A German woman was stopped and arrested recently after police got a tipoff that she was transporting a dead body in her car.  The woman was taking a relative to be buried in her hometown and said she was trying to save the money the mortuary was going to charge her to transport the body.  (Unsurprisingly, it was the mortician that tipped off the police.)

The comedy in this incident, as is often the case, is provided by a police spokesman, who told reporters what the woman had been cited for and what she had not been cited for.  "You’re not allowed to transport dead people in your private car," said spokesman Ralf Schomisch, which is why the woman was charged with violating burial laws and with "disturbing a dead person’s peace" (that second one, at least, really doesn’t sound very fair).  But Schomisch also couldn’t stop himself from noting another possible violation: "The corpse was on the back seat without a seat belt," he said, although he quickly was forced to note that "in this case [it] didn’t really matter."

There’s a definite note of disappointment there, it seems to me.  Another scofflaw gets away on a technicality.  The failure to cite the corpse for not buckling up has deprived the world of a full discussion of some important legal issues, that’s for sure.

Link: Reuters via My Way News