{"id":7185,"date":"2011-11-04T12:31:15","date_gmt":"2011-11-04T12:31:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=7185"},"modified":"2011-11-04T12:31:15","modified_gmt":"2011-11-04T12:31:15","slug":"darwin-awards-2011-competition-hots-up-further","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=7185","title":{"rendered":"Darwin Awards 2011: Competition Hots Up Further"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I mentioned the <a target=\"_blank\" title=\"Darwin Awards 2011\" href=\"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=6235\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #800000; \">2011 Darwin Awards<\/a> earlier this year. But we have a new contender in the form of <span style=\"color: #800000; \">Robert Mark Owens , a surprisingly 48-year old motorcyclist.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Throw the Book\" title=\"Throw the Book\" width=\"180\" height=\"157\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7186 lazyload\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/flying_book.jpg\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 180px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 180\/157;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>He filmed himself driving at up to 150mph on his Kawasaki 600cc bike. He was also filmed doing wheelies, riding on footpaths, and weaving through traffic &#8211; presumably at speed.<\/p>\n<p>Owens&#8217; place in the Darwin Awards 2011 nominations list was secured when he then uploaded the footage to YouTube.<\/p>\n<p>Someone saw it and reported him anonymously to the police. The story doesn&#8217;t say precisely how they identified him, but it wouldn&#8217;t surprise me if he put his stupid face on the video in his quest for glory.<\/p>\n<p>Owens was given 10 points, disqualified for 5 years, ordered to take an extended test, do 150 hours of unpaid work, had his bike (\u00a33,000) and camera (\u00a3150) confiscated, and given a 51-week prison sentence (suspended for two years). In other words, he had the book thrown at him. So when I called him a &#8220;motorcyclist&#8221; earlier, I should perhaps have said &#8220;ex-motorcyclist&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Serves the idiot right, anyway. The courts should be this harsh on <strong>anyone <\/strong>who breaks the law anything like this &#8211; and someone stupid enough to broadcast their stupidity shouldn&#8217;t be allowed to drive again. Ever.<\/p>\n<p>The trouble is, the courts <strong>aren&#8217;t <\/strong>this harsh most of the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I mentioned the 2011 Darwin Awards earlier this year. But we have a new contender in the form of Robert Mark Owens , a surprisingly 48-year old motorcyclist. He filmed himself driving at up to 150mph on his Kawasaki 600cc bike. He was also filmed doing wheelies, riding on footpaths, and weaving through traffic &#8211; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,86,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adi-related","category-bad-drivers","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}