else I was suppose to go, but turn around, since it was a dead end. But still got the ticket. But maybe there was somewhere else I was suppose to go and didn't know.

I got a speeding ticket for following traffic when I lived in Montana. Yes the officers there can pull over 2 or 3 cars at once. It's a matter of if you see a police car coming up behind you with lights, you pull over so they can get by you but instead they pull to the side of the road along with other cars behind you that had also pulled over and bam you all get tickets. It's a matter of being unlucky, being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

So if going through rural areas, it's better to just go the exact same speed or at least 4 above and let the other cars go fast and let them pass you. Let them get tickets. They probably know where the speed traps are too. Plus if you are from out of state, you are more vulnerable to being pulled over and cars won't tail gate you if you have a out of state license plate, they will just go around you. That is how it is in Montana anyway, not once do I see people tail gating, they will pass you instead. Some do it dangerously.

I’ve had a handful of speeding tickets over the years.. one for a mere 10kmh over, one for 90 over. (180 in a 90 zone.. 7 day impound - and my friend had just imported that 2003 BMW M5 That Day! Cost me over $700 to drive over one bridge lol quite the toll!)

The fastest I’ve ever driven a car is 185kmh. The fastest I’ve ever ridden in a car is 280kmh. (180mph) The fastest I’ve ridden a motorcycle is 140kmh - and that’s more than plenty fast for me - decided to pace the very fast flowing traffic and see how fast I’d go. Was fun, but not something I feel any desire or need to repeat. (Meanwhile a friend of mine rode passenger on a motorcycle at over 300kmh and I worked with a couple guys that ride that fast.. no thx!)

My driving is much calmer and slower than it was in years passed - even though I’ve never been a really aggressive driver or anything. I typically just cruise in the slow lane and let everyone else pass by me. It’s way too easy to speed during this covid time because traffic has been so free flowing vs typical bumper to bumper rush hour traffic - but - knowing that dozens of new speed cameras just went live everywhere all over BC And the fact that I’ve been driving my dad’s truck for essential trips vs my uninsured car = I keep it down around the speed limit. Also, I’ve been in no rush to get anywhere And I enjoy listening to the radio as I drive so doesn’t bother me to take an extra few mins and hear another song or two.

As for JATO - if it’s gaseous like nitrous oxide or propane, it’d be fed into the air intake or throttle body - something like that vs added to the gas tank or fuel line. It just has to enter into the combustion chamber where gasoline is squirted into so it can go Boom with the rest of the fuel.. so, in with the air it goes. Would only take a very basic understanding of physics/mechanics to rig something up so that it would at least work.. sure, there may be better (safer, more effective or efficient) ways to connect & regulate it, but almost any h00man could figure out how to duct tape a gas line in place and open a valve - even if all they did was feed it in just after the air filter.

This thread makes me wish I had my car insured And also had my motorcycle back from the shop and on the road - it’s been there since November 29th 2019.. slow repair job lol. Oh well, might not be able to renew my motorcycle licence until mid-August due to covid wait times anyways - Unless an out of town trip works to skip the line by going to a gov’t service office in a small town a few hours away. Gotta look into that for my father and I.

Flying with a car? There are people who did this without the help of rockets and survived.
About 35 meters and 7 meters high for parking at the roof of a church...