It shows officers following a vehicle near Vecumnieki on September 18 – which, with no small degree of irony had been designated 'Road Safety Day' – at a sedate pace after they noticed the car was not properly insured. Officers ordered the vehicle to pull over, perhaps expecting to deliver to the driver a brief lecture about road safety, and were surprised when he pulled into a nearby gas station via the 'No entry' sign.
Some would assume this was the fundamental blunder to which he had succumbed but no – fate had much more in store for this latter-day Lot. Perhaps sensing the cosmos was about to conspire against him in a less than trivial way, the driver promptly exited the vehicle and began to run away towards an adjacent field.
Evidently thinking there was something of the heroic defiance of Steve McQueen in The Great Escape about him and the field represented neutral Switzerland, the would-be escapee tried to vault the wire fence surrounding the field.
Not only was he notably unsuccesful in his attempt to execute a barrel roll over said obstacle, but his failure to do so also instantly alerted him to the fact that the fence had the additional inconvenience of being electrified in order to keep in some horses, who watched the entire tragicomedy unfold from the other side of the paddock the with their usual hauteur.
After disentangling him from the wreckage of his self-respect, law enforcement officers arrested the driver and administered a breathalyzer test and found that he was driving with a blood alcohol level of 0.95 and did not have a license to drive, having previously been caught driving under the influence. The Volvo driver was arrested and placed in detention. He is also unlikely to make the Latvian high jump squad.
