I was a bit worried about a story I read today. A chap called David Hamnett is a 47 year old marine engineer from Lancashire and he was involved in a car accident.
The first part of the story which confused me was that it said that he commuted every week from Ormskirk in Lancashire to Devon. Is this normal? That’s a long way to drive to get to work. I used to drive an hour a day and it bored me after a few months. I can’t help thinking that a marine engineer should live nearer the sea in the first place. That wasn’t really the weird thing, though…
Sloppy Clothes Driving in the Free World
Photo credit: Rendy Cipta Muliawan
Police found him in the wee small hours behind the wheel with just a t-shirt and jogging bottoms on. That’s wasn’t the weird bit either, though. I mean, we all go out and drive in sloppy clothes now and then. Just the other day I was wearing a pair of holey trousers and a faded Neil young t-shirt when I had to make a short drive to the shops to buy some milk and stuff.
Anyway, the bit that scared me was that the chap in question said that he went to bed and the next thing he knew he was 150 miles from home. What I mean is that he claimed he was sleep-driving for 2 hours. Is this even possible? Do I need to put “bumping into a sleeping driver” onto my ever growing list of fears?
The judge wasn’t convinced that this was the case. Mr Hamnett has crashed at 100 mph and had drunk whiskey and wine before driving, and was twice the limit (I’m not sure if this was sleep-drinking or if he drunk it before going to bed). He got slapped with a 6 month driving ban and a 12 month community order.