7-Year-Old Driver Caught In Australia, 10-Year-Old Louisiana Driver So Last Week

A 7-year-old driver in Australia means that Team USA can no longer even pretend to hold the title for youngest designated driver.

According to a startling report Friday by Australia’s 7 News, police on the Gold Coast of Queensland pulled over a bad driver about 3 AM on Friday morning — only to discover that the man at the wheel was a 7-year-old designated driver.

The boy who may be the world’s youngest-ever designated driver was driving around his 41-year-old father. The family is from New South Wales, also in Australia.

The police couldn’t or wouldn’t confirm a rumor that the drunken dad’s blood alcohol limit was a shocking three times the legal limit. However, he has now been charged with “dangerous operation of a motor vehicle and being an adult in charge under the influence of liquor.”

The boy is in the custody of relatives from New South Wales. The father will appear in court on July 3.

The case came only days after an incident in Kenner, Louisiana where a 10-year-old was the designated driver of a SUV pulled over on Interstate 10.

According to the Huffington Post account of the incident, 54-year-old Brenda Byrd and 48-year-old Sheila Joiner were booked with contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile and with allowing an unlicensed driver to operate the SUV. The 10-year-old boy driver was Byrd’s grandson.

She reportedly told the Kenner police officer who pulled the SUV over that the adults were too drunk to drive.

Here’s a video report on that case:

An Australian official told local media that he was shocked and that children that young weren’t normally caught behind the wheel.

Let’s hope.

I would hate to have to come back to report on a case of someone even younger than our 7-year-old driver.

[photo by Dmitry Bruskov via Shutterstock]