Well this is just plain ridiculous. Eyewitness News is reporting that policemen in Johannesburg are harassing owners of high-performance cars for rides in exchange not reporting their high-speed antics.

Hopefully none of the owners take the cops up on their offers, especially after the country witnessed what can happen when a driver loses control of an Audi R8 on a suburban road: half an Audi R8.

EWN spoke to an owner of a high-performance car in Johannesburg who said:

It’s been happening to me about three to four times a month. I have friends that also drive high performance cars and it also happens to them frequently . . . They’re [the police] quite happy to have you push the car, as hard as it can go.

Speculation now is rife as to whether this is what was going on with the Sandton officer who died in an Audi R8 last week. In that crash both the driver  Areff Haffejee and police officer Goodman Lubisi were killed when the car hit a tree, wall and light-pole on Oxford Road near Rosebank during the early hours of last Thursday morning.

The man who spoke to EWN also said that it was common practice for police officers to “bribe owners of the luxury vehicles to give them rides in exchange for the police forgetting about their misdemeanours.” Crazy.

The next logical step is for a hijacking gang, specialising in top-end high-performance cars to operate straight out of the SAPS HQ. Or the solution could be for out police to take the Italian approach and equip some of the force with Lamborghini Gallardos. You know our police have huge problems when instead of preventing laws from being broken, they are encouraging motorists to break the law for their own shits and giggles.

[Source: Eyewitness News]