April 27, 2006
It is our most modest receptacle…
Woman nabbed driving corpse across country
A 53-year-old German woman who was driving her dead mother across country to save on mortuary transportation costs was fined by police for disturbing a dead person’s peace.
“You’re not allowed to transport dead people in your private car,” said Ralf Schomisch, police spokesman in Koblenz, where the car was found after a tip-off from a mortuary.
“The corpse was on the back seat without a seat belt, which in this case didn’t really matter. But it was covered up with clothing. It is a misdemeanor.”
He said the woman, who was not identified, was charged with violating burial laws and disturbing a dead person’s peace. She would face a modest fine, Schomisch said.
[emphasis added]
So what’s really different between a private car transporting the body, and a mortuary vehicle transporting the body? Does not a mortuary “disturb a dead person’s peace” when they transport the body?
I think I pretty much know what happened here. I’ll bet that in Germany, the mortician’s lobby has pretty well ensured that only licensed mortuaries can transport bodies, and use that government protection to charge outlandish sums to do so. It’s the same thing you’d see with any government-created monopoly. The mortuary tipped off the cops— not out of concern for anyone’s “peace”— but out of concern for their own profit…
Hat Tip: Uncle Jack
1 Comment
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
I immediately recognized the title in my newsreader.
Big Lebowski.