Police nab Instagram hoon

A hoon driver who allegedly filmed himself speeding at almost 200km/h on a Great Southern road has been charged with reckless driving after posting the video on social media.

A continued police crackdown on the State’s worst drivers led to the seizure of a Mazda sedan by the Nimrod task force on Friday after a tip-off of the video on the driver’s Instagram page.

Yesterday Great Southern police confirmed a 26-year-old Rivervale man had been charged with reckless driving, alleging he filmed a 13-second video of his speedometer and the surrounds on South Coast Highway in Jerramungup on January 24.

His Mazda 6 sedan was impounded for 28 days after he allegedly sped at 199km/h.

The Nimrod traffic task force was launched in December 2014 to target the State’s hoons and reckless drivers in a bid to get them off the roads.

Police became aware of the video with the caption “there is nothing more freeing, than an open road” and the Instagram location as Albany.

After one comment on the video questioned “fast drive with a phone”, the driver replied “multitaskinn”.

Great Southern police district Superintendent Ian Clarke said driving at “extremely high speed” whilst using a mobile phone was a “deadly cocktail”.

“The driver, like many people posting behaviours of this nature, shows scant regard for their own safety or other road users,” Supt Clarke said.

“Like many country roads, it is frequented by wildlife, farm implements moving between paddocks and people travelling.

“You combine those factors with mobile phone usage at high speed and lack of experience, you have a deadly cocktail waiting for this driver and any other poor unfor-tunate on the road.”

The driver will appear in court at a later date.

It is not the first time police have investigated acts of reckless driving from social media posts after a Perth man was fined $1200 and disqualified from driving for eight months in 2016.

The 25-year-old man uploaded a 14-second video of him driving up to 180km/h, with the comment “shortened the 4.5hrs to 4hrs driving back to Perth” and the hashtags “Albany” and “Albany Highway”.

In 2017 police condemned the actions of another driver captured on social media allegedly speeding at close to 160km/h on a highway in Albany.