Sweden's Worst Driver

Raymond Chen

Swedish Television announced a new reality-based television program called Sweden’s Worst Driver (Sveriges värsta bilförare). I’ve done a bad job of translating some excerpts:

TV4 has gathered seven of Sweden’s worst drivers and subjects them to a series of tests and challenges. Those who complete each exercise the best get a prize and leave the contest.

Thus, whoever is the last one left in the television series, which begins on the 29th of April, “wins” and is the worst at the same time.

… “That there exist people who aren’t so good at driving, I knew that already. But people as bad as this I didn’t think existed,” says [race driver and judge Richard Göransson].

… Sven-Ingvar “Snappe” Eriksson, 39, from Hammerdal in Jämtland was nominated by his wife Lena because he has crashed his car at least 25 to 30 times since he got his driver’s license 22 years ago.

Participants get to do several exercises, among them, yielding the right of way for unexpected traffic on forest roads, backing up with a trailer, parking in a tight spot on a hill, and getting out of a parking garage.

This is sort of in the spirit of those makeover-type programs like What Not To Wear, *** Eye for the Straight Guy, where you ridicule somebody for their general lameness. But at least in those shows, after they make fun of you, they then try to help you be better! Even in the dreadful Queen for a Day, the humiliated “winner” at least got a prize. No such luck, it seems, for Sweden’s worst driver.

It’s now a simple matter of time before this show reaches the United States.

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