A 14-year-old behind the wheel, three driving while banned: 11 drivers detained in a single day

A 14-year-old from the village of Dobrino near Skopje behind the wheel. A 16-year-old from Skopje - the same. In a single day, police across the country detained 11 drivers for the criminal offence of "reckless driving" under Article 297-a of the Criminal Code, and the list reads like a cross-section of everything that's wrong on our roads.

Five were driving without having passed a driving test: besides the two children, there's 23-year-old A.Dž., E.Z. (26) and B.D. (51), all from Skopje. When a 51-year-old driver hasn't passed the test, it can no longer be written off as youthful madness.

Two were driving drunk: M.S. (42) from Ularci, in the municipality of Češinovo-Obleševo, and D.E. (64) from Negotino, who also managed to cause a crash with material damage. Three, meanwhile, shouldn't have been on the road at all, because they had an active driving ban - A.S. (36) from Bitola, R.R. (26) from the Kičevo area and M.D. (21) from Kavadarci. The man from Kavadarci is a story of his own: according to the police bulletin, he was caught late at night with an active ban, a measured 1.11 per mille of alcohol, and a white lumpy substance found in the vehicle.

Also on the list is M.N. (34), a Montenegrin citizen, detained for speeding. Criminal complaints, the Interior Ministry says, will follow once the cases are fully documented.

The police are once again appealing to people not to drive without a test, while banned or drunk. The appeal is fair, but the list shows that for some, a driving ban is just a piece of paper. If three drivers with active bans were caught in a single day, how many more haven't been? And who gave the car keys to a 14-year-old child?