As a police officer, you have to be prepared for anything while on duty, no matter how intense. One thing that probably doesn’t come up in training: discovering an 11-year-old behind the wheel of a car. Insider first covered how a Lancashire police officer pulled over a car being driven strangely in a nearby parking lot, only to find it was a young boy completely alone behind the wheel.
Turns out one of the poor boy’s family members was fed up with him playing “Grand Theft Auto” all day, a popular car racing video game series. Instead of allowing this child to be cooped up inside all day, this person decided on an extremely drastic response. They stuck him in their own car, to at least practice driving in the real world. Lancaster Police shared a humorous tweet acknowledging the bizarre development, which you can check out below:
The driver of this car was 11 years old… (yes, eleven!) A family member was fed up with the child playing Grand Theft Auto all day on the Playstation, so brought him out to practice driving on a car park Blackpool… The adult has been reported for traffic offences. #T2TacOps pic.twitter.com/TBqKmmOUfG
— Lancs Road Police (@LancsRoadPolice) March 1, 2020
People responded on twitter with a wide range of reactions. Everyone could agree that this was an absurd thing to have actually happened in real life, but ideas on why this happened and what should have been done varied greatly.
The family member who put this child in this position was reported for traffic offenses thankfully. No word from police on whether or not this child was good at driving, and whether his hours of frantic video game time actually helped his performance. Unfortunately, this kid will have to wait six more years before he can legally learn how to drive, hopefully without needing to police to pull him over once again.