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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Patrol Stands by 205 Mph Speeding Ticket |
| 2004-09-26 |
| "Well, your Honor, the first good indication of the defendant's speed was when I got a radar return signal with the unit turned off." WABASHA, Minn. - There's little doubt that a Stillwater motorcyclist could wind up his Honda sport motorcycle past 180 mph, but members of the motorcycle racing world question whether the State Patrol was correct to cite him for 205 mph last weekend. The State Patrol is standing by its stopwatch, and the speeding ticket a veteran trooper wrote for Samuel Tilley for driving his 2003 Honda RC51 on U.S. Highway 61 near Wabasha on the state's eastern border. Tilley faces misdemeanor charges of speeding, reckless driving and riding without a motorcycle license. He has declined repeated requests for comment from several media outlets in the past few days. The St. Paul Pioneer Press first reported the details of the ticket, which is unofficially the highest ever written in the state, on Tuesday. Soon motorcycle enthusiasts were buzzing about whether Tilley really broke the 200 mph barrier. "Theoretically, it could happen — anything is possible — but I don't believe it," said John Ulrich, editor of Roadracing World, a magazine that covers sport bike racing. "Guys who want to break speed records and go over 200 mph have to go to great lengths to get there." Ulrich questioned the State Patrol's timing methods, in which a trooper in an airplane used a stopwatch to calculate how long it took Tilley to cover a certain distance. Other enthusiasts said if the timing were off by only a half-second, it would drop Tilley's speed to about 185 mph. |
| Posted by:Zenster |
| #3 I'd like to see video of this...like the guy in Japan with the Ferrari. |
| Posted by: Rafael 2004-09-26 9:28:15 PM |
| #2 That would be plain crazy! Considering how, at 205 MPH, a vehicle travels some 100 FEET in the time it takes to blink, sanity isn't even part of the discussion. Running into a jackrabbit, prairie dog, squirrel or even just a littered beer bottle means taking the dirt nap. That is, if they find all of the pieces. Tilley is a suicidal moron who should hereafter find it quite difficult to obtain basic liability vehicle insurance for anything below the high four-figure range. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-09-26 8:59:00 PM |
| #1 To get an RC51 up to 200 mph, they say, the owner would have to change the motorcycle’s transmission, fuel injectors and gears — and might have to add either a supercharger or pump nitrous oxide or methane into the fuel system. That would be plain crazy! Only someone who owned a bike capable of 185 would even consider it. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-09-26 7:23:28 PM |