An L of a Driver

Getting a driver's license in Britain is an L of a job. Tyro motorists are forced by law to hang a learner's "L" on their car, are thus the object of gibes and sneers from every hot-rodder and truck driver on the road. None of this fazed Margaret Hunter, a spinster schoolteacher from Cheshire who at 65 finally decided that it was time for her to get her license.

Thinking that her next teaching job might be in the country far from public transport, Miss Hunter bought a snappy little red Fiat, signed on with a driving school, and hung out her L. After only 40 lessons, she was ready for a trial spin. But her jolting stops and starts so terrified her instructor that he got out of the car, remarking: "This is lunacy; it's suicide. I'm not going another inch with you. I've had enough." Undeterred, plucky Miss Hunter had another go two days later, sideswiped a five-ton truck and demolished her car. "The garage told me it's a write-off," she said sweetly.

When Miss Hunter showed up for her test, she was tailed by a platoon of reporters and photographers. Climbing into her test car, she stalled seven times, at last put-putted off at 15 m.p.h., made a quick right turn, nearly crashing into a van, stalled at a stop street, backed over a sidewalk while making a turn, sailed through a red light, flicked on her left-turn indicator at an intersection and then drove straight across, finally parked at the test center--three feet from the curb. So sure was Miss Hunter of her innocence that she refused to heed court summonses to answer for her highway misdeeds. A policewoman finally had to climb through her apartment window to arrest her. In court last week. Miss Hunter declined to enter a plea, said: "I don't think the question of guilt enters into it." The court thought otherwise, fined her a total of $55.44.

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