Norwegian Police have revoked a special speed licence issued to Top Gear after one of its supercars was clocked doing 151mph in a 50mph tunnel.
The permit allowed the 3.5 mile Atlantic Ocean Tunnel tunnel to be closed, so the BBC2 show would not be interrupted while filming there with a Ferrari GTC4 Lusso and Porsche Panamera Sport. Once filming was underway, sensors mounted within the tunnel alerted police to the vehicle travelling at 151mph – or over three times the posted speed limit.
The BBC have insisted that Matt LeBlanc and Chris Harris were not in the area at the time the reading was recorded, but officers are demanding to know who was behind the wheel of the speeding car.
“We are fully co-operating with the police”, a BBC spokesman told The Sun.
Police chief Anne Berit Lian said: “At present, one cannot determine who was behind the speed violations. The investigation is aimed at uncovering this. Permits to exceed the speed limit have been revoked.”
This latest incident comes after Top Gear failed attempt to have a 50 mph speed limit removed while filming last year in Romsdal, Norway, when Chris Evans was host. On that occasion, the £250,000 shoot was cancelled because police refused to up the speed limit – even after the cars were shipped over, roads closed and helicopters organised.
3 comments
This stupid things is typical Norwagian state is shitt.
A permit was given to exceed the speed limit, then they were upset when you exceeded the speed limit. So what was the point of the permit?!
I doubt that permit was valid for the tunnel, at least at that speed.
An accident in an undersea tunnel at that speed would most likely result in the death of whoever was in the car, and possible major structural damage to the tunnel, putting it out of use for months.
(it’s a single tunnel with 2 lanes, no parallell rescue tunnel or anything.)
And that’s not counting the danger to the firefighters who has to go in and extinguish the fireball.
Also, the permit was only valid during filming. As the crew maintains that the ‘stars’ were not driving, it must be assumed that this was just transporting the cars from one site to another, so not a valid use of the permit.