Minn. Trooper Writes 205 Mph Ticket

Joeychgo

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WABASHA, Minn. (AP) - With a State Patrol airplane overhead, a motorcyclist hit the throttle and possibly set the informal record for the fastest speeding ticket in Minnesota history: 205 mph.

On Saturday afternoon, State Patrol pilot Al Loney was flying near Wabasha, in southeastern Minnesota on the Wisconsin border, watching two motorcyclists racing along U.S. Highway 61.

When one of the riders shot forward, Loney was ready with his stopwatch. He clicked it once when the motorcycle reached a white marker on the road and again a quarter-mile later. The watch read 4.39 seconds, which Loney calculated to be 205 mph.

"I was in total disbelief," Loney told the St. Paul Pioneer Press for Tuesday's editions. "I had to double-check my watch because in 27 years I'd never seen anything move that fast."

Several law enforcement sources told the newspaper that, although no official records are kept, it was probably the fastest ticket ever written in the state.

After about three-quarters of a mile, the biker slowed to about 100 mph and let the other cycle catch up. By then Loney had radioed ahead to another state trooper, who pulled the two over soon afterward.

The State Patrol officer arrested the faster rider, 20-year-old Stillwater resident Samuel Armstrong Tilley, for reckless driving, driving without a motorcycle license - and driving 140 miles per hour over the posted speed limit of 65 mph.

A search of speeding tickets written by state troopers, who patrol most of the state's highways, between 1990 and February 2004 shows the next fastest ticket was for 150 mph in 1994 in Lake of the Woods County.

Tilley did not return calls from the newspaper to his home Monday. A working number for him could not immediately be found by The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Only a handful of exotic sports cars can reach 200 mph, but many high-performance motorcycles can top 175 mph. With minor modifications, they can hit 200 mph. Tilley was riding a Honda 1000, Loney said.

Kathy Swanson of the state Office of Traffic Safety said unless Tilley was wearing the kind of protective gear professional motorcycle racers wear, he was courting death at 200 mph.

"I'm not entirely sure what would happen if you crashed at 200 miles per hour," Swanson said. "But it wouldn't be pretty, that's for sure."

--- Information from: St. Paul Pioneer Press, www.twincities.com
 
Joeychgo said:
"I'm not entirely sure what would happen if you crashed at 200 miles per hour," Swanson said. "But it wouldn't be pretty, that's for sure."
I have a pretty good idea of what a 200mph bike crash would look like, and it's far from pretty OR surivable. :eek:
 
Something is a little screwy with that story because a stock Honda 1000 only has a top speed of about 165 mph. The fastest bike at the Daytona race last year topped out at 197 mph and that is a pro built full race bike with a top pro rider on it. It sounds like a state trooper has an itchy trigger finger on the stopwatch.
 
Sifrino3 said:
I hate that sh it. If you can't catch them in the act. Then go fu ck your self!
They did catch them in the act, what are you talking about? He was speeding, they paced him, they caught him.

PS - I know that Joey didn't add language filters for his health, so I am sure that bypassing them is unappreciated.
 
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BigT said:
Something is a little screwy with that story because a stock Honda 1000 only has a top speed of about 165 mph. The fastest bike at the Daytona race last year topped out at 197 mph and that is a pro built full race bike with a top pro rider on it. It sounds like a state trooper has an itchy trigger finger on the stopwatch.
I was thinking about that and was going to ask a couple friends about that speed since I don't know much about bikes. This is a prime example of the downfall of VASCAR and similar pacing methods. Think about human reaction time, like you see on a ¼ mile time slip. Factor in reaction time twice, once for start and once for stop, and you could have on very inaccurate reading.
 
JoshMcMadMac said:
They did catch them in the act, what are you talking about? He was speeding, they paced him, they caught him.

PS - I know that Joey didn't add language filters for his health, so I am sure that bypassing them is unappreciated.

If they are trying to catch some one speeding from above. Maybe they should write tickets to planes. They did not catch him in the act. Down the road they pulled him over doing the speed limit. That is not catching him. . .
 
Sifrino3 said:
If they are trying to catch some one speeding from above. Maybe they should write tickets to planes. They did not catch him in the act. Down the road they pulled him over doing the speed limit. That is not catching him. . .
1) Nowhere did it mention that he was doing the speed limit when apprehended. Please refine your reading skills.

2) By your logic, if I can shoot you without a cop present, then I should get away with it. Even using that logic the guy was still caught. A police officer saw him speeding. What more is he supposed to do, jump in front of the guy? And you are also suggesting that the vehicle being monitored should be apprehended using a like vehicle, i.e. airplane/airplane, not airplane/motorcycle. Along those lines only a motorcycle could have pulled him over. So along those lines the police are supposed to use an 18-wheeler to pull over a trucker. :rolleyes:

Give me a break.
 
Or maybe the cop should just have crash the plane on the bike to stop him !

JoshMcMadMac said:
1) Nowhere did it mention that he was doing the speed limit when apprehended. Please refine your reading skills.

2) By your logic, if I can shoot you without a cop present, then I should get away with it. Even using that logic the guy was still caught. A police officer saw him speeding. What more is he supposed to do, jump in front of the guy? And you are also suggesting that the vehicle being monitored should be apprehended using a like vehicle, i.e. airplane/airplane, not airplane/motorcycle. Along those lines only a motorcycle could have pulled him over. So along those lines the police are supposed to use an 18-wheeler to pull over a trucker. :rolleyes:

Give me a break.
 
Asakha said:
Or maybe the cop should just have crash the plane on the bike to stop him !

That would be alot better then what hes doing now. The plaine should have lights. SO, it can fly right next to the guy. Now that would be better. But nooo. He has to snitch to the other donut eater and say such and such is coming and I timed him doin 80 over. What kind of bull is that!
 
Sifrino3 said:
What kind of bull is that!
I don't know, what kind of bull is doing 200+MPH on a state road on a motorcycle? And I'm going to have to ask you to refrain from insulting donuts in such a disrespectful manner. I happen to be quite fond of Krispy Kreme.
 
If the stopwatch guy was off by even half a second, that's somthing like 35-40 mph. May not seem like much, but neither is half a second.
 
There is no doubt he was speeding but it was probably a lot closer to 150 or less then 205. When I was a couple of decades younger I had a bike up to 115 and it was pretty intense. I wouldn't want to go over 200 on any bike.
 
CaptainZilog said:
If the stopwatch guy was off by even half a second, that's somthing like 35-40 mph. May not seem like much, but neither is half a second.
Yea, doing the math on it, the cop measured his speed over the course of a ¼ mile, or 1320ft. Even with that, if the cop had timed him for 5 seconds it still equates to 180mph, or even 6 seconds gives 150mph. That's still absolutely flying!
 
Hey Sifrino3, the troopers were doing their jobs that person could have died or worse could have killed someone if he lost control at that speed. A year ago i was at a biker rally when two of my friends riding Honda sport bikes had a bad wreck, iwas told that they were going in excess of 150 mph one guy was in front of the other and when the second guy top the hill he ran right into his brother, very fortunately no one died, the guy that was in front is doing good there were two girls in the accident and they are both recovered the second a good friend of mine is still messed up to this day. I heard that if he continues to make the kind of progress that he is making now he should make an almost full recovery. Those troopers probably saved that guys life.
 
Sifrino3 said:
If your going that speed. You understand the risk. Plain and simple. . .
Alright, THAT I cannot stand for. From that statement you are saying that as long as you know that you could potential kill OTHERS with your actions that it is perfectly condoned? NO WAY. Just because you don't care about dying doesn't give you the right to endanger the livelyhood of others. You have got to be kidding me. That is probably one of the shallowest comments I have seen pass through this forum, and I cannot believe that you truly think it is ok to kill other people if you don't know any better.
 
JoshMcMadMac said:
Alright, THAT I cannot stand for. From that statement you are saying that as long as you know that you could potential kill OTHERS with your actions that it is perfectly condoned? NO WAY. Just because you don't care about dying doesn't give you the right to endanger the livelyhood of others. You have got to be kidding me. That is probably one of the shallowest comments I have seen pass through this forum, and I cannot believe that you truly think it is ok to kill other people if you don't know any better.

If your going that speed. You understand the risk. Plain and simple. . .

I said the above. But you do understand that you could get hurt and die and you should expect to do the same to another person. That just might be in your way. But did I say it was okay. No. . . I said you understand the risks. Lets not hope you are self centered and only thinking about yourself. . . If that is so, you should xpect the worse and it will happen on a busy hwy instead of the back road. Blah, blah, blah. . .
 
Sifrino3 said:
If your going that speed. You understand the risk. Plain and simple. . .

I said the above. But you do understand that you could get hurt and die and you should expect to do the same to another person. That just might be in your way. But did I say it was okay. No. . . I said you understand the risks. Lets not hope you are self centered and only thinking about yourself. . . If that is so, you should xpect the worse and it will happen on a busy hwy instead of the back road. Blah, blah, blah. . .
The more you talk, the less intellgible you become. Please do us a favor and think, THEN type. That way perhaps we can better understand the happy-horse :q:q:q:q you try and speak. You constantly contridict yourself and backtrack on what you've already said. Please work on your typing skills, it really is becoming quite a hassle to decypher your mess of characters you consider to be a post. :rolleyes:
 
Aside from the completely off-topic jibes about typing skills, spelling, grammar, and whatnot, I'm more inclined to believe that there was no feasible way the rider was doing 205 when he was timed.

First, from numerous sources, it's been determined that the particular bike he was riding wasn't even capable of those speeds in the first place. That alone should raise the BS meter for most folks, but there's a couple other items as well.

Next, one might consider the concept of parallax error. The bike and the airplane were most likely NOT doing the exact same velocity at the same time, so the angle of view from the pilot to the biker would have had to change over time (even such a short time). Depending on altitude, even a couple degrees of error would change the speed computation in those circumstances. It's basic physics. If at 1000 feet of altitude, and say 10 degrees angle of view from the plane down, you start a stopwatch, and five seconds later you're at 1100 feet and 12 degrees of angle, your stop time will not accurately indicate the velocity as it would if everything remained constant. So, this would beg the questions. Did the pilot remain at EXACTLY the same altitude the whole time? Probably not, those little planes can bounce 50 feet up or down without even trying. Did the pilot keep the exact same degree of angle on the biker? Probably not, as they weren't travelling at exactly the same velocity. Hence, parallax error is going to be a fairly major factor.

Finally, the last item I could think of........Did the pilot possibly mistake the end mark when timing the biker? Instead of picking the proper mile post or something, maybe he picked a warning post by mistake, which would dramatically drop the elapsed time, and concurrently increase computed velocity by leaps and bounds.


Nutshell synopsis: Did the biker actually do 205? More than likely not. Were there enough variables to create such a disparity of reality versus reported speed? Almost certainly. Granted, the guy was speeding, no question, but there is no way that they can make that reported speed stick, if he or his attorney have any sense at all.

(these are the thoughts that probably kept me out of the really GOOD schools)
 
JoshMcMadMac said:
The more you talk, the less intellgible you become. Please do us a favor and think, THEN type. That way perhaps we can better understand the happy-horse :q:q:q:q you try and speak. You constantly contridict yourself and backtrack on what you've already said. Please work on your typing skills, it really is becoming quite a hassle to decypher your mess of characters you consider to be a post. :rolleyes:


me spekey no jeshmqmachmec!
 
The fact is that no Honda available to the public with performance parts added is capable of 205 MPH period.
 
BigT said:
The fact is that no Honda available to the public with performance parts added is capable of 205 MPH period.
That is the sort of thing I was looking to hear from a person with motorcycle experience! ;)
 

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