Timothy Brady, 33, pleaded guilty at Oxford Crown court to dangerous driving. He was clocked driving a Porsche 911 Turbo at 172 mph. That is the fastest speed ever recorded in a routine speed check in the UK.Insp Martin Percival, of Thames Valley Police, said: “All road users share a great responsibility to others and need to realise that high speed increases the chance of failing to react to an emergency, let alone take sufficient action to resolve it.” Insp Percival said the 172mph speed equated to 77m per second.
“To put that into context, the average duration of a single blink of the eye is 0.3 seconds, during which time the car would have travelled 23m (five car lengths).”
In fact the constable who recorded the incident didn’t at first realise what had happened.
“I thought I’d had some sort of stroke,” said Constable Happening, “I saw a blur of light and lost all the feeling in my toes. There was a breeze as if an angel was passing and I heard the distant sound of Johnny Cash singing ‘I Walk the Line’. It turned out that Mr Brady had run over my toes, luckily he was travelling so fast that it only left a fleeting impression.”
A more permanent impression was recorded by the speed cameras and Mr Brady faces ten weeks in jail.
Previous record holder, Jason McAllister, recorded a time of 156mph driving on the A90 between Aberdeen and Dundee.
“If you’ve ever spent time in Dundee you’ll know why he was leaving so fast,” said an Aberdonian.