Is it just my imagination or are there an awful lot of stories round now about kids driving cars? This latest one is possibly the weirdest of them all, as the Dad asked his 8 year old to drive him home from the pub. He was as drunk as a skunk at the time, but that still doesn’t make it normal behaviour, does it?
This story actually brought back some long forgotten memories about the first time I ever got in a car, as I must have been about 8 at the time. My uncle had an old Trotters Independent Traders style vehicle and he took us to the beach in it one day.
Why Do Cars No Longer Stink of Petrol?
The thing stunk of petrol inside. Actually, why did cars used to smell so strongly of petrol in the old days? Almost all of my subsequent childhood driving memories involve this odour as well. Did people maybe carry petrol in the back in containers because there were less petrol stations, or were petrol pumps really difficult to operate, leading to cars getting sprayed in petrol every time they got filled up?
For some reason I got to sit in the front, but I realised once I sat down that I had no idea how to operate the seat belt. I understood the concept of belting up but I couldn’t for the life of me work out how to do it. This led to me spending the entire journey trying to nonchalantly hold the belt down by my side so that no one would notice my lack of basic car knowledge.
This brings me back to the 8 year old kid. It was actually fairly impressive that he could get the car moving in the first place. Not so impressive was the fact that he caused a 3 car crash, with all 3 vehicles written off. This happened in Poland and the Dad is now facing up to the prospect of a maximum of 5 years in jail.