You have to imagine that plenty of Lamborghini Gallardo owners have been hauled in front their local magistrate for daring to allow their Italian stallion to stretch its legs… but surely none of them were ever treated as well as Leone Antonino Magistro of Perth, Australia.
A police officer had “guesstimated” Magistro’s speed at 155 km/h by following some 100 to 200 meters behind in his police-issue Ford Falcon, and had issued a ticket for speeding. But instead of throwing the book at the accused, Magistrate Michael Wheeler took an entirely different approach: confessing his love for Top Gear and the Gallardo, and casting doubt on the policeman’s ability to keep up with the 500+ HP Lamborghini
With no disrespect to the Ford Falcon could it cut the mustard with the Lamborghini being driven by the accused? It couldn’t even catch my car, in all honesty. I have to confess, I’m a Top Gear tragic [Ed: Ain’t the Aussie language grand?] and know so much useless information about (the 2006 Lamborghini Gallardo) I have to disregard,
Aaand we have a new front-runner for judge of the year. But, amazingly, Magistrate Wheeler didn’t stop there. According to RTE, Wheeler ordered the police to pay about $18,000 in costs… and then went on to mock the Australian police for buying underwhelming vehicles. Noting that the officer in question had recently immigrated from the UK, Wheeler quipped:
He would have thought he’d never find himself driving a bog standard Ford Falcon when he came to Australia but I suppose that’s what bean counters do
A traffic magistrate who loves Top Gear and Gallardos, and mocks beancounters? It might just be time to move to Perth… I’d appear before this guy any time.
Doesn’t the accused at least get kicked in the bum with a big boot, in keeping with Aussie tradition?
Awesome Simpsons reference!
Speed limits…now just for poor people.
A traffic magistrate who loves Top Gear and Gallardos, and mocks beancounters? It might just be time to move to Perth…
Unfortunately, they’re pretty heavy-handed about porn and internet censorship. Which is just tragic.
Buggah!
Yes, that’s what happened after they kicked out John Howard and voted in Labour. Labour’s been trying to push the Internet filter for three years. The right-wingers remain against it (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/05/2974827.htm), but for Labour, which barely won re-election, the filter is all part of the National Broadband Network policy (http://www.neowin.net/news/australias-nbn-secured-as-labor-wins-election) which includes the government bringing everyone faster connections… at the price of the mandatory filter.
Not like it’s likely to play out much different in the US. “The FCC needs power over the Internet to preserve Net Neutrality” is going to end with them also having the power to censor and insist that the Internet’s architecture be more wiretap-friendly like the FBI wants. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/technology/17wiretap.html)
Yeah… Except we have freedom of speech enshrined in the constitution (via an ammendment, for the pedants in the house). There have been attempts to censor the net, but they’ve been promoted by local grandstanders and shot down long before they took effect. And even then, a system as pervasive and restrictive as Australia’s has never been suggested even by the fringiest of the fringe.
You’re talking about a government that got a freedom-of-information request for documents about the censorship program, delivered them 90% censored, and defended themselves by explaining that the documents were redacted “to prevent unneccesary debate”. It takes some serious cojones to pull that kind of thing off with a straight face.
Great story and good for the judge! I gave up several sports cars after some close calls and encounters (oh those were the days!). Now I drive a Jeep where few others go. However my favorite places are consistently threatened with closings by people who don’t live there or even in the next state. Are there any good off-road loving judges out there?
I don’t understand… 155 km/hr is just 96 mph, which even my 82 hp Toyota Tercel could maintain on level ground. It’s absurd to say a Ford Falcon couldn’t keep up with that.
The quote suggests that the judge was comparing the maximum speed of each car, rather than the speed recorded. He seems to have made the assumption that the Lambo pilot was going as fast as possible – which is absurd, as he is aware – but then asserting that the Falcon couldn’t keep up with the speed the L-car was actually going? It makes no sense at all. Either the quote was taken wildly out of context, or the judge’s grasp of logic is frighteningly tenuous.
WOW…I hope this judge is in the courtroom I have to appear in for doing 125mph in my SRT8 last month.
Is the judge name Jeremy Clarkson? Is Oz becoming Claaarrrrrksonnnnn Iland?… OH MY GOOOODDDD!!!!
I’ve been told that the Falcon employed by the police over there is the XR6 version, and IIRC, that thing got a turbo and at least 300HP. So if it was 150 mph, the Falcon was perfectly capable of holding with the Lambo.
I’m also mystified why the judge believed the Falcon couldn’t keep up with the Lambo.
But that aside, why should anyone, even gearheads, cheer the judge’s ruling??? I’m all for having fun while driving, but if you’re going to drive at or near triple digits, do it at the track, not on public roads.
“But that aside, why should anyone, even gearheads, cheer the judge’s ruling??? I’m all for having fun while driving, but if you’re going to drive at or near triple digits, do it at the track, not on public roads.”
We cheer it because it is a rare victory for common sense—namely, because the notion that 100 mph is too fast for public roads is absolutely laughable for most of the civilised world. North America, perhaps not surprisingly, is almost quaintly slow to move on from driving at quaintly slow speeds. I don’t know if this amusing skittishness about speed is a lack of confidence on the part of American and Canadian drivers or not, but at some point, surely the realisation that it is not, in fact, the early 1970s anymore (and that 100 mph is not even close to being at the outermost limits of the average car’s safe operational capabilities anymore) will sink in, and people will actually be able to get where they are going in a reasonably brief amount of time in the Colonies. Americans, at the mere mention of triple digit speeds, are forever nervously interjecting “But…but…who actually has to get anywhere THAT fast? Why not just leave an hour earlier?”…at which point I wonder aloud exactly what the hell the point of having a car is in the first place, if not to cover greater distances in less time than walking. I also wonder what kind of imbecile presumes to know the relative importance of my journey before I even set off on it, based solely, I suppose, on whether or not they, personally, are inclined to get where *they* are going in a hurry. “I dawdle, and thus, you can too!”. Jesus wept…
(And no, travelling at speed does not by definition suggest contempt for the life and liberty one’s fellow road users. Travelling at speed and behaving like an unpredictable dickhead certainly does, but let us be absolutely clear that they are emphatically not one and the same)
But I digress. Europeans tend to eat slowly and drive quickly, and Americans, seemingly, live their lives very much in reverse (for reasons that will continue to mystify me for the rest of my days…). That isn’t true of every American, of course, anymore than it’s true that every Italian drives at 130 mph…hmmm…come to think of it, that last one is a piss-poor example. Okay, scratch that. It isn’t true that every Frenchman, then, drives at a constant 130 mph. But many, many do. People just like you, and me, and him and her, with dogs and cats and kids in tow. Because they simply want to get where they are going as quickly and as comfortably as is humanly possible. Millions do, and our societies still stand. They don’t drive like maniacs, by and large. They just press the pedal on the right a little further to the floor. I do not argue that driving at maximum velocity is always appropriate, or indeed even usually appropriate. And I certainly don’t advocate it through school zones and residential communities, or for that matter in inclimate weather (for the record, I tend to drive under the posted limit in rain or snow). But I do very much take issue with the ridiculous, antiquated notion that one hundred miles per hour on public roads amounts to lunatic behaviour. It’s silly, it’s childish, it’s delusional, and it’s flat out wrong. And it does indeed reflect rather poorly on the people who continue, as late as the year 2010, to maintain that point of view.
Insert the non-blog forum “rolleyes” graphic here.
So does this mean that someone doing 175 km/h in their Corolla also goes free, or does this judge’s asinine ruling only apply to people in fancy cars?