Youtuber wanted in Colorado published video traveling I-70 at 160 mph
Texas YouTube creator “Gixxer Brah” is currently wanted in Colorado, accused of reckless endangerment and a slew of other offenses after allegedly driving a motorcycle approximately 50 miles from Colorado Springs to the Castle Rock area in 20 minutes.
The trip was recorded and uploaded to YouTube, depicting an intense ride where the digital tachometer on the motorcycle, a Suzuki GSX-R1000, hits 180 mph at one point.
The video has since been removed from the YouTube page, with the page’s narrator, who goes by Gixxer Brah, saying YouTube removed it in October. That narrator often refers to the page’s editor as a person named “Rendon,” asking Rendon to make edits to his videos while he’s riding, but Colorado State Patrol says after a thorough investigation was conducted, authorities have determined that Rendon and the driver of the motorcycle are the same person.
In December an arrest warrant was issued for Rendon Dietzmann of Justin, Texas; that warrant made headlines on Jan. 24 after Colorado State Patrol issued a press release saying that the 32-year-old recorded and posted the trip from Colorado Springs to Denver “with the intention of bragging about his excessive speed … and complete disregard for his safety and those around him.”
But that’s not the only video on the Gixxer Brah page showcasing a dangerous ride on Colorado interstates. A video from October depicts a journey that Eagle and Summit County drivers will recognize: a trip headed Westbound on Interstate 70.
Support Local Journalism
In that video, the GSX-R1000’s digital tachometer shows speeds of more than 140 mph for much of the ride between the Denver metro area and Idaho Springs. He finds the balance point of a 65-mph wheelie for approximately 50 seconds at mile marker 259, and by mile marker 249 or so, the tachometer hit 162 mph.
The rider reaches the Twin Tunnels near Idaho Springs at 112 mph on the digital tachometer and exits at 137 mph.
While it’s often noted that speedometers on high-performance motorcycles can be off by as much as 15% on the top end, the Gixxer Brah page has several videos discussing the actions he has taken to make his more accurate, with one video, titled “Fixing the speedometer to show actual speed,” documenting the installation of a product called SpeedoHealer V4 on the GSX-R1000.
The rider then provides hard evidence of his newly adjusted speedometer by hitting 170 mph on a rural road and checking it against a GPS speedometer. In another video, titled “What kind of gas mileage do you get at 180mph?” Gixxer Brah hits 186 on his digital tachometer, estimating that to be equal to 181-183 mph actual speed.
In his videos, Gixxer Brah says he started riding a motorcycle at age 6 or 7, and he’s now in his early 30s and has broken a bone once when a car pulled out in front of him while he was doing a wheelie. He often addresses the criticism he receives about the dangers of what he’s doing, saying he’s aware that what he is doing is wrong.
“I don’t sit around and think that I’m a golden child that’s untouchable and that I’m OK for doing what I do,” he said in one of his videos. “I understand that … people aren’t going to like it, and that’s understandable, you can’t just think that you’re fine, because you’re not, you’re in the wrong.”
He tells others who drive like him not to be “in the mindset that you’re in the right for splitting cars and going fast.”
However, he firmly believes that if he crashes during one of his speed runs, it will be him alone who suffers the consequences.
“No one’s going to die if my motorcycle hits their big old cage, besides me,” he says, in one of his videos, saying he often studies crash statistics in his free time.
“You know how many times a motorcyclist kills somebody in another car? It’s rare, it’s super rare,” he said. “It has to do with some extreme circumstances where the motorcycle ends up flying, like jumping, hitting one car and bouncing off and flying into another one, crazy stuff, stuff that just doesn’t ever happen.”
Colorado State Patrol disagrees, however, saying a small mistake could result in the death of an innocent person. Gixxer Brah, in his videos, says he doesn’t often see any law enforcement in his speed runs.
Trooper Gabriel Moltrer said law enforcement has to look at “the totality of the circumstances” when encountering someone driving that fast on a motorcycle. Law enforcement has to quickly determine “if it is beneficial to even chase at that extreme speed, to make sure that we are not endangering the lives of any other motorist on the road,” Moltrer said. “We want to make sure that it’s safe for everybody, so we aren’t just going to go at those excessive speeds and put a lot of other people in unnecessary danger at the same time.”
Gixxer Brah says in his videos that being a YouTuber is his dream job, and he would prefer to focus on “stunt riding” — doing tricks while going the speed limit. But after years of seeing YouTube remove stunt riding videos as monetizable content while leaving the speed runs “in the green,” or monetizable, he started focusing on speed runs instead.
Want the news to come to you? Get the top stories in your inbox every morning. Sign up here: VailDaily.com/newsletter
In September, while driving around Denver answering questions from his viewers, he said he had recently started making enough money from the monetized videos that he was “getting along, getting to travel, getting to have fun more often than not, and it’s going good.”
But by October, “YouTube finally caught me on their radar,” he said, removing many of the speed run videos from his page, including the infamous Colorado Springs to Castle Rock video. Many speed run videos remain, however, including the I-70 video, titled “Now that’s a fast Mustang.”
In another video, Gixxer Brah said that he would likely pivot his posting strategy if his page continues to see limitations from the type of content he provides.
“If I was to lose everything today, if my channel was to go to the ground — YouTube just flags everything and all of a sudden my revenue’s gone, Patreon gone, everything gone — I would be excited to rebuild it a different way,” he said. “I was successful here, I wonder where else I could be successful? Whether that be working for somebody or working for myself or starting a little business.”