205 mph earns biker citation

[gav]

Now how did I know some smart arse was going to post that photo? You think it would hit 205?

[Bodge]

Yep thats what I would classify as a minor modification....

[Gasman]

I think it's fair to say that the US has the most outdated and downright stupid system of law enforcement on the roads of any 'developed' nation. Hey, they still make you walk the line to see if your'e drunk. It's apparantley unconstitutional to use electoronic means. What utter bullshit! Any using a stopwatch and a white post to time a rider, probably 3,000 feet below (1,000 minimum) is equally bullshit. However, I bet it would stand up in court in many of those smaller communities, where the rule of law is also the rule of the local judge. I think we've seen enough evidence of that, e.g. the town where the sherrif and deputies arrested every biker one weekend because they 'thought' they might be a law breaker going to an illegal gathering. So much for the land of the free.

[Wenier]

They can actually do something like that, GOD. every biker arrested for possibly nothing, glad i dont live in america.

[vifferman]

They can actually do something like that, GOD. every biker arrested for possibly nothing, glad i dont live in america.

Well, they've done things like closed car-parking areas on some of the winding roads to stop the "rice-rocket jockeys" from 'racing on their high-powered murdersikkles' in the weekends, and stationed cops with radar all up and down the road to put a stop to this unlawful behaviour.
But it's not like that everywhere in the US.

[marty]

the 1000 foot (300 metres) minimum is a NZ CAA limit. this can drop to 500 feet (150ish metres) in certain conditions/areas. i am sure in the usa a police spotter plane flying around in the desert can fly at whatever level they want - eagle in auckland often flies at 1000ft AGL - they are almost always cleared to 'not above 1500 feet'.

i can think of 1/2 dozen times when bikes/cars have outrun Eagle on the hauraki plains/southern motorway. it's always gonna hurt when the pilot stands up in court and says " he goddamn outrun my aeroplane your honor'

who cares anyway? the guy was riding fast, and got the bragging rights from hell! good on him.

[gav]

[Coldkiwi]

grey/red/black sounds like a CBR to me. a 'minor modification' in the US could well be a few KG's of Nos strapped to the bike and some mad gearing. After all, that picture of the VTR would suggest that there's almost nothing you can't do to your vehicle and not get it a road legal certificate.. this is the country that has road legal cars powered by rolls royce 12L Merlin ex-p51 mustang engines!! Yes 200mph is damn fast and would be heavily modded by our standards... but the guy who took the ticket is probably a fan of 8000hp top fuel dragsters where even Nos is childs play!

[gav]

NO No No, it was a RC51 US spec, they call them an RVT1000 (cue photo about here)

apparently the local TV show showed aphoto of a CBR1000RR and the (red neck) rider rang them up and explained that he had an RC51.

[scumdog]

Maybe it is like NZ where all you have to do is exceed 50 kmh over the limit and you've maxed out your speeding fine??

[marty]

even if there was a 1.5 second error in the cop's timing (6 seconds for 400m), that still means around 240km/h - not 205mph i know, but if it was 5 seconds for 400m - that's 288kmh.......

[sAsLEX]

the 1000 foot (300 metres) minimum is a NZ CAA limit. this can drop to 500 feet (150ish metres) in certain conditions/areas.

topdressing?? do these guys have a special allowance, seen them get lower than 150m

[Bob]

The US Racing press have come out against the 205mph claim made by the state trooper.

See here for the article.

[marty]

topdressing?? do these guys have a special allowance, seen them get lower than 150m

150m is pretty high - close to the low flying zone height of 500ft - todressers are more like zero to 30 feet when spraying, 100 feet when dumping super. they operate under their part of the civil aviation rules, which allows them to operate under certain conditions, when undertaking topdressing operations.

[vifferman]

Motorcycle enthusiasts question 205 mph ticket

WABASHA, Minn. (AP) — There's little doubt that a Stillwater motorcyclist could wind up his Honda sport motorcycle past 180 mph, but members of the motorcycle racing world question whether the State Patrol was correct to cite him for 205 mph last weekend.
The State Patrol is standing by its stopwatch, and the speeding ticket a veteran trooper wrote for Samuel Tilley for driving his 2003 Honda RC51 on U.S. Highway 61 near Wabasha on the state's eastern border.

Tilley faces misdemeanor charges of speeding, reckless driving and riding without a motorcycle license. He has declined repeated requests for comment from several media outlets in the past few days.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press first reported the details of the ticket, which is unofficially the highest ever written in the state, on Tuesday. Soon motorcycle enthusiasts were buzzing about whether Tilley really broke the 200 mph barrier.

"Theoretically, it could happen — anything is possible — but I don't believe it," said John Ulrich, editor of Roadracing World, a magazine that covers sport bike racing. "Guys who want to break speed records and go over 200 mph have to go to great lengths to get there."

Ulrich questioned the State Patrol's timing methods, in which a trooper in an airplane used a stopwatch to calculate how long it took Tilley to cover a certain distance. Other enthusiasts said if the timing were off by only a half-second, it would drop Tilley's speed to about 185 mph.

While that would be still be the unofficial state record, and within the specifications for Tilley's Honda, it wouldn't break the prestigious 200 mph mark.

Department of Public Safety Spokesman Kevin Smith there was no reason to believe the trooper, who had 27 years of experience, was wrong. He said the Honda could go 205 mph.

"What we have is what we have," Smith said. "That is the number he came up with, and there's really no going back on it."

Legally, he said, there wasn't much difference between 205 mph and 185 mph because even the lower speed wouldn't help defend against the reckless driving charge. "Let's say he was going 186 — that's still 121 mph over the speed limit. I don't see the relevance," Smith said.

As it is, motorcycle experts say that most unmodified sport bikes already top out at about 185 mph because of limits with their fuel injectors.

To get an RC51 up to 200 mph, they say, the owner would have to change the motorcycle's transmission, fuel injectors and gears — and might have to add either a supercharger or pump nitrous oxide or methane into the fuel system.

All of these changes are possible, but expensive. And anyone with those kinds of modifications isn't likely to tool around southern Minnesota with nitrous or jet fuel in his bike, they say.

"It's just not something that some dude can roll out of his garage and go for a ride and do," Ulrich said. "A hundred fifty? No problem. Two hundred? Big problem."

Tilley will get a chance to plead his case in Wabasha County District Court on Oct. 25.
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And here's some other comments, from a friend of mine in Murka:
"That's been kicked around a lot on the DC-Cycles list and the VFR list, including some forwarded comments from the ticketee. At first folks on the DC-Cycles list thought it was a CBR1K double-R, but it later turned out to be an RC51, which makes the claim by the cops of 205 mph even more improbable. Maybe downhill, with hurricane-force tailwinds..... And, I'm bet all those factory teams are wondering where they went wrong, if some kid can best them on a highway in Minnesota.

Ticketee made a good observation, he said the cop in the airplane supposedly clocked both bikes in the 1/4-mile timing zone, not to mention flying while all this was going on. It's BS, and the cops trying to steal some headlines. There was some sort of big rally in the area and that explains all the police presence.

So, I don't see a problem with the guy getting it knocked down to 60-over or so."