Would-be teen racer gets bagged
January 7, 2008
Tried to goad an unmarked Chevrolet Impala police car into an impromptu highway drag race.
Sgt. Cam Woolley of the OPP highway safety division said the teen was driving his parents’ 2008 Chrysler 300 toward Windsor on Friday when he pulled up alongside the unmarked OPP vehicle, a Chevrolet Impala with tinted windows.
Police say he repeatedly tried to get the Impala, driven by the Chatham-Kent OPP detachment commander, to race. The Chrysler’s speed reached over 160 km/h.
The teen was pulled over and arrested. His licence was suspended and the car impounded for a week. He also faces a minimum $2,000 fine if convicted.
Woolley said the teen’s parents had to pick him up after the car was taken away.
Nobody likes getting a ticket, obviously, but I for one rather enjoy the fact that more and more police departments are using ‘ghost cars’. People will do very stupid things on the road when they think a cop isn’t watching, not so much when they think a cop might be…and I for one think that stupidity in a vehicle almost always deserves to be rewarded with harsh fines. Hence my love of ghost cars.
I’ve never seen Edmonton drivers, in everyday circumstances, obey the rules of the road as well or as rigidly as they do as when an interceptor has been in plain view nearby. I feel a swell of guilty enjoyment when I see the car that went whipping past me twenty blocks earlier pulled over on the side of the road with an unmarked cop car sitting behind it.
