“She’s older and has better insurance.”
A 71-year-old grandmother says a Jeep Wrangler tried to race her at a light, so she let her cammed Chevrolet Silverado answer for her. By the time she had passed the Jeep and pulled back over, two sheriff’s deputies were behind her, and one of them, she says, told her he had to nearly hit 100 mph to catch up.
Kaylen (@kaylenxco) recently posted a conversation she had with her grandma about the drag race gone wrong. “Me asking my 71 y/o why she got pulled over in her cammed Silverado,” reads the caption on screen.
“I was trying to race,” her grandmother admits, before shifting blame. “This little stupid. Oh, I shouldn’t say stupid. They love their car, too.” A Wrangler had revved beside her, she says. “I was like, huh? You want to see what I got? So I stepped on it and passed him, and then I let off and got over, and all of a sudden, here came two sheriffs.”
“He said he had to go 95 to catch up to me,” she says of the deputy. She insists she wasn’t racing: “I wasn’t trying to race him, but since he was trying to race me, I basically just wanted to show him that, excuse me, but I could outrun you.”
The deputy, she says, told her, “You don’t need to prove anything. You know what you have,” to which she replied, “No, I don’t really know.” Then he offered her some advice: “He said, go to the drag strip. And then he told me three times to go to the drag strip.”
The TikTok has been viewed 2.3 million times as of this writing.
Kaylen’s written caption reads, “Last video for proof.” The day before she had posted a longer cut that opens with her grandmother in a parking lot. “So I got in a little trouble with the law, so I’m gonna be a little more practical. This is my new car,” she says, as the camera pans to a lime-green Smart Fortwo.
Her grandmother has been the channel’s main attraction since July, when a clip captioned “POV: your 70 y/o grandma drives a cammed Silverado” drew 4.3 million views. In a September video, Kaylen urges her on at a light, “Step on it! Step on it!” Her grandmother answers, “I don’t think he’s trying to race,” then, after obliging, “You wanted me to waste my gas.”
Kaylen confirmed in the comments that the Silverado is tuned and not stock.
While the sheriff’s deputy may have had to nearly hit 100 mph to catch up, commenter turbobandit noted, “95 to catch up doesn’t mean lil old lady did 95.”
“If his lights weren’t on while trying to catch up, then he was speeding too,” added one_day.closer. horizontalrunner recalled hearing the same line: “My response was, ‘That doesn’t actually prove that I was speeding, only that you were.’”
Catching up is not how police measure speed without radar. The method is pacing, which Steve Montiero, who answers traffic questions on air as Trooper Steve for Orlando’s WKMG, describes as “when a police vehicle matches the speed of the violating vehicle,” then travels “at the same speed for a determined distance to gather the other vehicle’s speed.”
A cruiser used that way needs its speedometer “physically calibrated every six months,” he said. Virginia’s Court of Appeals put it the same way in 2009: “If the distance between the two vehicles remains constant, the speed of the second vehicle must be the same as the known speed of the first vehicle.” One Virginia police directive tells officers to pace “a minimum distance of two tenths of a mile, when possible,” keeping the gap constant.
By her grandmother’s account, she had already let off and moved over before the deputies arrived, which is a chase, not a pace. The video doesn’t say what, if anything, they clocked, or whether she got a citation. “Good for granny! But did she get a ticket????” asked eddieglancerealtor. Neither woman has answered.
A recurring theme in the comments was that the septuagenarian could afford to break the speed limit (Motor1 does not advise speeding except in case of emergency).
“SHE HAS BAIL MONEYYY,” wrote sinyearobinson, in a comment with more than 56,000 likes. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the face of no regrets,” wrote israel.muoz857. Twrecks333 appropriated a famous line from the classic film Fried Green Tomatoes: “She’s older and has better insurance. IYKYK.” A string of replies said “Tawanda!”, the battle cry from the movie. kaylenno supplied the full quote delivered by Kathy Bates’ character after ramming into the vehicle of some young girls who took her parking space: “Face it girls, I’m older and I have [more] insurance!”
While these comments are certainly meant to be tongue-in-cheek, there is truth to them.
Drivers aged 65 to 69 do indeed have the lowest rates of collision and property-damage liability claims per insured vehicle, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. “Rates start increasing after about age 70,” it says. “However, older drivers’ insurance claim rates are much lower than rates for the youngest drivers.” The Insurance Information Institute lists driving record as first among the factors that set a premium: “If you’ve had accidents or serious traffic violations, it’s likely you’ll pay more than if you have a clean driving record.”
When bethdismang wrote that her grandmother “was out teaching lessons,” Kaylen replied, “Gotta keep these kids in check.”
jalenpratt0 asked the question on many minds: “When Granny court date.”
Motor1 reached out to Kaylen via TikTok direct message for comment. We’ll be sure to update this if she responds.
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