- A German motorcycle rider has been fined €17,000 ($19,000) after amassing 15 speeding violations in a six-week period this summer.
- The rider from Rüsselsheim was also handed a 31-month driving ban and received 22 points on his driving license.
- Because the speed traps only snapped vehicles from the front the rider mistakenly believed cops wouldn’t be able to track him down.
A motorcycle rider from Germany has been slapped with a hefty €17,000 ($19,000) fine after going on a speeding spree over the summer, mistakenly believing he would never be caught.
The unnamed rider from Rüsselsheim was snapped 15 times by speed traps, sometimes twice in the same day, over a six-week period during June and July. Cameras recorded him traveling at up to 131 km/h (81 mph) in a 50 km/h (31 mph) zone and blasting through 30 km/h (19 kmh) limits at 61 km/h (38 mph).
Related: A BMW Has America’s Highest Rate Of Speeding Tickets And You’ll Never Guess Which One
He even taunted cops by posing while speeding past the traps, knowing that the forward-facing cameras that are designed to help identify car drivers aren’t so useful on motorcycles, which don’t have front-mounted license plates. But local officials made it their mission to track the speed-obsessed rider down and sent police patrols out across the city to find him.
Before long, they’d located who they believed to be the wanted rider and carefully compared him and his bike with the many images the speed traps had amassed. Their game was up, apparently to the shock of the rider, who told cops he never thought they’d find him.
But from that point, what probably seemed like a bit of fun to the “young” rider suddenly got serious. Eleven of his 15 offenses have so far been processed, landing him with a €17,000 fine, a 31-month driving ban, and 22 points on his license.
German news site Hessenschau explains that a mere eight points is enough to get your license taken away and that to win it back the rider will need to prove that he’s fit enough to deserve the privilege. We suspect he’s going to struggle to persuade any licensing officials of that for a few years to come.
While a $19k fine is definitely not small change, it looks that way compared with the $128,000 fine a BMW driver recently received for tailgating another car in Switzerland, where driver penalties are means-tested.