Lamborghini driver arrested after posting speeding video
A man is so proud of his Lamborghini Gallardo that he takes it above the speed limit. Two times above it. He then posts film of it on YouTube.
Pride comes before a visit from the police.
An example of this socially-networked maxim comes from Japan, where a man decided to drive his car toward its maximum.
His car happened to be a Lamborghini Gallardo, which tends to go like dung off a shovel -- a phrase I've never understood, as I've never seen dung fly quickly off a shovel.
This man, whose name has been withheld -- perhaps to protect him from admirers -- took his Gallardo out for a spin and spun it along at around 156 kilometers an hour. This is a mere 97 miles an hour. Did the Gallardo even get out of third gear?
The problem, sadly, was that the man knew that the speed limit in the tunnel in which he was driving was a mere 60 kilometers an hour.
Actually, the real problem was that he filmed himself speeding and then posted the video to YouTube.
As Bloomberg News reports it, the 38-year-old man's video, posted in March, caught the attention of misanthropes and ne'er-do-wells.
One or more of them were so appalled at his sheer irresponsibility, his mindless selfishness and, perhaps, his camera skills, that he was reported to the Hiroshima Prefecture Police.
Naturally, the 38-year-old man was arrested this week.
I am not sure whether Japan has criminal charges for hubris. Bloomberg merely suggests that he could face as much as six months in jail and a fine of around $1,260.
However, the context of this arrest is that Japan has endured something of a bonfire of car vanities lately.
Indeed, at the end of last year, 8 Ferraris, a Lamborghini, and couple of Mercedes were involved in a quite spectacularly self-conscious pile-up.
They were all on their way to a supercar shindig (described by police as "a gathering of narcissists") and managed to somehow corral a Prius into their accident. Fortunately, there were no reported injuries.
I know that many will be critical of this latest galling Gallardo driver. They will chide him for his laissez-faire attitude.
Surely, though, his real mistake lies in being so humongously self-involved that he needed to show the whole world just how humongously self-involved he really is.
This is nothing more than being a modern, socially-networked man.