Fastest Texas Speeding Ticket Story Arouses Controversy
Sammy Hagar's famous song "I Can't Dive 55" was an anthem. Many Americans rebelled against slower speed limits, especially in a state known for long distances and personal freedom. The fact that there are states with faster-posted speed limits than Texas bothers some people.
Against that backdrop, tickets for Texas's fastest speeders are the stuff of legend. There is some controversy about the actual fastest speed ever ticketed in Texas.
There is a widely believed story that the fastest ticketed speed in Texas history went to Arthur Chirkinian for driving his Koenigsegg CC 242 mph in a 75-mile-per-hour speed zone during a Texas road rally in 2003.
This was even posted on the widely known blog "winIt" in their list of the fastest speeding tickets in each state.
The auto in question pictured above is no stranger to speed. Reaching the alleged speed of 242 would have been no problem for the vehicle. In 2017m a Koenigsegg Agera RS became the world's fastest production car with an average speed of 277.9 mph.
There is a problem with this speeding ticket story. There are a lot of problems, actually.
According to Road and Track, the speeding ticket supposedly occurred during the 2003 Gumball 3000. The Gumball 3000 was a 3-thousand-mile race with a high entry fee meaning only celebrities and the ultra-wealthy could participate. The 2003 rally where Texas's fastest speeding ticket supposedly occurred was on the Texas leg of the race, which started in Miami and ended in San Francisco.
Midway through the race, as the story has it, a Koenigsegg received a speeding ticket for going 242mph in a 75 mph zone. The problem is there is no official record of this happening. People who believe the story says that Arthur Chirkinian was stopped but talked his way out of a ticket.
I have a real problem with that part of the story.
There are other problems with the story. The Koenigsegg CCR didn't go into production until 2004, one year after the race. Maybe it was a prototype. The predecessor of the CCR was the CC8s, which had a top speed of 240.
Another problem with this story is that police radars generally do not record speeds in access of 199mph. In 2003, it would have been impossible for a police department to measure a speed of 242 miles an hour reliably.
The verdict on this story is that it is probably just a well-known urban myth. It's a great story, but it's just that, a story.
If you discount this story, the fastest ticket in Texas state history went to Alex Roy, driving a highly modified BMW M5 at the time of the incident in 2003 near Rockwall, Texas. He was traveling at 181 miles an hour.
Another high-speed ticket story gained a lot of attention in 2017. A man named Samuel Reyes April 2017 was driving his orange Ford Mustang on the Grand Parkway in Harris County clocked by an officer at 162 mph in a 75 mph speed zone.
This story went viral at the time because the police officer engaged in a high-speed pursuit with Reyes. In that incident, Reyes eventually pleaded guilty to a reckless driving charge and was given probation, a $500 fine, and to perform 160 hours of community service.
Even at that, he was lucky that he escaped the incident alive and no innocent persons traveling on the roadways were injured.
