A motorist caught travelling at 172mph on an Oxfordshire dual carriageway has been jailed for ten weeks.

Timothy Brady, 33, a courtesy driver for a car rental company, was driving a £98,000, 3.6litre Porsche 911 Turbo on the A420 near Abingdon on January 27 when he exceeded the national speed limit by 102mph. He was trapped by a police constable using a speed gun from a nearby bridge. It is the highest speed ever recorded in a British trap.

“Your driving was criminally self-indulgent and utterly thoughtless of the danger you might be creating for the innocent,” said Judge David Morton Jack, sentencing Brady at Oxford Crown Court yesterday. He was banned from driving for three years and ordered to pay court costs.

Brady, of Harrow, northwest London, took the black Porsche without permission from his employers, the court was told.

He had asked his boss at Helphire, in Kingston Bagpuize, Oxfordshire, about taking the Porsche out the day before, but his boss had repeatedly refused. Brady then went in to work on his day off and, with a colleague in the passenger seat, took the car out anyway, claiming that his boss “did not say no to that idea”.

John Reilly, for the defence, said: “It was not company policy but sometimes blind eyes were turned. It was almost an allurement that went with the job.

“He won’t be able to find employment for a number of years doing what he likes to do, which is driving.” Brady later described his behaviour as “foolhardy, stupid and done in a moment of weakness”, and resigned from his job soon after.

A spokesman for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents said: “This was an absolutely terrifying piece of driving. Even if he thinks he is capable of controlling a car safely at more than 170mph, he is making no allowance for the possible behaviour of other road users.

“They would never expect a car to be approaching them at that speed, whether they were pedestrians or motorists. No one would have had a chance of surviving if there had been a crash.”

Brady admitted one count of dangerous driving. His plea of not guilty to one count of aggravated vehicle-taking was accepted by the prosecution.

He was told he would have to sit an extended driving test before being allowed to drive again.

His parents, with whom he moved in after losing his job, were in court to see him sentenced.

In 2003, Jason McAllister, a car dealer in Aberdeen, was convicted of driving at 156mph on the A90 between Aberdeen and Dundee and given a five-month sentence.