How Much Would Cutting Up the Prime Minister Cost You?

Photo credit: Roger Doherty

I was interested to see talk of fines for drivers being increased in the UK. It was actually a bit of a coincidence, as I just saw something on the local telly about plans to do it here in South America as well.

The local Highway Code here in Bolivia lists out the fines for various infringements and the relevant fines. I’ll try and convert some of them to English and pounds for you.

A Few Sample Fines to Savour

One of my favourites is the one about performing acrobatic acts on a motorcycle in the middle of the road. If you survive this you could get hit with a fine of a tenner. If you are even wackier you might fancy blocking the route of the president. Seriously, on page 214, point number 38 the fine for not giving way to the President is £20. This is, for some bizarre reason, double the fine for not giving way to the emergency services, who are probably in more of a rush than the leader of the nation anyway.

Clearly, the size of these fines takes into account the national economy but they still seem incredibly small. The news article I saw this morning was actually on Argentine telly, as my wife had turned it over to watch some sort of ridiculous dancing show where everyone’s clothes always fall off. They have more reasonable fines there and you can now expect (if memory serves) to be hit with a £25 fine for parking badly, which is a bit more than you can get billed for drink driving here.

Anyway, back to the UK. It seems that local councils are keen to start fining any motorists who carry out illegal turns, go into bus or cycle lanes or enter those annoying yellow boxes. The word from the Government is that this could well be a goer. Their thoughts on motorcycle acrobats and cutting up the Prime Minister are unknown at the present time.

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