Perth driver issued infringement after being caught playing Minecraft behind the wheel

A Perth driver has been fined after police caught him turning his morning commute into a Minecraft marathon.

WA Police have shared jaw-dropping footage of the moment a road policing officer pulls over a motorist in Forrestfield after observing him allegedly playing Minecraft and swerving his car on Tonkin Highway.

The video shows police approaching the motorist while the block-based video game was clearly open on the man’s phone screen, with the device placed next to his steering wheel.

“Can you give me one sensible reason why you’re playing a game on your phone on Tonkin Highway while you’re swerving all over the road?”, the officer is heard asking the man in the viral clip, which has already amassed a quarter of a million views.

The wild incident was the central topic of a new podcast episode from WA Police Confidential that was released on Thursday.

Responding officer Don Justin told podcast hosts Claire Ciantar, Mya Grieve and Sgt Nate Gilmour that the police were initially patrolling the thoroughfare for speeders — but the driver’s video game antics were too reckless to ignore.

“On that particular morning, our focus was on speeding offences,” the officer said.

“However, this is one of those things you’ve just got to stop the driver before he goes down the road and actually ends up seriously injuring or killing someone.

“People have their priorities a bit wrong behind the wheel but certainly when it comes to playing Minecraft in a live environment, that sort of takes the cake.”

The officer, who was patrolling on his motorbike, said he had watched the driver in the vehicle for several moments before deciding to pull him over.

“I took a couple of seconds to just get my head around what’s actually going on in the car and the closer I got, the more it became evident that it wasn’t just a YouTube video — the driver was actually interacting with his mobile device,” he said.

“Once I had satisfied myself that I wasn’t seeing things and I wasn’t dreaming, the decision was made to stop the gentleman.”

The driver was followed to a quieter side street in Forrestfield, a suburb in Perth’s south-east, and was promptly pulled over by law enforcement.

“As I walked up (to his car), it was one of those instances where a picture speaks a thousand words . . . so I took a photograph of what he was doing and briefly spoke to him,” he said about the traffic stop.

“I do know that Minecraft is apparently a really common game for teenagers, five-year-olds, etc. . . (but) Tonkin Highway at the morning time is really not the place to be playing that.”

The driver was slapped with a $1000 fine and four demerit points over the incident.

As viewers tried to wrap their head around the wild situation, Sgt Gilmour took a moment to ask the officer one burning question: “Were they only bad at driving or were they also bad at Minecraft?”

The query prompted a chuckle from the officer, who revealed that he sadly couldn’t issue infringements for people being bad at games.