Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos was briefly detained by local police in southern Washington State near the Oregon border late Wednesday night, according to the Vancouver Gazette. Bezos was charged with speeding and driving with an expired license.
In an exclusive interview with Shelf Awareness, Bezos admitted to driving his 2011 Lexus "significantly" above the posted limits at a rate of speed that was nearly twice as fast as the last time he drove in that area a week earlier, or "more than a triple digit percentage increase." He was also, he said, several car lengths ahead of one car and nearly 20 behind another. Trees lining the road swept past at a rate of 212 per minute during the last mile before he was pulled over. However, he declined to state how many miles per hour he was driving.
At the time of the incident, Bezos was on a regular late-night run to Portland from his house in Seattle to pick up a coffee at Starbucks, a few groceries and toothpaste. Despite being 150 miles away, Oregon, he noted, has no sales tax, which makes for "an optimal shopping experience."
Concerning the driver's license, Bezos said that the State of Washington's department of licensing does not use EDI standards compatible with Amazon, delaying his renewal of the license. He proposed that the state join Amazon's Government Prime, a new affiliate program that on the new interactive Kindle handles a variety of transactions such as tickets and pleas, deed registration, building permits, graft payments, as well as driver's license renewals. "You can download your license directly to your new award-winning Kindle in less than a minute," Bezos said excitedly. "You can send that sewer utility payment in with just the press of a button." Government Prime does not work, however, for sales tax collection.
The speed trap personally annoyed Bezos, he added. "In most any other state we don't collect sales tax so local governments have to cut back on superfluous services like police. But in Washington we have an undeniable presence--and as a result, they nailed my Lexus, my nexus and my ass!"