Tourist rental car confiscated - guess the race....

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

Foreign driver has rental car taken by police after complaints from public




Three people had called police to complain about a man's driving between Christchurch and Kaikoura.

A tourist driver has been taken off the road after complaints from the public alerted police.

The man, from Mumbai, India, had his rental car confiscated on the first day of his New Zealand holiday following three calls to police about his driving from Christchurch to Kaikoura.

Constable David Gillies, of Kaikoura Police, followed the man and his wife into Kaikoura for the last 10 kilometres of their journey, and said he witnessed some of the worst driving he had ever seen.

He tailed them to their destination, Clearwater Motel on the Esplanade, and informed them of the complaints.

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Terry Thompson, right, and his wife Bon outside their Kaikoura motel, say rental car companies need to shoulder some of the blame for poor tourist driving.

Motel owner Terry Thompson said he asked the driver why he thought people had complained.

"He was trying to be careful not to break the road rules in New Zealand," said Thompson.

"He said maybe he was braking on a regular basis and also going over the centre line the odd time."

The following morning, police confiscated the rental car on behalf of the rental company.

Thompson believed the complainants and police did the right thing. "I see people drifting over the centre line all the time, looking at the scenery - they are just not concentrating," he said.

"You have got to drive defensively nowadays."

But he did not think the blame should lie solely with the tourists.

"We have to question how much the rental car companies are telling these visitors."

Thompson's wife Bon said foreign drivers were not to blame.

"This is about education when they arrive in our country. Is the information given to them in, say, Mandarin?" she said.

"We need to help them because we need their tourism."

Thompson said he wanted to help his guests, who had two weeks of their holiday left with no transport.

He contacted a friend in the rental car business in Christchurch and organised a car and driver for their two-week holiday, a solution he would like to see more tourists take up.

"They told me they would definitely recommend hiring a car and driver to their friends as it was the best way to see New Zealand without getting stressed out about the driving."

- Kaikoura Star


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