In today’s load of bullshit, a Victorian L-Plater has been hit with a $1652 fine for going on a driving lesson with her mum, after a cop deemed it to be non-essential travel.
17-year-old Hunter Reynolds was pulled over while practicing wet-weather driving with her mum in the Frankston area. The cop claimed Hunter had breached stage 3 restrictions.
“We didn’t think for one minute that we would be doing anything wrong,” Sharee Reynolds, Hunter’s mum, told 3AW. “We weren’t in contact with any person, we weren’t stopping anywhere, we weren’t planning on visiting any destinations, we were just learning to drive in those conditions.”
“[The officer] said we were too far from home and we would cop a fine, and that Hunter would be the person to receive that fine.”
Given that the pair have been socially isolating together and did not leave the car, I just don’t see what the issue is. Here’s the thing, though – different states have contradictory stipulations about whether driving lessons are essential or not. And it’s this clusterfuck of a contradiction that’s leaving many of us in the dark, and creating such an ambiguity between what’s right and wrong.
For example, while Victoria is now saying driving lessons are non-essential, NSW believes otherwise: “We consider that it would be a reasonable excuse for a person to leave their house to receive driving lessons (either from a driving instructor or a member of their family),” a NSW Police spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.
“This is a learning activity that cannot be done from home and is akin to the listed reasonable excuse of travelling to attend an educational institution where you cannot learn from home.”
U-huh. Right.
