Motorcyclist accused of hitting 117 mph says bathroom emergency left him with no other choice

Marlisa Goldsmith of FOX 35 Orlando opened the story with a line that sounded half-joking and half-warning: “Nature called, but police answered.” In the same breath, anchor Luanne Sorrell told viewers what made the stop go viral fast – police say a motorcyclist hit 117 miles per hour on a Brevard County roadway.

FOX 35 reporter Chancelor Winn picked it up from there, telling viewers the man’s explanation was simple and also unbelievable in the moment. According to Winn, the rider told Palm Bay police he was speeding because he needed to use the bathroom—badly.

Winn didn’t sugarcoat the result. The excuse “did not work,” Winn said, and the man ended up “placed in cuffs and taken to jail,” accused of being a “super speeder.”

It’s the kind of story that makes people laugh for five seconds, then pause, because 117 mph isn’t just “a little fast.” It’s the kind of speed where small mistakes become unrecoverable problems, and everybody on the road becomes part of the risk whether they agreed to it or not.

“I’m Gonna S**t My Pants, Bro”

Winn’s report leaned heavily on bodycam audio that captured the moment the stop turned into a headline. In the footage, an officer asks the rider, “You know how fast you were going?”

The rider answers with a blunt confession that basically explains the entire defense: “Yeah, I’m gonna s**t my pants, bro.”

Winn then lays out what police say happened next. Officers tell the rider the speed they clocked: 117.

In another bodycam snippet Winn aired, the rider tries to pull back from the number, saying, “I did not know I was going that fast,” but quickly circles back to the same point: “I legitimately just gotta use the bathroom.”

Winn frames it as a familiar human moment placed in the most dangerous possible setting. Everybody understands urgency. Almost nobody thinks the correct solution is triple-digit speed on public roads.

And that’s what makes this case feel so combustible. The explanation is relatable. The behavior, if the speed is accurate, is the exact opposite of relatable.

The “Super Speeder” Crackdown Hits Motorcycles Too

Winn describes the arrest as part of a bigger enforcement push. Law enforcement, he reports, has been “cracking down on super speeders” since the law took effect in July.

That timing matters, because Winn’s point is that this isn’t a one-off traffic stop where an officer decided to be harsh. He presents it as a clear policy moment – Florida has a new line in the sand, and agencies are actively trying to make people believe it.

Winn also makes the term “super speeder” sound like more than a nickname. In his report, it’s treated like a category – an enforcement bucket – with real consequences.

My own take is that this is exactly how states try to change driving culture: they pick a threshold that horrifies most normal drivers, attach jail time to it, then publicize arrests so the fear of consequences becomes part of the decision-making process.

You can argue about whether it works long-term. But you can’t argue about the goal. The goal is to make people feel like 110+ isn’t “getting away with it” anymore – it’s “getting booked.”

“That’s Like NASCAR Speed”

To explain why police are taking the new law seriously, Winn brings in Jamie Copenhaver, identified in the report as a former sheriff’s detective.

Copenhaver doesn’t talk like a man trying to be polite about it. He uses plain language and a comparison that instantly paints a picture: “Traveling those speeds in excess of a hundred miles an hour,” he says, “that’s like NASCAR speed, right?”

Then Copenhaver drives the point into the pavement. He asks whether the rider is “trained and equipped” to have an accident while traveling at those speeds.

That question is doing more than it seems. It’s not only about skill. It’s about environment. NASCAR has a track designed for speed, safety teams staged nearby, and everyone moving in the same direction under strict rules.

A public road has none of that. It has merging cars, distracted drivers, uneven pavement, sudden braking, and people who don’t even know they’re sharing space with someone doing 117.

Winn’s report doesn’t show a crash. It shows what comes before crashes. And honestly, that’s the point of enforcement stories like this: it’s a warning delivered through someone else’s bad day.

The Law, The Numbers, And The Penalties

Winn says the state has data to justify the crackdown, and he points to the Florida Highway Patrol’s numbers.

In the first six months of the new law, Winn reports FHP says troopers collected more than 1,200 super speeders. Winn adds one jaw-dropper to show how extreme it can get: one driver allegedly hit nearly 170 miles per hour in a 65 zone—over 100 mph above the posted limit.

That detail lands like a punch because it makes 117 look “less insane,” even though it’s still wildly dangerous. And that’s a weird psychological trick these stories can play—when you hear “170,” your brain starts treating anything under that as “not the worst.”

But Winn anchors the discussion back to the law itself, and Copenhaver helps explain it in simple terms.

Copenhaver tells Winn the super speeder law is straightforward: if you’re caught going over 100 mph, or more than 50 mph above the posted speed limit, you could face 30 days in jail and a $500 fine.

Winn also includes Copenhaver’s argument for why these penalties exist. Copenhaver describes highway-speed violence in gruesome terms, talking about “carnage,” “dead bodies,” and “body parts,” and he says if people saw that reality, they’d appreciate the crackdown.

It’s harsh language, but it matches the subject. Triple-digit crashes aren’t fender-benders. They’re physics taking over, and physics doesn’t negotiate.

From my perspective, the most important line in Winn’s entire report might not be the bathroom quote. It might be this underlying idea Copenhaver pushes: the public only sees the traffic stop, not the aftermath that cops and first responders sometimes carry around in their heads.

Brevard County’s Message: This Isn’t Slowing Down

Winn closes by widening the lens again, showing this case is part of a steady pattern, not a single embarrassing excuse caught on camera.

Over the last week, Winn reports the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office says deputies pulled over six super speeders – and Winn notes that’s only on I-95.

That’s a simple statistic, but it signals something bigger. If six in a week is “only on I-95,” then enforcement is happening often enough that it’s becoming routine.

And if enforcement is becoming routine, the next phase is predictable: more arrests, more court cases, more people insisting they had a reason, and more agencies responding that the reason doesn’t matter at that speed.

This is where the bathroom excuse turns into a kind of cultural Rorschach test. Some people will hear it and think, “Come on, we’ve all had an emergency.” Others will hear it and think, “Pull off the road – don’t turn the highway into a roulette wheel.”

I land closer to the second group, because the risk isn’t private. At 117 mph, the danger doesn’t stay inside the rider’s helmet. It spills outward onto every driver who has no idea what’s coming up behind them.

Winn’s reporting doesn’t say what a judge will do, or how the case will resolve. What it does show is the new reality Florida wants drivers to absorb: under the super speeder law, the margin for excuses is shrinking fast.

And as this Palm Bay stop shows, even the most human excuse in the world – “I have to go, right now” – can still end with handcuffs when the speed hits a number like 117.