Chris Oliver
Last updated August 13 2010 4:08AM
A Swedish motorist has been handed the world’s most expensive speeding ticket, one that is expected to cost him £650,000.
The 37-year-old man was driving at 186mph, two and a half times the speed limit, on a Swiss highway when his £140,000, 570-horsepower, black Mercedes-Benz was pulled over by traffic police.
Police said he was travelling so fast it took more than a third of a mile for his car to stop and that he had smashed the previous record for speeding on Switzerland ’s roads.
Under Swiss law, speeding fines are calculated using a formula that takes into consideration the income of the motorist and the severity of the offence.
The man escaped being caught by numerous radars simply because he was going too fast and they were incapable of clocking speeds greater than 125mph. It was a new generation of radar that finally caught him on the A12 highway between Bern and Lausanne.
Asked to explain why he was travelling so fast, the man allegedly told police: “I think the speedo on the car, which is new, is faulty.”
The police arrested the man, who has not been named, shortly afterwards and released him after questioning.
This is not the first time a European motorist has had to pay a huge fine for speeding.
In January, a Swiss court fined a millionaire Ferrari driver £180,000 for driving at 60 mph (nearly twice the speed limit) through a small village.
Traffic fines in Finland are determined in a similar way to those in Switzerland. In 2001, the 44-year-old boss of Nokia was issued with a £95,500 fine, the world’s most expensive speeding fine at the time. Police pulled over Anssi Vanjoki on his cherry red Harley Davidson in Helsinki after he was clocked driving 47mph in a 31mph zone.
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