There are routine speeding stops, and then there’s whatever played out on U.S. Highway 27 last week. Lake County deputies say they pulled over an 85-year-old man who was running through a 45 mph zone at 110 mph in the middle of the night. The driver didn’t really argue the speed — he argued the reason behind it, and that’s where this stops being a normal traffic story.
William Bosworth of Leesburg now faces two charges after deputies say he was caught running alongside another car late on June 12. According to an arrest affidavit, this wasn’t a simple lead-foot situation — investigators believe his gray sports car and a red Corvette next to it were street racing on a public highway at speeds that would be dangerous on a closed track, let alone a road shared with regular traffic.
The Explanation That Didn’t Help
The full exchange was captured on the deputy’s body camera, which means the explanation Bosworth offered that night is now part of the official record — and it ended up working against him. Here’s the part that turns the story. When the deputy raised the racing accusation, Bosworth pushed back hard, insisting he wasn’t racing anybody. He claimed the other driver had swerved at him, and that he only hit 110 mph because he was trying to put distance between the two cars before something went wrong.
Read that twice. His defense for going 110 in a 45 was that he was driving fast to avoid trouble — logic that doesn’t erase the speed, and if anything, confirms it. He also told the deputy he was just out for a ride in the car he loves most, a charming thing to say and an awful legal argument, delivered in the same breath.
Bosworth did follow instructions. He stepped out of the car when asked and was placed in handcuffs without any struggle, taken into custody right there on the side of the road.
Why This Is Bigger Than One Stop
The charges Bosworth is facing aren’t the kind that come with a quick fine and a court date you can mail in. Deputies booked him on driving in a vehicle race and on dangerous excessive speeding — counts that treat the behavior as criminal conduct rather than a basic citation, carrying far heavier consequences than a standard ticket. Florida has spent years sharpening its approach to street racing for exactly this reason, and a 110 mph pass on a public highway is the precise scenario those laws were built to punish.
Then there’s the question the body camera forces you to ask. If a deputy can catch an 85-year-old at 110 mph, and the other car was reportedly moving even faster than that, what’s happening with the drivers who do this all the time and never get pulled over? Street racing tends to live in the gap between what people get away with and what finally lands on camera. This time, it landed on camera.
The Part Enthusiasts Should Sit With
Car people get the pull of a favorite machine and a wide-open road at night. That feeling is real, and it’s not the issue here. The issue is doing it at more than double the limit on a highway where other people are just trying to get home in one piece. Enthusiasts already burn a lot of energy defending car culture against lazy crackdowns and clumsy policy, and stops like this one make that job harder, because they hand critics an easy headline and a tidy villain.
Bosworth’s case will now grind through the Lake County court system like any other. What sticks, though, is the picture it leaves behind: an 85-year-old man, a gray sports car, a radar reading of 110 in a 45, and an explanation that did more to lock in the charge than to beat it. The favorite drive was certainly not worth this.