ABC Radio’s SA Regional Drive<\/a> show on Friday, Superintendent Shane Johnson, officer in charge of SAPOL’s Traffic Services Branch, said the homemade car looked like a cross between a ride-on mower and a kid’s toy.<\/p>\n“[Police] were quite alarmed at the time \u2026 [it] was driving on a road,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It’s got a real steering wheel, a single seat, [it] had a car battery slapped on the back. It looks like it’s been well used as well, but looks like the kind of thing that you’d build on a weekend with spare parts.<\/p>\n
“I’m sure it’d be a bit of fun at a backyard barbecue, but definitely not one for the roads \u2026 It’s simply not safe.”<\/p>\n
The man and his homemade car were detected by one of two new shadow police patrol cars, which were deployed to the Riverland this week.<\/p>\n
The man will be summonsed to appear in court at a later date.<\/p>\n
During the three-day operation, police detected 25 drug drivers, issued 52 traffic expiation notices and defected 27 cars.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police issued 24 instant loss of licences and impounded two vehicles.<\/p>\n
What constitutes a vehicle?<\/p>\n
Traffic law specialist Karen Stanley said the legislation that defined a motor vehicle was “quite specific”.<\/p>\n
“Basically, if a vehicle is built to be propelled by a motor, then it’s a motor vehicle,” Ms Stanley said.![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/505fd7c3f8bf0eaf596f9b2085095781.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Karen Stanley says the definition of a motor vehicle is “very specific”, according to legislation. (Supplied: Karen Stanley)<\/p>\n
“However, there are lots and lots of exceptions to that. There are exceptions for what we know now are e-scooters, mobility scooters \u2026 the real question is, is this a motor vehicle or is it a vehicle because it is excluded in the legislation?”<\/p>\n
Ms Stanley said she had not seen many instances of homemade cars on the road.<\/p>\n
“There’d be all kinds of safety regulations that [a homemade car] is breaking,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I expect there would be some laws about riding a vehicle in certain circumstances \u2026 I don’t know if this meets the definition of a bicycle, or whether it meets the definition of a mobility scooter because it has the motor of a gopher in it.”<\/p>\n
Superintendent Johnson said motors being “slapped on” pushbikes was “happening more and more” on the roads, especially among youths, leading to police actively targeting the devices.<\/p>\n
‘Shadow’ patrol car concerns<\/p>\n
SAPOL’s shadow patrol operation, which led to the discovery of the homemade car in Glossop this week, was part of a wider regional deployment focusing on areas with high casualty collisions, Superintendent Johnson said.<\/p>\n
The patrol vehicles are not unmarked but are less visible, particularly under certain lighting conditions, he added.<\/p>\n
“We want drivers to drive safely and not take risks all of the time, not just when they see a police car, so we’re targeting those \u2026 dangerous road users who we find only drive safely when they see police,” Superintendent Johnson said.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/b80da52cd0b8f6e7500f0597d2793b6f.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
The shadow patrol cars, which were launched last week by SAPOL, have faint reflective markings on their side that are harder to see in daylight. (Supplied: SAPOL)<\/p>\n
While it was important for police to catch people committing road offences, Ms Stanley said she was concerned what the shadow patrol cars would do to public trust.<\/p>\n
“I am sure that these shadow vehicles will detect a lot more offences, and they might make the roads safer, but I’m a little bit concerned about increasing police distrust,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Because there is a school of thought about revenue raising.”<\/p>\n
More news from regional SA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man will face court after he was found driving a homemade car in the Riverland. According to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":805825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,199566,379149,379146,379147,379148,44],"class_list":["post-805824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-e-scooter","tag-gopher-mobility-scooter","tag-homemade-car","tag-homemade-car-traffic-offences","tag-man-caught-driving-homemade-car","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=805824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/805824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/805825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=805824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=805824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=805824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/35f08686f623e5dfe7ee50247608e37c.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n