Blink And You Might Miss This NYE Driver Outrunning Cops At 156 MPH

There's fast, and then there's way too fast. The Washington State Patrol released a video showing a car speeding past a trooper, at night, in the fog, with no lights, on New Year's Eve. That, for many reasons, was very illegal, from WSP Trooper Rick Johnson's description:

A trooper pulled over to the right shoulder SB I-5 near S. 188th to look for a vehicle that was observed by another trooper at an extremely high rate. The vehicle passed the trooper at 156 mph and quickly disappeared into the fog. The vehicle was not located and thankfully no collision occurred!

While this is not the fastest speeder we've ever seen, it's still way too fast for American highways and more than double the maximum speed allowed on any Washington highway. If you want to go that fast, take it to the track, or maybe Arizona, if it removes numerical speed limits from rural highways.

A speed of 156 mph would be too fast on a bright, sunny day. But since Washington is in the Pacific Northwest, it's foggy and gloomy, significantly reducing visibility. It's even worse in the middle of the night when it's easy to overdrive your not-so-great headlights. That doesn't really matter, though, because this driver didn't have their headlights on at all, perhaps to evade police or maybe out of sheer neglect.

Finally, this incident took place on New Year's Eve. There were a lot more drunk drivers on the road, and a lot more police cracking down hard (I know someone who got stopped for 48 in a 45 that night). It's probably the worst time to be setting a new land speed record on Interstate 5. It's truly amazing they didn't hit anyone or anything. People like this are why the NTSB is calling for speed restrictors on new cars.

Washington is the eighth most likely state to get a speeding ticket. However, we would not recommend adding this method to your plans for avoiding traffic tickets. This particular driver got away with it, mainly because they were going too fast to get a license plate number or even the car's make and model, making it impossible to identify the owner and who was driving. Even the Washington State Patrol's plan to pick them up down the road didn't work because they were too invisible and too fast for the trooper to get up to speed in time. Don't try this at home.