The Other Side of Speed
The other side of speed
UP FRONT
David Edwards
WE ALL LOVE A GOOD CHASE SCENE, don’t we? Steve McQueen evading evil Nazi hordes in The Great Escape. Burt Reynolds as “Bandit” gunning his Trans Am to greater glory in all those Smokey movies. Hell, NASCAR, now so mainstream it’s sickening, has at its roots a bunch of good ol' boys in jacked-up jalopies running white lightnin’ from the rev’nooers.
Fess up, having blown through some podunk speed trap, who among us hasn’t for an instant considered burying the twistgrip and making a run for it, leaving nothing but dust for the coppers to chew on?
I’m guilty.
Apparently, more and more of us are acting on those impulses, though.
California Highway Patrolman Steve Miles has as his beat twistfilled Ortega Highway, a favorite of SoCal sportbikers. He once turned his Crown Vic on its roof giving chase to a speeding motorcycle. “Bikes are incredibly fast. They’re difficult to chase,” Miles recently told the Los Angeles Times. “Usually they try to outrun us. They know they can.”
There are even websites dedicated to the dubious art of elusion on two wheels. One runner boasts, “I have gotten on it on the highway and disappeared. I have run in the boonies. I have run in residential areas. I have never been caught. As a matter of fact, I have no tickets and no accidents on my record. I even have a safe-driver discount...”
Though he does toss in this disclaimer: “The instant you whack that throttle open, tuck down and run from the cops, you are criminal scum. There is no way around this.”
Cue my good friend Chuck Davis.
Readers may recall my January, 2000, editorial, “Arkansas Travelers,” describing respectable family men, all established in their careers, alumni of various Cycle World GP Euro-Tours, and each committed to making continuing rider education a top priority. Chuck, a 48year-old Chicago-based management consultant, was among those mentioned. Slightly pear-shaped, hairline a distant memory, with a loving wife and two cute, college-bound daughters, Chuck could be your next-door neighbor.
He almost ended up criminal scum.
In August of 2000, Chuck was on a three-day ride with friends in Colorado, a fantastic backroads loop that took in the Royal Gorge Bridge, Durango and Aspen. At one point, the group traded bikes, Chuck landing in the saddle of a Honda CBR929RR. “I felt curiously invincible,” he remembers. “It was like strapping on a new pair of skis, riding that 929 for the first time.” Chuck charged ahead, running about 85 mph when Colorado State Trooper Thomas clocked him, wicked up his light bar and attempted to apprehend.
It’s then that Chuck turned a simple speeding citation into a life-threatening event-for him, fellow road users, pedestrians and the police. “I can’t really explain what happened...my thoughts were racing,” he says. Before him lay an open panoramic valley as far as the eye could see; beneath him 130 horsepower. Chuck pulled a runner. He was not drunk, he had no outstanding warrants, the bike he was riding was properly licensed and insured. Inexplicably, he just refused to pull over.
During the next 10 minutes, it’s reported that Chuck passed 12 cars across the double-yellow, went through one police roadblock, sped around a patrol car also blocking his path and eluded six cars in hot pursuit. The police report describes speeds of 145 mph. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
At some point during this severe case of cerebral flatulence, Chuck regained command of his senses, slowed to a stop, turned around and rode slowly back to meet his captors. His admonition that, “It was a stupid thing to do,” fell on deaf ears, seeing as how the pursuing officers, guns drawn, were understandably eager to have him off the bike, face-first on the asphalt and in handcuffs.
The charge was a serious one, evasion of a police officer, a Class 5 felony with the possibility of a year-and-half in prison if the DA pushed hard-which he was. Chuck hired an attorney and began two years of legal wrangling that culminated in the case coming to trial this past July at the Park County Courthouse in Fairplay, population 387. A hardscrabble town of patched tin roofs and dirt streets, Fairplay is philosophically a world away from the nearby chi-chi ski village of Breckenridge. After a day of jury selection, it was clear that the good citizens of Fairplay had little sympathy for out-ofstate flat-landers who treated their roads as a high-speed racetrack. Flown in to stand up for Chuck as a character witness, I met with his lawyer that night.
“Your friend is in a world of hurt,” he began.
Handwriting clearly on the wall, next morning Chuck copped a plea. In exchange for the felony charge being deferred (to be expunged in four years, if there are no future felonies or major traffic offenses), he agreed to spend 30 days in county jail, suffer a 12-point speeding ticket and pick up the prosecution’s court costs, about $5000. That’s on top of his lawyer’s fee, a hefty expert-witness bill and travel expenses for three character witnesses. Back in Illinois, he’s staring at a probable loss of license, high-risk insurance rates, four years of visits to a probation officer and other litigation expenses. “Roughly equal to a freshman year at Harvard University,” rues Chuck. All up, figure about $30,000. An expensive lesson.
“I want everyone to know the risks,” he says. “This event could have ended with a wadded-up bike, physical harm to others, an ended career, serious time behind bars. I’m thankful I was given a second chance.”
Still not convinced about the folly of fleeing? Think you’re fast and furious enough to outrun The Man? Maybe. But as one CHP officer reminded me, “Yeah, those bullet bikes are fast, but they still can’t beat a 186,000-mph radio wave..
