Reverse logic

In a population as big as China’s there are many opportunities for superlatives. And China’s bloggers are now convinced they have video evidence of the world’s worst driver. According to the People’s Daily, the recent incident occurred in Jiangyin in Jiangsu province and was “dumbfounding”. It occurred in a car park, where a video camera showed a driver attempting to reverse his vehicle out of a space. With seemingly no sense of direction or spatial awareness he hits the car next to him, and then drives back into the original position. What makes the situation a little more extraordinary: he hits the adjacent car a further 15 times before he eventually manages to extricate his car from the space. At this point he gets out to inspect the damage before driving off. An understandably miffed owner of the dented vehicle then contacts the police, and the authorities eventually track the woeful driver down. Owing to his new celebrity on the web – where footage of his reversing skills have earned him the monicker Brother Reverse – the Jiangyin police felt obliged to release a statement. In it, they said the driver was a novice who’d recently graduated from university and just started a new job. He’d learned to drive in his first year of university but hadn’t needed to drive much during his time studying. Police commented that he was “fairly good at driving forward, but unskilled in reversing”. Owing to the hit and run nature of his act, his licence has been confiscated pending a decision on his punishment.

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