A Holden ute that was clocked at “one of the highest ever speeds” detected on South Australian roads has been crushed by police.
The vehicle, worth an estimated $20,000, was clocked at 253 kilometres an hour on the North-South Motorway at Waterloo Corner in January.
Superintendent Darren Fielke said the incident was “completely unacceptable”.
“This is one of the highest ever speeds that we’ve detected on South Australian roads,” he said.
“This really puts the full stop for this particular matter here today but it sends the message that if you’re going to engage in behaviour like this, then you’re going to lose your car.”
Superintendent Fielke said driving at such speeds could have been “catastrophic” for the driver and others.
“Heaven forbid if he would have collided with anybody else or any other thing it would have been catastrophic for an untold amount of people,” he said.
Although no one was injured in that incident, Superintendent Fielke said speeding had accounted for “over a third” of the fatality crashes that occurred on South Australian roads.
“This year the amount of lives lost is off the chart,” he said.
“It is unacceptable. We can’t continue to tolerate this.”
Under South Australian law, drivers who commit certain offences can have their cars crushed or sold.
Some impounded cars are sold at auction, with the proceeds given to the Victims of Crime Compensation Fund, while those deemed unroadworthy or defective — like the Holden ute — are destroyed.
Police Minister Joe Szakacs said 1,500 people were “permanently deprived of their vehicle” last year.
“That is a lot of cars and roughly about two-thirds of those cars were demolished,” he said.
“About a third of all vehicles are sold, and that’s because we must, where we can extract maximum value from the cars we strip from hoon drivers.
“All of that money is reinvested into supporting victims of crime.
“But the roughly 900 last year that were crushed or ripped apart for scrap metal were done so in large part because they were also unroadworthy.”
Mr Szakacs said he believed the learner driver of the Holden ute was the first to be jailed under a recent law change targeting extreme speeding.
The driver, now aged 20, was sentenced to at least seven months in jail in July for a string of offences committed on multiple occasions and will be disqualified from driving once released. (ABC News)