Designated Drivers
If you live in this country and you want to drive an automobile, three things are needed: money, because the price of gas is out of this world, courage, because British roads are narrow, busy and full of holes and a licence to drive, for which you will need to pass a special test.
Or will you? It's just been revealed that thousands of people here are cheating. Believe it or not, they have been paying somebody else to sit behind the wheel and show the examiners they know how to drive.
And this is no small time scam. A few days ago the courts took action against a man from the northern city of Manchester. His trade was driving a bus. But his hobby was passing the driving test for other people.
In his case, that meant 200 other people, each of whom handed up to 1,000 bucks to pretend he was them. That adds up to 50,000 dollars for a little bit of impersonation.
How did he get away with it? Sadly it wasn't hard. Remember, this is Britain. Our driving test examiners don't know who they're testing and they don't look too closely at your ID.
I probably couldn't get away with pretending to be a youngster, but if you faintly resemble the guy who's slipping you the money and you say you're him and you drive safely, they usually don't spot the difference. Even if they get suspicious the worst that happens is the test gets cancelled.
Almost five thousand tests were cancelled last year alone. So this is probably the tip of a very profitable and widespread criminal iceberg.
Once you've got a driver's license you've got an identity - you can open a bank account, take credit, get a life. So it's a very popular crime with illegal immigrants, and we have thousands of them. The punishments are pretty slack too - the Manchester bus driver was ordered to do 200 hours of community service and fined just 1000 dollars.
The police only managed to trace 15 of the 200 men for whom he committed fraud. Which means that there could be 185 guys out there right now, swaying across the turnpikes, without a clue. You have been warned.
By Ed Boyle