Drivers caught cooking whilst driving are to face tough penalties, the government says. Under new rules expected to come in next year, drivers will receive six points on their license and a £120 fine.
Transport secretary Sean Maddox said, “this new law will be an effective deterrent against cooking drivers. Cooking meals using portable gas cookers whilst driving a vehicle impedes the driver’s ability to concentrate fully on the road. It’s a flagrant transgression that contravenes our ‘no cooking and driving policy.'”
Salesman Mark Gutteridge from Milton Keynes was prosecuted for cooking with camping stoves as he drove his car on the M6 motorway. Gutteridge 46, said:
This new law is an abuse of police powers and it violates my cooking and driving rights. It’s OK for cyclists to cook and cycle. I see lots of them riding around, cooking roast dinners on their handle bars. There’s so much gravy leftovers in the roads now I had to buy a gravy snorkel on E-Bay.
Anyway I was cooking on the dashboard of my car and the police pulled me over. The policeman said. ‘What are you doing?’
I said. ‘I’m doing spaghetti Bolognese mate, what does it look like? – Pasta, tinned tomatoes, onions and mince?’
So he said, ‘Well it looks to me like you’re cooking either spaghetti Bolognese or pasta, tinned tomatoes, onions and mince.’
So I said, ‘Well I’m cooking a bit of both, as it happens!’
So he said, ‘So what are you going to do with it?’ I said, ‘I’m doing fried sausages with it’. He said ‘I can see that, but what are you going to do with it all?’ I said, ‘I’m going to eat it, what do you think I’m going to do with it? – Chew it and swallow it?’
He said, ‘Well I thought you were either going to eat it or chew and swallow it.’ I said, ‘Well I was going to do a bit of both, as it happens.’
He said, ‘It’s against the law now to cook and drive. If you’re addicted to cooking and driving, why don’t you cook at home, and fit a steering wheel to your cooker? That might satisfy your craving, and you won’t be breaking the law.’ I said, ‘Oh no, that would be no good, I wouldn’t be able to fit my passengers in the oven!’
Image attribution:
Further reading on bureaucracy: