It’s been a tough few days for sweet cars. A speeding driver who attempted to flee from a traffic stop on the Gandy Bridge in Tampa Bay, Florida, was rewarded with a love tap from the Florida Highway Patrol. The questionable high-speed move sent the JDM MKIV Toyota Supra careening into a tree, destroying it instantly. The driver was allegedly going more than 100 MPH when the police chose to end their (brief) pursuit with a PIT maneuver that ultimately sent both occupants of the right-hand-drive sports coupe to the hospital.
FHP’s Tampa Bay office shared a synopsis of the incident on Instagram. It’s a wall of text, so we’ll break it down for you:
An FHP Trooper on routine patrol along the Gandy Bridge overnight observed a Toyota Supra traveling at 93 MPH in a posted 55 MPH speed zone. The Trooper attempted a traffic stop and the driver fled eastbound on the bridge at speeds exceeding 100 MPH.
93 in a 55? Yep, that’s pursuit-worthy. We’re with you so far.
The Trooper conducted a successful PIT maneuver at the east end of the bridge, at which point the vehicle rotated onto the shoulder, collided with a light pole, and caught fire.
Nope, we didn’t skip any steps. This whole thing escalated really quickly. In the Highway Patrol’s defense, Gandy Bridge isn’t just some two-lane arch over a small creek; it’s the southernmost bridge over Old Tampa Bay. It’s 3.2 miles from the expressway crossovers linking the east- and west-bound lanes at either end of its span, and that’s a decent amount of ground to cover.
Still, at speeds approaching (and later exceeding) 100 miles per hour, three miles of highway go by real quick. At a steady century, you’d clear the bridge in a minute and 55 seconds. That means this pursuit was less than two minutes old before the Highway Patrol chose to end it with a risky maneuver.
The driver, 31-year-old Brandon Ramnarine of Tampa, charged with fleeing and eluding at high speed, suffered non-life-threatening injuries and was transported to an area hospital for medical care. A passenger traveling in the vehicle, a 32-year-old Tampa man, also suffered non-life-threatening injuries and likewise was transported to an area hospital.
Look, we get it: Play stupid games; win stupid prizes. And to play devil’s advocate once again, if the driver had fled into the residential neighborhoods on the eastern side of the bridge, that certainly could have posed a danger to locals, though we doubt pedestrian traffic was pouring out of the local Publix or Walmart Supercenter at 1:00 a.m. on a Sunday.
The world is down one vintage JDM Supra, and that’s worth pouring one out. Be smart out there, folks.
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