Spanish driver acquitted of speeding at 228 km/h on medical emergency grounds, Digi Mart USA News: A Spanish driver who was recorded at 228 km/h on a highway limited to 120 km/h has been acquitted on appeal. The incident occurred on April 17, 2025, when a Guardia Civil radar recorded his Mercedes GLE 450d at a speed that, after a 4% margin of error was applied, was calculated at 218.88 km/h.
On June 26, 2025, the criminal court in Cuenca convicted the driver of a criminal road safety offense. The penalty was a fine of 1,620 euros and a driving ban of one year and one day.
On September 15, 2026, the appeals court in Cuenca overturned that decision. The judges found that the father acted in sufficiently exceptional circumstances to qualify for a defense of necessity, according to the ruling reported by Spanish local media and recorded as judgment No. 123/2026 of the Audiencia Provincial de Cuenca.
The driver was traveling with his wife and their 11-year-old daughter, who had a serious illness for several years. The child had metastases in her spine, had lost her sight, and had already undergone four neurosurgical operations and chemotherapy treatments.
During the trip, the girl suffered severe back pain, nausea and significant agitation. Her parents, aware of the seriousness of her condition, feared a complication requiring immediate care, and the father accelerated sharply to reach the hospital in Albacete.
At the hospital, doctors treated the child’s pain without finding the major complication the family had feared. For the judges, however, that relatively reassuring outcome did not undermine how serious the situation appeared to the parents at the time.
The court applied the state of necessity provision of Article 20.5 of the Spanish Penal Code, which can exempt a person from criminal liability when an offense is committed to avoid a greater danger, and it annulled the first-instance conviction despite opposition from the prosecution.
Could a French court reach the same outcome? In principle, yes, but not because a Spanish judge has acquitted this driver.
The Spanish ruling is not European case law binding on French courts, and a French lawyer could cite it only as an example of reasoning applied abroad.
French law has its own provision: Article 122-7 of the Penal Code, which provides for criminal non-liability when a person performs an act necessary to protect someone from a present or imminent danger, provided the means used are not disproportionate to the threat. A driver prosecuted for a serious speeding offense could invoke this provision by showing he acted to respond to a particularly grave medical emergency, but simply driving a relative to emergency care would not be enough on its own.
A court would examine the reality of the danger, the urgency of care, and whether other options were available, such as calling the emergency medical service SAMU or whether rescue services could arrive quickly enough. Proportionality would be the most difficult question at such a high speed.
The article notes that at 220 km/h a car travels about 61 meters every second, compared with 33 meters at 120 km/h, so a one-second reaction time alone means nearly 28 additional meters are covered before braking begins.
In a comparable French case, the defense would need precise medical and factual evidence, such as the patient’s medical file, the nature of the symptoms, and the timing of the trip and hospital admission. The absence of an accident would not by itself justify a major speeding offense, and French law does not require that all alternatives be impossible, but the existence of a less dangerous option would weigh heavily.
The urgency must be judged on the information available at the time, and the outcome of treatment does not alone show whether the initial reaction was justified.
The Spanish acquittal is therefore a rare judicial case rather than a general new exception to the traffic code. In France, the law already allows a state of necessity to be recognized even in a road traffic offense, but the defendant must show that the emergency was real and that the danger created was not disproportionate.
