Police in Italy have fined a 103-year-old woman who was caught driving an uninsured car at night with an expired driving licence.
Officers received a call at about 1am reporting a vehicle being driven dangerously in the centre of Bondeno, a town with about 13,000 inhabitants near Ferrara.
The officers dispatched to the scene in the northern Emilia Romagna region were “greatly surprised when they discovered the year of the driver’s birth”, according to a police report.
Giuseppina Molinari, known as Giose, was born in 1920. She had been driving to Bondeno to meet friends and “probably” got disoriented in the dark and lost her way, police said.
Molinari’s licence expired two years ago. In Italy, drivers over 80 must undergo a medical exam every two years to renew their licence.
Molinari was fined and taken home by police.
“I will buy myself a Vespa,” Molinari told local newspaper La Nuova Ferrara.
In the meantime, she plans to visit friends by bicycle instead.
Ferrara’s mayor, Alan Fabbri, hailed her approach to life. “I would give Giose a medal rather than a fine,” he said.
“It’s not common to have such inner strength, and it gives me hope for my own old age!” he wrote on Facebook.
