Friday, December 12, 2008

Keep your shirt on

Here in Australia we say "keep your shirt on" - usually in a slightly impatient tone - when people are trying to rush us for no apparently good reason - often in traffic. But perhaps this could be seen as more literal advice for some drivers in the US and Australia after last month (it's taken me this long to remember it and look up the details). Police attending an accident where a car had rolled at Hastings, Vic, found the driver and passenger were naked. It didn't say if they were wearing seatbelts. The names of the 18 year old female driver and her fatally injured, naked 19 year old male passenger were not released. There were reportedly no suspicious circumstances.
Meanwhile, in California a couple of days earlier police had apprehended a drink-driving suspect after his van hit a car. It was only after tasering him (can "taser" be a verb and is it safe to hit someone in control of a motor vehicle with driver with a Taser - and was the vehicle moving at the time - and if it wasn't, why did they have to Taser him?) that they discovered he was driving his car "completely" naked. Given these reports were truly within a couple of days of each other, does this mean some kind of global naked driving ritual has been uncovered? And if so, is it something that happens all the time - or just for special occasions?

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