Serious offences spark bizarre punishments while trivial transgressions could get you jailed. Here are five reports of transport crimes and punishments that may leave you scratching your head, (if indeed they are all true).
1) The Cold Shoulder
The Guardian reported this week that drink drivers and repeat traffic offenders in Thailand could be sent to work in hospital mortuaries under a new plan by the authorities to try to put a stop to carnage on the country’s roads.
2) Face to Face
Similarly, the Mail has reported that a drunk driver in America will have to view the bodies of two people who were killed in car accidents, as part of a sobering sentence.
Judge Mike Cicconetti from Painesville Municipal Court in Ohio handed down the unusual punishment to Jonathan Tarase, 27, in a bid to keep him, and other drunk drivers, from becoming repeat offenders.
3) Man/Rich-Flu
Meanwhile, the Guardian this week reported a return of sense in sentencing. Ethan Couch, the Texas teenager who used the now infamous ‘affluenza’ defence (too spoilt to know right from wrong) after killing four people in a drunk driving accident will serve nearly two years in jail after originally being sentenced to rehab and 10 years’ probation.
Couch was accused of violating his probation – which prohibits him from drinking, using drugs and driving – after a video appeared on social media showing him at a party with alcohol.
4) The (even) Longer Walk Home
It has also been reported that in Turkey drinking and driving sometimes results in novel punishments – ‘for example police officers have been known to take drunk drivers 30km from their hometown and make them walk back with the police car tagging on slowly behind to make sure that they abide by this punishment’.
4a) The Overkill?
Transport Network has not been able to verify this, or claims on another website that a first offence of drink driving in El Salvador will result in ‘execution by firing squad’.
5) Man, Oh Man!
Finally, it was reported last year that at least two men have been arrested and charged on New York’s public transport for ‘Manspreading’ – taking up more than their share of seating.
The offence, rather than the word itself, does indeed appear in the Metropolitan Transport Authority’s Rules of Conduct as an example of ‘disorderly conduct’.
It is not restricted to men but does indeed appear to be something for which you might be jailed.
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