Expat fined for speeding ... in Saudi Arabia

AN Australian expatriate logged on to a government website to check for speeding violations and discovered he had been driving over the limit… in Saudi Arabia in 1928.
The driver, who preferred not to be named, assumed there must have been an error because not only had he never been to Saudi but he was not even born at the time of the ‘offence’.
He told Gulf Times: “Perhaps it was something my granddad did!”
Maybe so, but his grandfather must have been a time traveller as well as a traffic law violator because according to the computer the guilty culprit back in 1928 had been driving a 2001 model car.
The Australian was first alerted to the mistake when he received a text message from the Ministry of Interior’s METRASH service.
“You have new violations for vehicle number…on 2008-04-15 of amount 500 QR,” read the message.
The expat immediately went to check his car registration on the Ministry of Interior (MoI) website.
His suspicion that something might be amiss was raised when he looked at the price of the fine, which was marked as 150SR rather than the previously reported QR500. 
Things went from bad to worse when he looked at the location of the offence which simply stated ‘Saudi.’ 
“I was slightly worried when I saw Saudi on there, especially considering I have never visited the country,” he said.
The new ‘offence’ also cast some measure of doubt on a previous fine he had incurred for speeding in Wakrah on a Friday evening.
“I have never been down to Wakrah in the evening – especially not at the weekend.”
On that occasion, the Australian decided to pay up thinking that he might have committed the offence in the morning and it had taken time to process.