Man Pulled Over for Driving Without a License, or His Leg

So this is a little old, but I got a chuckle out of it and thought I’d post it anyway.

Cape Town traffic officers pulled over a Bishop Lavis man on Potsdam Road on Friday morning to discover that the man was driving without a valid drivers license, and sans his left leg.

It seems that, although the man was in the process of learning to drive an automatic, he had neither a learner’s license, nor, in fact, an automatic. He had instead decided that a viable alternative was to have his eleven-year old son work the clutch for him as he operated the gears, presumably with the child wedged somewhere down by the pedals, surviving on stale chips and spilt copper change.

“That… I did not expect.”

The man was charged with driving without a valid license, operating an unlicensed vehicle, and not wearing a safety belt, but he was let off with a warning and sent on his way.

Now, the comments after the original article are full of fire, brimstone and all forlorn-igans – people lamenting the plight of our country, police corruption and an unbalanced judicial system. I think these people need to have a beer and chill the fuck out. As a kid in the Eastern Cape, I was working gears, with varying levels of success, well before it was legal for me to watch The Simpsons, let alone operate a vehicle.

I read this as a feel good story. The cops saw the humour and let him off with a warning. Maybe because it’s just so unabashedly South African… I don’t know, but I just can’t get angry at this.