Fined over $6,000 for driving over 400 miles per hour in an urban area: how is this possible?

When a man behind the wheel of an Opel Astra opened his mail in Belgium, he found a speeding ticket that defied logic and physics. The authorities claimed he had been clocked at nearly 700 kilometers per hour – which translates to around 435 miles per hour – while driving through a city. His fine? A jaw-dropping €6,597 (about $7,125).

If you have even a basic knowledge of standard cars, you may have spotted a problem: the Opel Astra tops out at 146 mph on its best day, and that’s likely with the pedal glued to the floor and with a supportive tailwind. Even the world’s fastest production car, the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+, only manages around 280 mph. In fact, the motorcycle land-speed record is clocked at 376 mph. The ticket accused him of driving faster than the top speed of a commercial airliner preparing for takeoff.

Could a radar gun be so wrong?

As tempting as it is to believe someone slipped a rocket engine into a family hatchback a la Gru, the more mundane culprit was a faulty speed camera. According to Auto Zeitung, the radar device responsible for the reading had a coding error. Somewhere between measurement and paperwork, a digit got scrambled, turning a modest speed into something out of a science fiction movie. The radar gun reported a velocity of 696 km/h (432 mph) when the Astra was actually cruising at a more reasonable 60 km/h (37 mph).

If you’re wondering how fast 696 km/h really is, that’s about 193 meters per second – enough to cover the length of two football fields in less time than it takes to blink.

Did the Belgian driver have to pay?

Would you believe that the driver did indeed have to pay? But not the $7,125 ticket.

Once the error was caught, the fine was recalculated based on the driver’s real speed. And while 37 mph in a 31 mph zone doesn’t sound like headline material – I certainly wouldn’t be writing this piece if that was the only story – it’s still enough to warrant a small fine under Belgian law. The final amount, while not confirmed, was said to likely be around €53 ($57), the standard penalty for exceeding the speed limit by less than 10 km/h in Belgian residential areas.

So, no world records were broken, no Opel Astra was turned into a supersonic experiment, and no one had to sell their house to pay for a speeding ticket. But the case does serve as a reminder: technology isn’t always perfect.

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