This story from the USA contains a number of themes of interest: joyriding; differences in US and UK car cultures and media coverage of crime.
The follow up by the same reporter adds further layers of interest after the event with a more local news website (5-year-old caught driving on Utah freeway takes safer luxury spin a day later) adding further layers .
Nominally under the care of his 16-year-old sibling (taking a nap) whilst their parents were at work, the five-year-old took the keys to the family SUV and drove a few miles on local roads before joining Interstate 15. Apparently, the boy is obsessed with cars and had asked his mother to buy him a Lamborghini. She refused.
His crime was detected by a State Trooper when he observed the car swerving and only doing 32mph in a 70mph zone. He had $3 on him. The parents were reunited with their child and their car. The County Attorney’s office will consider whether the parents should be charged. The second article specifically calls this a joyride. Indeed, I was only baited to click on the article by my curiosity to see how it was portrayed.
The second article also moves the story on to the next day when a local Lamborghini owner gives the boy, his mother and sister a trip around the block in his car. He acknowledged, ‘even though the joyride was dangerous, and he doesn’t want to encourage similar behavior, he wanted to cheer the boy up’.
In the third local article this legal trip is also called a ‘joyride’ and we are treated to a picture of the boy on his mother lap in the car.
I don’t know Utah motoring law but surely this is dangerous even if legal.
More interestingly still we discover that owner ‘took his own maiden joyride at age 12’!
No vehicles were damaged and the whole thing is treated as a light human interest story with a warning to watch your children. I would share Trooper Morgan and his colleagues belief that, ‘the child may have secretly hit the road before Monday’s experience’.
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