Ridiculous excuses Townsville drivers use to get out of speeding tickets

THE leading excuses people use to try and get out of a speeding ticket are easily being flushed by police. But still people try and get away with this messy one.

EXPLOSIVE diarrhoea and being late to doctors appointments are two of the most popular excuses drivers in Townsville use to try to get out of speeding ticket.

But officer-in-charge of the Townsville Road Policing Unit Senior Sergeant Brendan White said these were easy to disprove.

“We do get on a regular basis, people racing to the doctors, but the majority of the time they are usually travelling in the wrong direction,” he said.

“Which is very easy to disprove because the officer, in the course of his or her inquiries, will ask where the doctor is and ring and ask where the appointment is.

“People I think they just try it, a quick-thinking thing, but it’s easy to disprove.”

Sen-Sgt White’s comments come as Department of Transport and Main Roads data revealed about 20 people were fined for speeding in the Townsville police district every day.

In 2017, leadfoots across all speed ranges were fined a total of $2.5 million. The largest portion of them were travelling between 13km/h and 20km/h above the speed limit, which attracts a fine of $261.

Sen-Sgt White said explosive diarrhoea seemed to be the go-to excuse.

“But when you look at where they’ve come from, they’ve passed three shopping centres, two service stations, and they’ve had heaps of opportunity,” he said.

“When you ask them why they didn’t use those, they say they don’t use public toilets, and obviously if you had explosive diarrhoea you would be using anything you could.

“The diarrhoea one is the most popular excuse that people use, thinking that police officers would be so turned off by talking about diarrhoea that they won’t proceed.”

Sen-Sgt White said speeding had declined in recent years due to visible policing.

“There are less and less people doing the wrong thing, but there are still too many people doing the wrong thing,” he said.

“I think some people lose track of what they’re doing, thinking about other things unaware of the speed limits.

“And then there’s a smaller portion that don’t care, they regard their driving skills as quite high, they’re a better driver fast, we often hear.”

A total of 3115 drivers were fined for speeding in the Townsville Police District up to the end of May.

Police in the district handed out 12,094 speeding tickets in 2014, 10,643 in 2015, and 8640 in 2016.

Nearly one in every five Queenslanders were caught speeding last year, with a total of 917,905 tickets issued. Two-thirds of drivers across the state were booked for driving less than 13km/h over the speed limit.

Sen-Sgt White said police would do all they could to help someone who was caught speeding for a genuine health ailment.

“We have intercepted people who have had diarrhoea obviously, you know it’s genuine then, messy but genuine,’ he said.

Originally published as Ridiculous excuses Townsville drivers use to get out of speeding tickets