Irish cops tripped up by Prawo Jazdy dragnet

Irish cops have finally uncovered the identity of one of the Emerald Isle's "most reckless drivers" - a Pole who had by June 2007 clocked up over 50 speeding fines and parking tickets on the Garda Pulse computer system without once being convicted of a crime against motoring. The penny finally droppped when a Garda traffic …

[Tim]

Oops

You can but imagine the Polish drivers trying to stop themselves grinning as PC Plod writes that down.

Though it looks like they needn't have worried anyway, going by this story:

http://new.edp24.co.uk/content/news/story.aspx?brand=EDPOnline&category=News&tBrand=edponline&tCategory=news&itemid=NOED19%20Feb%202009%2008%3A55%3A04%3A220

Tim#3

[Anonymous Coward]

You just couldn't make it up could you.

Maybe we should change our names to Driving Licence via the deed poll website and see if that works on UK police 8-)

Signed, A.N.Onemouse

[Seán]

Prado famine

I thought Jazdy was musical wanking

[Lottie]

D'oh

Epic fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

How thick do you have to be?

I know language skills are not a prerequisite for the gardai as half of them have difficulties speaking English, what idiots. Paris, because if her TV career fails, she can always get a job with the gardai and still be seen as one of the smart ones.

[A J Stiles]

And this is why

This is just one reason why the proposed national identity register would never work.

[Andus McCoatover]

HO, effing HO!

Now I've a way to get around Jaqui's system.

My name henceforth is "Ajokortti Körkort". Bet the razzers don't have 'Ö' on their machines. That'll fuc*k 'em.

See http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1b/Finnish_driver%27s_license.jpg - first word Finnish, second Swedish meaning the same.

(Having said that, the letter 'Ö' does look a bit like me, after Friday lunch....)

[Matt]

Commentard Cliché alert!

I hesitate to say it but: FAIL

The top of my (UK) driving licence bears the words....Driving Licence

My Surname and name are listed underneath, next to my at-the-time-pimply-17-year-old mugshot.

I thought the whole point of these EU driving licences was that they were all the same format, so couldn't be confuddled. Come on Garda, wake up!

Off-topic I know, but my Swedish friend has been refused entry to clubs when visiting me in Cardiff, because the bouncers couldn't fathom her Swedish driving licence - which again is in the same format as the UK ones...Honestly, ex-rock-ape bouncers I can forgive, but trained Police Officers?

What's the world coming to, we're going to hell in a handcart...etc, etc. Mine's the one with a copy of the Daily Mail in the pocket.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just waiting

for the first child to be named Prawo Jazdy to keep them safe from driving tickets- "Who's this car registered to, officer O'Brien?" "tap o'the marnin to ye sgt Paddy. It's anudder wan o' dem polish loicenses." "Get rid of it, O'Brien. We'll never find the foreign fine-dodging git now."

[Anonymous Coward]

Spellcheck FAIL

"write large at the top."

[Shingo Tamai]

Idiocy at its finest

YES WE CAN!!!

[Steve]

@ Tim

Use Tiny URL much easier for long urls http://tinyurl.com/bbb46y

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine Too...Idiots..

The top of my (UK) driving licence bears the words....Driving Licence

[Michael]

Worst part is ...

... most people are giving the garda sicini the benefit of the doubt wrt low iq .

Nobody's questioning wether any brown paper envelopes changed hands, either at the roadside or in the back office.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, here we go

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PL_driving_license_front.JPG

It turns out that Prawo is actually a young lady. (Paris, 'cause young ladies are always the worst drivers.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh

That's a bit sad, but not entirely surprising. The Gardai are under-resourced, under-staffed and under-trained, so sadly stuff like this probably happens far more often than it should.

There again, one of their better plus points was summarised by Neal Delamere on RTE 2's The Panel: "Gardai- it's Irish for not shooting a Brazilian in the back of the head".

[Anonymous Coward]

DAmn!

So the french guy I fined the other day does not go by the name of "Permit de Conduire"? Damn those frenchies and their subterfuges!

[Alexis Vallance]

Irish

Is the same detective who did so well at not finding Shergar involved I wonder?

If you saw Harry Hill the other week, you'll know what I'm on about!

[Martin]

ID cards for all.

In parliament today Jaqui Smith announced that all crime in the UK had been committed by a "Mr I.D. Card" and police were tracking him down.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re You just couldn't make it up could you.

Yes, we could. But you're not allowed to make jokes against individual countries any more.

Especially when they are PC jokes :)

[Anonymous Coward]

Standard

I thought the European driving licence was supposed to be the same across tthe continent. And I thought the reason for this was so that plod new where to find the details whatever the language the licence is printed in. Do the Irish have photo card licences? If so then surely their plod would know where to find the drivers details. And is it not standard practice to record the licence number too, in which case wouldn't this provide a cross check?

This carries all the hallmarks of an urban myth.

[JMB]

Prawo Jazdy

I would have thought one solution would be enter phrases like "Driving Licence" in all languages into their system so it displayed a warning but that would need a bit of common sense.

[robbie]

At least...

The Irish still have some humour in amongst their road traffic policing, and haven't bent over and been rodgered by piratical local councils and police authorities.

[Andy Bright]

Lost in translation

Good attempt but it doesn't beat the "sorry I'm out of the office" sign post..

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7702913.stm

My personal favourite is the sign for pedestrians in Cardiff reading 'Look Right' in English and 'Look Left' in Welsh.

That'll pay 'em right proper for not reading in the mother tongue.

[Nicholas Ettel]

Intelligence FAIL!

@ AC 14:01 GMT --

All those words are spelled correctly, and, as such, wouldn't be caught by spellcheck. It is, however, grammatically incorrect, whereby a grammar checker would/might catch that. Thanks for playing the game, but you lose.

[Ceadunas Tiomana]

@ Anonymous Coward #9

y-e-h-h... you'd have thunk, but no. Our driving licences are still paper tri-fold design. There is a photo, but the licences bear no resemblance to any other EU licence. Those of us who work with EU nationals have seen the credit card style ones, but so far as I know there's no plans to bring them in here.

And nope, it's not an urban myth unfortunately; it's since been decided that it might be a good idea to have samples of licences from other countries. Better late than never I suppose.

Look, you're probably aware of the incompetance and corruptness in our banks - the rest of the administrative bodies aren't much better. Actually, that was probably the only bright spot in todays papers.

[David]

It's actually not as simple as you'd think!

It's an easy enough mistake to occur when you look at European driving licenses, they're not all identically layouts.

I searched a few examples in google images just out of curiosity and there seems to be a few different versions around as well as pre-EU national versions in the recently joined member states, like Poland, which may still be valid.

The problem was that a particular version of the Polish License had those words printed where you'd expect to see a driver's name usually on the standardised EU version.

Also, the big pink papery book is still used by a few EU countries, I know a few french people who still seem to carry one, so it's definitely not unique to Ireland.

There was some fuss over rolling out credit card size licenses here as they wanted to wait until the Garda (Police) had rolled out its hand held computer programme (now almost complete). Any system rolled out will have to be trialled with those devices etc first. So, there was some sense in not rushing ahead with first generation chip cards.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ who ever it was...

"Honestly, ex-rock-ape bouncers I can forgive, but trained Police Officers?"

And the difference being.....?

[Andus McCoatover]

@JMB

<<I would have thought one solution would be enter phrases like "Driving Licence" in all languages into their system so it displayed a warning but that would need a bit of common sense.>>

Yep, but the "Driving Licence" woids are on the licence in the common Euro languages. See the examples above. Even the Polish one's got it in English, too. It's in Welsh (I think) and possibly in Gaelic - not one of my skills, I add.

Grief, even Irish Paddywagon drivers can't be that unobservant.

Can they?

[David Taylor]

"It's not as easy as you think"

Yes, it is. The fields are all numbered and the meanings of each field is the same on all EU licenses.

[Ceadunas Tiomana]

@ David Taylor

And obviously all driving licences within the EU are identical...

[Tonto Popaduopolos]

That is bad......

......but how many of you choppers have had a photo licence for more than 10 years and haven't renewed it.