Goodness knows how many thousands of miles I have driven in the 12 years I’ve been a motoring hack. In all that time I’ve only been pulled over by the police once, and that was because they wanted to have a nosey at my Chrysler Crossfire test car. They were clearly bored and I was driving the only one in the country. This week I got stopped again in the suburbs of Gothenburg, Sweden. The speed limit sign said 30 and I was doing 30. Unfortunately it meant km/h and I was thinking in mph.
I accept the police have the right to stop me – I was doing 43km/h outside a school, even though it was 2pm and there were no kids around. I accept they have the right to breathalyse me, which they did, because Sweden has a zero tolerance policy on drink-driving.
What I didn’t like was just how many police officers were standing around at the speed trap – I counted 12, surely a waste of resources? – and how totally disinterested they were in anything other than taking money from me. There was no lecture about the dangers of going too fast near a school. This wasn’t a road safety exercise for them, it was a fund-raising initiative.
What happened next justifies my belief. I had no local currency, and my passport and driving licence weren’t in the car with me. The local police chief realised fining a foreigner would mean a load of extra paperwork and effort, so I was sent on my way. He didn’t even tell me to slow down. Amazing.
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