Brits bamboozled by bizarre rules

EUROPEAN driving laws are leaving Brits in a bit of a pickle, with many people completely unable to separate wacky truths from absurd fiction.

To celebrate its new road trip competition, chocolate experts Cadbury dug up a selection of crazy driving laws across the continent and mixed them in with some entirely invented ones to create a quiz that caught many folks by surprise.

For a start, 75% of people refused to believe that a dirty car is punishable by law in Belarus.

Then there’s an excellent piece of Luxembourg logic, whereby a car is not legally required to have a windscreen, but it must be fitted with windscreen wipers. A whopping 80% of people thought it was made up.

Closer to home, a technically active British law still states that all Hackney Carriages in London must carry a bale of hay and a bag of oats with them at all times. Almost two thirds (62%) thought this was false.

Elsewhere, 30% fell for the fib that drivers in Estonia are obliged to keep a pair of wheel chocks in the car to prevent the car rolling away when parked.

Cadbury’s Win a Banger competition gives the winner a chance to drive a clapped-out old motor, decorated ‘imaginatively’ using the theme of one of the firm’s chocolate bars, across part of Europe.

The survey also explored British drivers’ bad habits while driving overseas, revealing that 15% of us simply talk slower and louder when someone doesn’t understand English.

Almost 10% ended up in entirely the wrong country by trusting an errant sat-nav, while Lewis Hamilton was voted the best driving partner, securing 13% of the vote.

The competition is open for entries now.

By Press Association reporter