Motorway madness in France - changing drivers at 130km/h

While most motorists might get from A to B with only the slightest of hitches and the minimum of mistakes there are also of course plenty of daft driving stories, plain stupid ones, those involving reckless fools and others simply defying belief.

What follows surely is a tale that falls into each of the idiotic categories - and then some.

And it just goes to show that mad motorway stories aren't confined to summer speeding when the media is hunting around for the unusual to fill the airwaves or column inches.

On Tuesday highway police patrolling a stretch of the A10 motorway in the département of Vienne in central-western France stopped a car because they had spotted the driver and passenger exchanging seats.

Maybe that should be capitalised to add emphasis.

No, obviously the car wasn't stationary as the driver and passenger swapped places otherwise the police wouldn't have had to stop it.

Instead it was cruising along at the official speed limit on French motorways of 130 km/h or just over 80 mph!

The less-than judicious manouevre came to the attention of the police because as the two attempted to change places their vehicle (not surprisingly perhaps) suddenly dropped speed to a more modest 60 km/h or 37 mph.

When the car was pulled over at the next rest area and the police had checked the papers of both the driver and the passenger, it transpired that son who had been trying to hand over control of the vehicle to his 70-year-old father had in fact had his licence suspended:

"Something that probably explains why the two were willing to take such a risk", according to police.

Among the offences with which both men have been jointly or individually charged are driving with a suspended licence, not wearing seat belts and - as if it needed to be spellt out - "driving under conditions that didn't allow for easy manouevring."

Legalese presumably for "dangerous driving".

Their fate will be determined by a judge.