Swedish motorist slapped with world’s largest motoring fine

A 47 year old Swedish driver is not facing the prospect of having to pay a whopping €650,000 motoring fine after he was clocked by a speed camera travelling at 180mph on a Swiss motorway. The man who was driving his £140,000 Mercedes SLS AMG will now have to pay the fine which is about £538,000, he also had his car impounded and license confiscated by Swiss authorities.

After he was caught speeding on the the A12 highway between Bern and Lausanne on Friday, a police spokesman said: ‘we have no record of anyone being caught travelling faster in the country.’ The unnamed man was arrested shortly after when he stopped in a lay by and he was released after questioning. It is believed that he was collecting the brand new car from a seller in Germany.

Benoît Dumas, a police officer in the area where the SLS six-litre-engine car was impounded, said: ‘He needed over half-a-kilometre of road to come to a halt.’ It’s thought that the driver had not been caught on other speed cameras on his journey because he was going too fast and the instruments were incapable of clocking any speed beyond 200kph, the reason he was finally caught is because he passed a new generation of radar machines.

After he was caught the driver told police: ‘I think the Speedo on the car, which is new, is faulty.’ It’s thought that he is unlikely to go to jail but he is expected to be hit with the landmark fine because of the way speeding fines are administered in Switzerland. There his case will be judged by a magistrate and the fine will be based on his income and the ‘extraordinary speed’ at which he was travelling, in both Switzerland and Germany it is common for fines to be levied in such a way. Its normal in Switzerland for a fine to be dependent on a person‘s income and in this case the suspect is very rich indeed.

The Swedish driver is now facing the highest possible penalty of 300 days of fines at 3,600 Swiss francs a day which comes out to close to 650,000 Euros, his car will also now undergo a technical inspection to see if his tale of a faulty odometer holds up.

Picture courtesy of RUD66

Motoring World News