I Read this today!

[msnden]

Search:
Articles-last 7 daysArticles-older than 7 days The Web for



News | Business | Sports | Entertainment | Living | Shop Local | Classifieds | Jobs | Cars | Homes








Sign Out







SUBSCRIBE
RENEW
START/STOP
ADVERTISE

LOCAL/COMMUNITY

NATION/WORLD
COLUMNISTS
OP/ED
POLITICS
OBITUARIES
BUSINESS
SPORTS
ENTERTAINMENT
LIFE & HOME
SHOPPING
TRAVEL
OUTDOORS/LEISURE
WEATHER
TRAFFIC
WEB EXTRAS
DISCUSSION
CONTESTS
E-NEWSLETTERS
QUICK VOTE
SPECIAL REPORTS
WEB LOGS
SERVICES
ARCHIVES
CONTACT US
NEWSPAPER ADS
MAPS & DIRECTIONS
TRAFFIC
PRINT EDITION
YELLOW PAGES



From the Press




• Pioneer Press Special Reports



Back to Home > St. Paul Pioneer Press > Tuesday, Sep 21, 2004











email this print this
Posted on Tue, Sep. 21, 2004



R E L A T E D L I N K S
• The faster lane




205 mph earns biker citation

Speeding ticket may be Minnesota record

BY HANK SHAW

Pioneer Press


Al Loney couldn't believe his stopwatch.

The Minnesota State Patrol pilot had been flying near Wabasha on Saturday afternoon, watching a pair of motorcycles racing each other along U.S. 61. When one of the bikes accelerated dramatically, Loney was ready — clicking his stopwatch when the cycle reached a white marker painted on the roadside.

A quarter-mile later, he clicked it again. It read 4.39 seconds, which Loney calculated to be an astonishing 205 mph.

"I was in total disbelief," Loney said. "I had to double-check my watch because in 27 years I'd never seen anything move that fast."

The bike was moving nearly twice as fast as Loney's airplane. After about three-quarters of a mile, the biker slowed to about 100 mph and let the other cycle catch up. By then Loney had radioed ahead to another state trooper, who pulled the two over soon afterward.

The State Patrol officer arrested the faster rider, 20-year-old Stillwater resident Samuel Armstrong Tilley, for reckless driving, driving without a motorcycle license — and driving 140 miles per hour over the posted speed limit of 65 mph.

Several law enforcement sources said Tilley might have set the record for the fastest speeding ticket in Minnesota history.

No comprehensive records are kept, but a search of speeding tickets written by state troopers, who patrol most of the state's highways, between 1990 and February 2004 shows the next fastest ticket was for 150 mph in 1994 in Lake of the Woods County.

Tilley, the son of a Washington County sheriff's deputy, did not return calls to his home Monday.

Few vehicles can reach speeds in excess of 200 mph. Only a handful of cars, such as the Dodge Viper, the Porsche Carrera and several Lamborghinis, can hit the 200 mark. But many of the so-called "crotch rocket" motorcycles popular with young men can top 175 mph. With minor modifications, they can top 200 mph. Tilley was riding a Honda 1000, Loney said.

State trooper Steve Stromback, one of the officers who arrested Tilley, said the biker was taking part in the semi-annual Flood Run, a motorcycle rally that started in Hudson, Wis. The ride, in which thousands of bikers participate, raised money for the Gillette Children's hospital this year.

Stromback said most of the participants obey the law, but added that police cited another eight bikers for driving more than 100 mph last weekend. Speed demons show up every year, Stromback said, which is why the State Patrol had aircraft and extra troopers in the area.

Kathy Swanson of the state Office of Traffic Safety said unless Tilley was wearing the kind of protective gear professional motorcycle racers wear, he was courting death riding at such a velocity.

"I'm not entirely sure what would happen if you crashed at 200 miles per hour," Swanson said. "But it wouldn't be pretty, that's for sure."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Staff writer Rick Linsk contributed to this report. Hank Shaw can be reached at hshaw@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5257.

email this print this






News | Business | Sports | Entertainment | Living | Shop Local | Classifieds | Jobs | Cars | Homes
About TwinCities.com | About the Real Cities Network | Terms of Use & Privacy Statement | About Knight Ridder | Copyright

[gambrinus]

205mph?!?! Holy Crap! I've hit 140 a couple of times and determined that to be as fast as I cared to go in anything without wings.. 205mph just boggles my mind.

[YB in IN]

Methinks that someone was a bit quick on the stopwatch. I don't think that a Honda CBR 1000 could top that. Now a Souped up Hayabusa maybe, but not a CBR.

[YB in IN]

I just saw a blurb on the scrolling byline on CNN. Great, yet another thing to piss off the general public towards motorcyclists.

[trmptrmrk]

"driving without a motorcycle license "?
:jawdrop
He didn't take the time to get licensed, so he probably didn't take the time to learn how to do much more than twist his wrist. So I wonder if he was wearing racing leathers.

[BouncinBob]

Originally posted by YB in IN
Methinks that someone was a bit quick on the stopwatch. I don't think that a Honda CBR 1000 could top that. Now a Souped up Hayabusa maybe, but not a CBR.


A dealer commented on this on another list I am on. He says that bike with some modification can maybe do a bike over 190. Suspects the rest is the trooper's finger. I'll bet the degree of accuracy of the stop watch method drops dramatically as speeds top 100 in the quarter mile. But it sure makes for a sensational headline.

[rocketman]

Originally posted by BouncinBob
A dealer commented on this on another list I am on. He says that bike with some modification can maybe do a bike over 190. Suspects the rest is the trooper's finger. I'll bet the degree of accuracy of the stop watch method drops dramatically as speeds top 100 in the quarter mile. But it sure makes for a sensational headline.

True, having been a timer at many of son's swim meets, it was rare that all three timers for each lane ever got the same time, so rare that they offered prizes when two or three timers got the same results. Figuring the differance in speeds of a teenager swimming and that of a bike going well over a hundred... besides, the differance between 180 and 205 are probably very small in any kind of unplanned get off!


RM

[Braddog]

I guess it was an RC51, V-Twin. Top speed of around 160. Only mods the bike had was a slipon.

The kid posted on SBN, I've been told.

It will be interesting to see how this all pans out, and what the young man ends up with.

[manicmechanic]

He ended up alive, which should suffice.

[fetishbear]

Originally posted by Braddog
I guess it was an RC51, V-Twin. Top speed of around 160. Only mods the bike had was a slipon.

The kid posted on SBN, I've been told.

It will be interesting to see how this all pans out, and what the young man ends up with.

Well, here's his side of the story...Posted on www.600rr.net

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"All right, I was the one who got the ticket and it is time to clear some things up. For one, I was riding a 2003 Honda RC51, "heavily modified" with 2 Brothers slip on pipes and, well thats all the mods I have unless you count the "I stop for wh***s" sticker. Next, the bike wasn't impounded, it was towed so it wouldn't be in the roadway. Ok, on to the tickets. 205...uh no. I am personal friends with the owner of "Hitman Motorsports" and tonight, Sept. 22, we did a top speed run on his dyno, in 6th gear, and maxed nearly 60mph slower than I was arrested for. The "no motorcycle endorsement" is because my licence was expired, I do have a motorcycle endoresement for all you people digging into me about that. The stop watch method may be accurate at times, but this is un-conceivable for my motorcycle to approach 205. Honda's RC211v, which is Honda's MotoGP race bike, 5 cyclinders and 268 horespower, just broke 200mph on the track within the last week. And we are talking about a 1/2 to 3/4 million dollar bike. And for you gear-heads, I had on Joe Rocket Boots, Shoei helmet, Leather gloves, Ballistic coat, and leather bottoms. Also, both of us were arrested, and no, the slower one did not get a warning, he was ticketed for 111mph on a F4i. I hope this clears things up for everybody, I am just sick of everyone saying things about what they dont know, making me look like this horrific person. People speed, and if anyone knows anything about the "Flood Run" (which was the ride I was on, which by the way benefits the Gillettes Children Fund) I would be a hell of a lot more concerned about the 7,000 bar-hopping motorcyclist out on the road. 99% of the people you hear things from are misinformed. If you have questions, I will answer them. And one last note, this is information you don't know, the pilot who clocked me, was clocking me, the F4i, and flying his plane at 110mph all at the same time. Think about that for a second.

TO answer some questions this happened about 5-6 miles south of Wabasha on 61 heading towards Winona. I haven't talked to the flood run organizers, however the officers did say they were there because they knew the event was taking place and they have had a history of "excessive speeders" on the last stretch down to Winona. And while we were on the side of the road, I would estimate 200-300 bikers passed us, but no one pulled over. And in response to Merlin509, there are some decent steches on that road, but even if my bike did do 205, I personally wouldn't feel comfortable. And the stretch down to Treasure Island you are talking about, one of my old roomates was killed on that road earlier this year.

And on the subject of this stopwatch calculation, you have to sit back and think, and believe me I have done a lot of this, about human reaction time, the fact that he was running two stop watches and flying his plane at the same time, his degree of angle on my when I crossed the hash-marks on the road, plus depth-perseption. I really do appreciate everyones feedback on this, and I will keep everyone informed."

[jgr451]

Well that's a bit of a different story.Wonder how the original got so embellished?

[Burnszilla]

Sep 24, 2004 9:43 am US/Central
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 where 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.