Police are warning of a new hazard threatening the safety of Britain’s motorists – masturbation. “Whacking off at the wheel is fast overtaking talking on mobile phones whilst driving as the number one menace to road safety,” says Inspector Andy Strummer of the West Midlands police. “Only last week we had a ten vehicle pile-up on the M6 after a driver lost control of his car as he reached the vinegar stroke and crashed into a minibus – he was still grinning like a wanking Jap when we pulled his body out of the wreckage.” Drivers are not only pleasuring themselves manually – there have also been reports of hand brakes being used as dildos and seatbelts being used as restraints in bizarre S&M games. “We pulled one guy out of a wrecked car with the gear shifter still stuck up his arse,” says paramedic Ron Knott. “Apparently he’d been shifting gear with his bum for sexual kicks. Unfortunately, it meant that he couldn’t reach the pedals properly and was unable to brake when a lorry pulled out in front of him.”

Knott also claims to have found a road accident victim with his penis jammed into the cigarette lighter – the pain was so great he lost control of his car and crashed off of a bridge onto a crowded motorway below, causing numerous fatalities. Automotive eroticism isn’t just a solitary vice, often couples also engage in dangerous sexual antics in moving vehicles. Sometimes this is as simple as a front seat passenger masturbating the driver, or vice versa – either way this can lead to a fatal lapse in concentration at the moment of climax. Equally dangerous is mobile oral sex – paramedic Knott has seen several instances of male drivers’ members being inadvertently bitten off by their passengers when their vehicle has been rear-ended in an otherwise minor collision. “We once had a case of a couple performing in the ’69’ position whilst driving on the M5,” recalls Inspector Strummer. “The man was seated in the driving seat, his legs braced on the dashboard, either side of the steering wheel, whilst his partner had her legs around his neck and her head in his lap. He was steering whilst she operated the pedals with her hands. In fact, their driving wasn’t the problem. We actually pulled them over for a defective rear light.”

But just what kind of people indulge in this bizarre behaviour – sometimes referred to as ‘highwanking’ – and what motivates them to risk both their own, and other road users’, lives in this way? “Its the thrill of driving with one hand on the wheel and one on your knob at a hundred miles an hour,” David Humpty, a City banker and veteran ‘highwanker’, told us. “The element of risk accentuates what is otherwise a sad and furtive solitary past-time – it takes wanking out of the bedroom and into the realm of extreme sports.” Humpty is himself a member of the elite ‘Hundred Miles an Hour Club’, all of whose members have successfully masturbated whilst driving a vehicle at, or above, that speed. “To qualify you have to complete the job and actually ejaculate whilst the vehicle is travelling at over a ton,” he explains. “The first time I did it I was stopped by the police who had clocked my BMW at 108 mph, and my left hand at 75 mph.”

Obviously, this is an incredibly dangerous hobby and, not surprisingly, there have been casualties. “I shot my load all over the windscreen, obscuring my vision – I tried to clear it with the wipers, forgetting in my state of panic that it was on the inside of the glass, not the outside,” recalls financial analyst and club member Brian Zazzle. “Inevitably, I lost control and crashed my Mercedes into the back of a school bus.” Zazzle was paralysed from the waist downwards in the accident and is now confined to a wheelchair. However, this has not dampened his enthusiasm for automotive sex – he was recently arrested for attempting to masturbate his flaccid penis whilst driving his electric wheelchair along the M3 at 15 mph. Humpty and Zazzle are typical of ‘highwanking’ enthusiasts – well-off, predominantly male, middle-class professionals seeking the thrills denied them by their formal everyday lives.

“This is further evidence that, for many men, their motor car is merely an extension of their penis,” rants sexologist Professor Juan Popazogalou. “By masturbating at speed in their expensive automobiles they are effectively equating their penises and sexual potency with the power of their vehicles. They are saying to other road users, ‘not only is my manhood bigger than yours, but it operates at higher speed’. Causing a fatal accident whilst masturbating at the wheel is, of course, the ultimate expression of sexual power; they are saying ‘my penis is not just a giver of life, but a bringer of death also!'” The activity of ‘highwanking’, is believed to have originated in the US, and has only recently spread to Britain. “In the US they have the advantage of long straight highways, they can just put on the cruise control, lie back, loosen their pants and crank the shank to their heart’s content with little fear of an accident,” believes Inspector Strummer. “Clearly, it would highly inadvisable to do the same thing on Britain’s narrow and winding roads, where driving safely requires one’s full attention. Our advice would be that if you really must pleasure yourself whilst driving, at least make out sure that the vehicle you do it in is an automatic – the lack of a manual gearshift reduces significantly the risks of driving one-handed.”