Please Don’t Try Gordon Ramsay’s Very Illegal Trick to Avoiding Speeding Tickets

Plastic wrap on the license plate? Rubbish, just rubbish.

byKyle Cheromcha|
Share

0

Listen, we understand. Speeding tickets are a major bummer. But we still have to rule against following the example of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, who recently told Mirror that he uses plastic cling wrap to cover the license plates on his Ferrari California T so speed cameras can't make out the numbers and track him down.

The Hell's Kitchen host and global restaurateur is no stranger to speed, boasting a nine-car fleet of Ferraris that includes a 1-of-150 LaFerrari Aperta. Eight of them reside in London, while Ramsay keeps his aptly-named California T at his home in Los Angeles. And with a new restaurant opening in Las Vegas, he's been making the long and dusty trip between the two cities quite frequently and speedily—but not without his secret sauce.

"I’ll take it out at 2:30 in the morning on the freeway and I’ll blast on the motorway, and no police catch me and no cameras because I wrap my number plates with cling film," Ramsay said. "It’s a great thing for a chef when they get your own Ferrari, just wrap it with cling film. It won’t photograph, it reflects. Brilliant! It’s a great tip. I’m trying to help you."

Brits and Americans use different words for different things, but we're pretty sure "help" isn't one of them. For one, speed cameras can see through plastic wrap, and the idea that they can't is something of a myth (conveniently busted by Mythbusters a few years back). There are other ways of stealthily stopping a speed camera from reading his plate, and while some work better than others, they're all illegal in California and most other states.

Not only does plastic wrap not block out a speed camera, it's also fairly obvious to anyone with eyes. Should a cop drive up behind him and notice his handiwork, he's definitely looking at a ticket for an obscured plate. We can sympathize with Ramsay's desire to put his foot down with a 552-horsepower, twin-turbocharged V8 under the hood of that Ferrari California T, but he'd be better off with a creative defense than these sorts of extralegal measures.

There is one foolproof way to beat a speed camera (aside from stealing it), though we can't officially recommend it either: Mythbusters also found many units weren't able to record a car moving faster than 200 mph. Maybe that's what all those Texans were doing last year.

stripe