Driver caught by police playing the flute at the wheel

25 October 2021, 10:06 | Updated: 25 October 2021, 15:18

A driver has been caught with both hands on his flute, instead of on the steering wheel, leading to a moving violation for the musician. And Twitter couldn’t help but make some jokes...

A Canadian man has been given a motor violation, after being caught by a traffic officer playing the flute while driving.

The man was pulled over in Toronto on Wednesday 20 October at around 4pm local time. The traffic officer, who was conducting distracted driver enforcement, expected to find the driver on a mobile phone.

The officer instead was shocked to find “the driver playing his flute with both hands and following along to an iPod while driving!”

A spokesperson for Halton Regional Police Department unfortunately was unable to confirm what song the flautist had been playing along to.

Read more: India to replace ambulance sirens with traditional flute and tabla music

In a tweet from the Halton Regional Police Service account, the story was recounted to its following of 31,500 followers, along with the, perhaps underused, hashtag #FlutesAndDrivingDontMix.

Twitter was quick to engage with the story, with commenters asking whether the driver was on his way to “band camp?”, and “did he blow over?”.

According to the government of Ontario’s website, the following counts as distracted driving: using a phone to text or dial, using a hand-held electronic entertainment device, watching a video, or using a GPS device.

Although playing the flute currently doesn’t feature on the website, the Halton Police Department told a Canadian news channel that the driver was charged with “start from stopped position not in safety” under Canada’s Highway Traffic Act.