What appeared to be a meteor shooting through the sky above Luxembourg on Tuesday night turned out to be a driver racing to get home before curfew.
A truck driver spotted the ball of fire passing him on the A13 motorway shortly before 11 p.m., and dozens of law-abiding people at home in the south of the country reported briefly hearing loud techno music which was followed by a sonic boom.
According to officials who later caught the driver using information supplied by military radar, the man had spent the evening at an illegal gathering in Petange where he and two other men watched videos of last year’s sporting events and pretended it was 2019.
When he noticed it was 10:53, the man ran out the door without finishing his beer or saying goodbye and hopped into his car.
Miraculously, he encountered little traffic on the A13, which allowed him to push the 115 horsepower engine on his 2015 BMW 2 Series to the maximum.
One speed radar unit on the motorway clocked the car travelling 502 kilometers an hour, while moments later another one recorded him reaching speeds of 743.
A surveillance camera near the Croix de Bettembourg showed the car at 10:58 leaving the road surface and shooting across the sky while flames trailed behind it.
However, as the car was not equipped with air brakes or a drag chute, the man was unable to stop when he passed his apartment in Frisange. He ended up landing in a cornfield in the German state of Hesse and was forced to wait till the morning to drive back to Luxembourg.
“I can’t explain it, except that the adrenaline produced by my fear of getting fined a third time for breaking curfew created some kind of combustible gas, which caught fire and turned my car into a rocket,” he said.
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Originally published by RTL Today on December 17, 2020
