A Swedish driver who was caught driving at 290 km/h (180 mph) in Switzerland is likely to receive a world-record speeding fine of one million dollars.
The 37-year-old man, who was driving his Mercedes SLS AMG, was clocked along the A12 highway between Lausanne and Bern in Sweden last week.

Swiss police arrested the driver and confiscated his car.

“Nothing can justify a speed of 290 km/h,” BBC quoted local police spokesman Benoit Dumas as saying.

“It is not controllable. It must have taken 500 meters to stop,” Dumas added.

The man defended himself on the grounds that his car’s speedometer may have been faulty.

“I think the speedo on the car, which is new, is faulty,” the driver told police.

The Swiss law calculates the cost of a speeding fine based on the size of the infringement as well as the income of the driver.

Prosecutors say that, under the law, the Mercedes-driving man is likely to be fined CHF 1.08 million (USD 1 million), the highest speeding fine ever.

The driver had previously escaped being clocked by numerous speed cameras on his journey simply because he was going too fast and the instruments were incapable of clocking any speed beyond 200 km/h.

The camera that caught him driving at close to 300 km/h was a new generation of radar machines that was recently installed.