Policeman charged for chasing speeding Ferrari
The incident happened in April 2006 on the E6 road in southern Sweden. The Ferrari 360 Modena was being driven by owner Bo-Göran Sederlin to a meeting of car enthusiasts, when it met another Ferrari on the motorway. When another car started chasing the two Ferraris, Bo-Göran Sederlin says he feared that his car was about to be hijacked. In fact, the other car was an unmarked police car.
The police set up road blocks to try to catch the car, but when Sederlin reached the block he did a u-turn and drove the wrong way down the motorway. He told Aftonbladet that he still had not realized that it was the police who were trying to stop him. The police car had no blue lights and no police markings.
"I thought he was trying to ram us. I swerved to avoid him, and he smashed into my right side. It was crazy," Sederlin told Aftonbladet. The car, worth one million kronor, smashed into a crash barrier and was written off.
Now both Sederlin and the policeman are being charged with careless driving. Prosecutors say they want to see how far police officers are allowed to go to stop dangerous driving.
"We have to test where the limits are," said prosecutor Kristian Augustsson to Helsingborgs Dagblad.
The head of Helsingborg's traffic police, Roland Johansson, said that police "must be able to stop people who show obvious disregard for the lives of others."