The excuses put forward by some motorists to justify their speeding to the police or gendarmes are sometimes unusual, and often ineffective. Here is a selection of some nuggets.
The automatic radars are relentless: speeding + flash = PV. But when the police or gendarmes carry out an interception, it can be tempting for the perpetrator of a traffic violation to seek to justify his fault, and to urgently imagine a sufficiently credible pretext to hope to escape the sanction. Very often, this leads to funny exchanges that the police and the local press do not fail to report.
Drivers in a hurry
Among the most common excuses is that of “urgent need”. Last summer in Haute-Saône, a motorist flashed at 180 km / h on an axis limited to 80 km / ha tried to justify his speed by an urgent desire to urinate. In 2019 on the Nîmes side, the gendarmes had to deal with an offender spotted at 107 km / h in an area limited to 80 km / h on the pretext of imminent diarrhea in an attempt to remove the men in blue. Before what comes out, there is what comes in, and the pretexts are sometimes of a culinary nature. ” I didn’t want to eat my cold McDonald’s », Thus pretext in 2018 a motorist of the North intercepted at 174 km / h where the limit was 80 km / h. Putting frozen products in the freezer as quickly as possible is also a well-known excuse, as police officer Alexandre Despretz reported in 2015 in a book entitled “Good excuses from bad drivers“.
TO READ. Radars. Soon the automatic report for lack of technical control?
Some say they are possessed
Sometimes offenders ask the officers who intercept them to get into their minds. In 2019 in Banyuls-sur-Mer in the Pyrénées-Orientales, a man explained that he was possessed by the spirit of Michael Schumacher to clear himself of his speeding ticket. Arrested in possession of drugs, he did not specify whether it was the seven-time F1 world champion who pushed him to smoke several dozen joints of cannabis per day as he indicated to the judge in immediate appearance. In February 2020 in Lot-et-Garonne, a driver stopped on a road limited to 80 km / h explained that an obsessive-compulsive disorder pushed him to align the needle of his speedometer forward, i.e. 110 km / h. But it was at 142 km / h that he had been flashed.
And others a little too conscientious
Can speeding be overzealous? Some drivers justify their offenses by their desire to maintain their vehicle properly. Just a few days ago, at the beginning of December 2021 in Isère, a motorist intercepted at 149 km / h on a lane limited to 80 km / h explained that he was obliged to accelerate to compensate for the ” regeneration problems »Of its exhaust depollution system. Even some elected officials adopt this strategy. In 2014, Jean-Louis Hennon, then mayor of Courcelles-Epayelles in the Oise, explained that he had driven at 154 km / h on a secondary road as follows: “ Usually I drive normally. But that day the weather was fine, I left for Maignelay to wash my car and on the way back I accelerated for a kilometer to dry my car. His license was withdrawn. It is expensive to wash. Any anecdotes to share? React in the comments!
Sources : Courrier Picard, l’Indépendant, Presse de Vesoul, Dauphiné Libéré, Gendarmerie du Nord, France 3 Nouvelle-Aquitaine, C8, radars-auto.com