Speed Racer: Daredevil Arrested for Lapping 2nd Ring in 14 minutes
Ever been stuck in endless Second Ring Road traffic and daydream about hopping on a chopper and hightailing it out of there at record speed? Keep that fantasy in check: a biker was detained on Saturday for rocketing around the 34km (21 mile) circular roadway at an average speed of 237 km/h (147 mph), lapping it in a dizzying 14 minutes.
Police didn’t catch the biker—surnamed Peng and hailing from Guangxi—in the act. Instead, their evidence came from a video the boastful roadster posted on social media, giving viewers a first-person vantage of him zipping around the ring road on his Yahama YZF-R1 street bike in the dead of night, when its typically clogged lanes were all but empty.
Video: biker speeds around second ring road
After the clip went viral—racking up 220,000 views according to one news article—police zeroed in on Peng’s location in Guangxi, and apprehended him under the charge of dangerous driving.
The bizarre, high octane incident made headlines in the BBC and several other global outlets.
Such dangerous high speed stunts have plagued Beijing’s streets for years, as reckless drivers stage their own “The Fast and the Furious" style races.
In April, for instance, one Ferrari owner raced a rival driving a Lamborghini, resulting in the totalling of the latter vehicle and a passenger being injured.
Far more tragic incidents have occurred in February 2014, and December 2012, resulting in the death of a passenger and a driver, respectively.
A strange “high-speed sex game” was rumored to be the catalyst of the earlier Beijing incident.
Several other—equally unsettling and surreal—crashes have been documented on Car News China.
Meanwhile, in the annals of rich boys with their toys, a RMB 4.4 million white Lamborghini was abandoned at the north gate of Gongti early this morning after ramming eight other vehicles and injuring another driver.
There were no license plates on the car.
The car was reported to have damaged eight vehicles, four of them taxis, while driving the wrong way down the road at about 4:20am this morning (Oct 6).
One netizen reported seeing the driver of the sportscar take a jacket and a cellphone from the wreck and leave the scene in a pedicab.
Police have yet to track down the driver or the owner of the car.
Image: The Beijing News