Vroom vroom bork bork bork

In Switzerland, apparently, speeding fines are determined by the speed you were doing and by your ability to pay. So, the Swedish gent who was clocked by Swiss police doing 290km/h or 180mph in a Mercedes sports car "could be given a world-record speeding fine of SFr1.08m ($1m; £656,000), prosecutors say."

This being Switzerland there will be four words for "schadenfreude", one of which is "schadenfreude".

And yet ...

This guy is Swedish, which I happen to know means he comes from a land where the average speed limit is 80 or 90km/h. Occasionally, just occasionally, a really good stretch of road will let you up to 100 and sometimes they go mad and let you do 110 for a stretch of about five miles before welcome sanity kicks in and they rope you back to 80 again.

For ease of reference, 8km = 5m. Do the maths.

Approaching a junction, even if you're in a 110 zone, the limit goes down to 70. And there are a lot of speed cameras. They're sign-posted but they're also unobtrusive - just slender little blue poles by the side of the road.

Not that most Swedes pay the limits the slightest attention, as far as I could see. We were rocking in the slipstream of Saabs and Volvos more times than I could remember. But even so, I do sympathise that this guy has probably wanted to go fast since he was born, and putting him a Merc in another country is just asking for trouble.

Should have been a fighter pilot, then ...