+ Click to Enlarge READY TO RUMBLE: It's a Lamborghini Gallardo and these cops mean business. While a similar car, badged by Arrive Alive!, sits prettily but uselessly by Gauteng freeways this one goes out and nails the bad guys - or saves the lives of injured road-users.

December 22, 2004

While the Arrive Alive! Lamborghini Gallardo sits impotently at the roadside as a PR exercise of little benefit to anyone other than the Gauteng Lamborghini agent who parked it there – Italian police are getting some serious mileage out of theirs.

The Polizia Stradale (highway patrol) are using the high-powered sports car on the autostradas to keep pace with the country's notoriously reckless drivers in their quest to curb speeding and enforce safer driving.

The Gallardo, donated to the State Police by the Lamborghini factory at Sant' Agata, has a V10 five-litre 375kW V10 engine and permanent all-wheel drive. Pirelli has set it up for bad winter weather with Sottozero snow tyres developed especially for Lamborghini.

It has a video camera with which the crew of two can film speeding vehicles and an Elsag Autodetector number plate identification system linked to the Italian police's Provida system that records violations and sends images in real time.

"I have no need to overtake a speeding vehicle," said Franco Iacomini, one of eight Polizia Stradale officers specially trained at the factory to handle the car.

"It's enough to follow it at a distance and warn other patrols up ahead – but we can just order it to stop."

The system can also be used to send and receive information and images about road accidents, fires and other disaster situations.

The Lamborghini patrol car also carries first-aid equipment including a defibrillator that can record electrocardiograms and automatically measure arterial blood pressure and oxygen and carbon dioxide levels.

It will be on patrol during the Christmas holiday season on the Salerno-Reggio Calabria highway in southern Italy.

Laura Ciano, the only woman in the special high-speed squad, described how the team had already carried out patrols during the Italian summer on the Rome-Reggio Calabria autostrada, one of the most dangerous in Italy.

"We took away 20 driving licences for really serious speeding offences and applied a points system in other cases," she said. "Some admirers of the car even said: 'If you arrest me, let me have a go at the wheel!'"

The superfast Lamborghini, capable of more than 300km/h, can also be used to transport vital plasma and organs for human transplants at high speed.

There's a special compartment where they are kept chilled, as far away as possible from the rear-mounted V10 engine – Lamborghinis are notorious for running hot. - Sapa-AFP, motoring.co.za