Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Philip Odegard's speeding ticket
All hail Philip Odegard - the man who allegedly managed to go over 210mph in a Bugatti Veyron and get a speeding ticket for his trouble. Jalopnik and Top Gear both ran the story originally, but now Odegard has removed the ticket from his Flickr photostream, and the CHP confirmed it was a fake. The ticket was doctored from a 100mph one that he received whilst driving a 2004 Infiniti. The original ticket has also vanished from Odegard's Flickr photostream. Fortunately, keen-eyed car nerds like me grabbed a copy while we could.
There's a couple of issues with the original story that would lead you to believe it really is a fake.
The first is : how the hell did a stock police cruiser actually catch a Veyron? Unless the CHP have invested in McLaren F1's, there's no way this happened. The ticket is an "in person" ticket, not one from a speed camera so the implication is that the cruiser either caught him up, or he just stopped. Frankly if I was going that fast in a Veyron, I'd know the police couldn't catch me and I'd keep going.
The second problem is this : police issue radar guns timeout at about 179mph - you just get and "EE" message on the display, meaning "error". So Odegard could not have been clocked at "210+" as the ticket indicates.
The final problem is the speed itself. 210mph is 308 feet per second. That's just shy of one regulation football (soccer for the Americans) pitch per second. At that speed, by the time the officer had registered the Veyron, put down the radar gun, flicked on the lights and sirens, started the engine and pulled out, the Veyron would have already been over a third of a mile away. Odegard would not have even seen the cop in his mirrors.
There's a couple of issues with the original story that would lead you to believe it really is a fake.
The first is : how the hell did a stock police cruiser actually catch a Veyron? Unless the CHP have invested in McLaren F1's, there's no way this happened. The ticket is an "in person" ticket, not one from a speed camera so the implication is that the cruiser either caught him up, or he just stopped. Frankly if I was going that fast in a Veyron, I'd know the police couldn't catch me and I'd keep going.
The second problem is this : police issue radar guns timeout at about 179mph - you just get and "EE" message on the display, meaning "error". So Odegard could not have been clocked at "210+" as the ticket indicates.
The final problem is the speed itself. 210mph is 308 feet per second. That's just shy of one regulation football (soccer for the Americans) pitch per second. At that speed, by the time the officer had registered the Veyron, put down the radar gun, flicked on the lights and sirens, started the engine and pulled out, the Veyron would have already been over a third of a mile away. Odegard would not have even seen the cop in his mirrors.
// posted by Chris @ 17:10 
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