I was booked for speeding last week, an unfortunate occupational hazard.

But I wasn’t driving through a school zone, nor was it on a busy highway or a dual carriageway through suburbia.

It was on a quiet, long open road stretch on the Oxley Highway between Port Macquarie and Walcha on the New England Tableland in NSW.

There was hardly any traffic, it was 12.30pm on Friday, the road was clear, vision was perfect with a cloudless sky and bright sunshine.

I’m not making an excuses but it wasn’t a fair cop. I wasn’t endangering the lives of other motorists, driving recklessly or at mega-speeds. There were few vehicles on the road and there was plenty of vision for kilometres ahead.

I was driving one of the safest cars available. A high performance BMW M3 Convertible, which is designed to travel on German autobahns at more than 200km/h with brakes, Electronic Stability Control and other passive and active high-tech systems on board to make the driving experience safe and secure.

But the copper was being sneaky. He had hidden up a farmer’s driveway and I didn’t see him until we had passed and my driving companion spotted the white Mitsubishi Pajero.

We were on a 110km/h speed limited road and when I looked down I realised we were above that, around 140km/h.

The man in blue was using a hand-held radar gun and didn’t even bother to step out and wave us down.

No, he climbed into the 4WD and gave ‘chase’.

By this stage I was sitting on 110km/h and it took him several minutes to catch up with his blue and red lights flashing. We couldn’t pull over safely for a couple of kilometres because of the drop off the main road. In fact, we had to use a farmer’s driveway to park.

I was booked for doing 140km/h in a 110km/h zone. No excuses were accepted and I received a $238 fine and the loss of three points. Don’t ask me how he calculated $238.

The last time I was booked was in New Zealand in December last year when I received a speed camera fine of $30 for doing 55km/h in a 50km/h zone.

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