FED: Oddities of the week
09 Jan 2009 12:43 PM
Subject: FED: Oddities of the week FED: Oddities of the week
SYDNEY, Jan 9 AAP - Oddities of the week:
+ Backpackers who used a cardboard number plate, a man who claimed he was "slip-streaming" to save fuel and another who did a burnout in front of a police camera have been nominated as the worst drivers of 2008 by Queensland Police.
On December 19, traffic police in north Queensland intercepted a vehicle driven by backpackers, sporting a cardboard registration plate.
It read: "LICENCE". The tourists were fined.
On May 2, a police officer on radar duty saw two cars pass at just above the 100km/h speed limit, with the rear car sitting just three to four metres behind the front car, maintaining that distance.
The officer stopped the 31-year-old male driver of the rear car who said he was "slip-streaming" to save gas.
He was charged with drink driving.
In another drink-driving incident on March 17, a 25-year-old man did a burnout in front of a police speed camera at Yamanto, west of Brisbane.
He was charged with dangerous driving and drink driving after he returned a blood alcohol reading of 0.078.
+ A drug-runner who filmed himself masturbating while driving at 150 km/h has been sentenced to two months jail.
Brendon Alan Erhardt, 39, was pulled over by police on July 16 last year, 25km south of Daly Waters.
He was returning to the Northern Territory from Adelaide, where he had used an inheritance from his dead mother to buy a Holden SV6 and 5kg of cannabis.
Inside the car, police discovered 10 packages of cannabis hidden in a blue esky in the boot, two cannabis plants on the back seat, two drug pipes and a loaded .22 rifle.
Erhardt told the officers he had been masturbating shortly before being stopped for speeding on the 130km/h stretch of the Stuart Hwy.
He had filmed himself travelling at a speed of 150km/h.
"(It is) conduct one might expect of a much younger immature person to engage in," Magistrate Sue Oliver told Darwin Magistrate's Court.
Erhardt pleaded guilty to six charges, including carrying an unregistered and loaded firearm, driving dangerously and driving unlicensed.
Sentencing him to two months in prison, Ms Oliver said his behaviour was strange and humiliating.
"The circumstances of the driving are bizarre to say the least," she said.
+ A British shopkeeper who left an honesty box at his DIY store for customers to serve themselves on Boxing Day returned to find nearly $A400 in it and nothing stolen.
Tom Algie sold STG188 ($A390) worth of goods when he left his shop, called Practically Everything, open and unattended in Settle, North Yorkshire, on Boxing Day.
"I wanted to spend the holidays with my family but thought it would be quite nice to open the shop," Algie told the Daily Mirror.
"I didn't think twice. Settle is a lovely, quiet, rural town and there's never any trouble here."
Algie left a note on the honesty box saying: "Yes, I have given everyone the day off, including me, so please choose the items you want and place the right money inside."
AAP bsb/wjf/it=0A
FED: Oddities of the week