Boys in the blue in Montana,
Pulled over a giant banana.
Drawn by the appeel of the yellow four wheeler,
They spun jokes deadpan and deadpanner.
That thing is so cool and I've seen it in the wild a few times.
It’s especially funny because the owner of the vehicle has zero problems and none of you have evidence of abuse of power but oh no, you’ve all made up your minds and ACAB.
It’s embarrassing you have all decided to stop thinking.
Reminds me of Dumb and Dumber when the cops say they're following a "1985 Sheepdog, sir"
Who knew that abuse of privilege could be fun! But then I think it's only natural that the LEOs of a banana republic would feel a magnetic attraction to a giant banana.
> The truck beneath the banana has now traveled more than 250,000 miles.
It is also possible to register a vehicle built from scratch, but this typically requires a lot more paperwork to do.
At even just 10 minutes a stop, that is over 30 hours of this poor man's life he has spent staring at the berries and cherries just because some entitled cop thought he deserved a photo op.
> Often officers simply wanted photographs.
> Other times they invented reasons to start a conversation.
> His favorite stop happened in a small mountain town in West Virginia.
> A traffic light turned red. Braithwaite stopped. The light turned green and he made a leisurely turn through the intersection.
> A few moments later, flashing lights appeared behind him.
> A police officer marched up to the banana and delivered the news.
> "'The reason I pulled you over, that light back there, you peeled out.'"
Their job is to take advantage of their authority to have fun at the expense of the time of citizens?
This man is driving a homemade banana car across the continent specifically because he wants the attention it garners. It's the whole point.
I understand your perspective, but viewing police as solely as a potential threat is not spreading whimsy.
What a privileged point of view. For a lot of people police are indeed nothing but a potential threat.
The prioritization of a respect for authority over a respect for the rule of law is notoriously problematic in small town america in very real ways.
SCOTUS made race-based Kavanaugh Stops legal. Stipping a banana on wheels is a much lower bar
> Two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence, (1, 2) in contrast to 10% of families in the general population.(3) A third study of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24% (4), indicating that domestic violence is 24 times more common among police families than American families in general.
https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2017R1/Downloads/Comm...
However we interacted as equals and I was free to refuse the conversation or end it when I wanted. I was free to set boundaries.
I would not feel the same if stopped by cops.
And it didn’t start there in Germany, either banana cars or death camps.
A belief that they have violated some law. They cannot do it for these reasons, from the article:
> Often officers simply wanted photographs.
> Other times they invented reasons to start a conversation.
"Reasonable suspicion of a crime" is an objective legal standard that doesn't mean the same thing as "they look suspicious" or the situation itself is "suspicious" -- it means that the officer thinks that a specific articulable crime has, is, or is about to occur. They don't have to be 100% sure, and they don't even have to be correct about what the law even is, but they do have to believe a law was broken.
Being unusual by itself does not legally qualify for reasonable suspicion of a crime or infraction, because being unusual isn't a crime.
Now, the officer could be interested in the car because it is a banana, and want to stop it to take a picture of it, but they have to have suspicion of some specific violation first.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whren_v._United_States
For example:
1. "Hey that banana car looks weird" > "it doesn't look like it has turn signals" > [pulls them over] > "hey do you have turn signals", "yes", "ok my bad have a nice day" = legal, because not having turn signals is an equipment violation.
2. "Hey that banana car looks weird" > [pulls them over] > "hey is this thing legal?" = illegal, because looking weird is not a crime
But other examples in the article like "Often officers simply wanted photographs." would not be a legal reason.
It's perfectly reasonable to question whether that vehicle is street legal when it passes by on the road. It would be my first thought. It looks like it's mounted on a boat trailer chassis, and the windshield appears to have questionable effectiveness at high speeds. Pulling him over to ask about it seems like they are doing their jobs. Especially when I am also a driver on the same road.
A giant banana car is the definition of unusual behavior, after all.
Society doesn't benefit from policing "Weird".
A Montana police officer spotted the giant banana rolling through Billings on Wednesday afternoon and did what countless law enforcement officers have done before him.
He turned around and pulled it over.
For Steve Braithwaite, owner, builder and full-time driver of the 23-foot-long Big Banana Car, the stop was less of a surprise than a tradition.
"I would see a police car going the other way and get my documents ready," Braithwaite told Cowboy State Daily from Seattle on Thursday morning. "I knew they were going to loop around and pull me over."
After 15 years, more than 250,000 miles and enough roadside conversations to fill a produce aisle, Braithwaite has learned that driving a giant banana attracts attention.
Especially from cops.
"They always find a reason to pull me over," Braithwaite said.
in this case it was an issue with the license plate, but ultimately he was not given a ticket.
Braithwaite figures he may have spent the better part of a decade as one of the most frequently pulled-over drivers in America.
Not for speeding, but simply because he was driving a giant banana.
"For the first eight or nine years I was the most pulled-over man in America," he said. "It was constant."
Often officers simply wanted photographs.
Other times they invented reasons to start a conversation.
His favorite stop happened in a small mountain town in West Virginia.
A traffic light turned red. Braithwaite stopped. The light turned green and he made a leisurely turn through the intersection.
A few moments later, flashing lights appeared behind him.
A police officer marched up to the banana and delivered the news.
"'The reason I pulled you over, that light back there, you peeled out.'"
For a moment, Braithwaite didn't know if he was being serious or not.
"He said it so straight-faced," Braithwaite recalled. "And I'm like, 'Oh yeah.'"
The banana jokes, he said, are "never-ending."
Fortunately, so are the laughs.

Passengers wave from the Big Banana Car during one of Braithwaite's many community appearances. He regularly offers rides and says meeting people is the best part of driving the giant fruit. (Courtesy: Steve Braithwaite)

Steve Braithwaite and a law enforcement official pose beside the Big Banana Car. (Courtesy: Steve Braithwaite)

The Big Banana Car makes an appearance at a McDonald's parking lot. Braithwaite says ordinary errands often become impromptu photo opportunities. (Courtesy: Steve Braithwaite)

The Big Banana Car rolls down a residential street. Braithwaite built the vehicle atop a pickup truck chassis after a chance encounter with a banana in a gas station inspired the idea. (Courtesy: Steve Braithwaite)
The whole thing began in a gas station in 2008.
Braithwaite, a lifelong hot-rod enthusiast, had become bored attending car shows.
Then he watched an episode of the British television show "Top Gear" featuring bizarre custom-built vehicles, including a street-legal garden shed and a drivable couch.
For the next month, his brain worked overtime.
"Everything I looked at, I thought, 'can I turn that into a car?'" he said. "My drill, my neighbor's lawn mower, everything."
Then one day he found himself standing beside a bowl of fruit in a gas station.
On top sat a banana.
Not the curved cartoon banana he'd always pictured, but a straighter one.
Suddenly, he could see it.
"The windshield would go there. The wheels would go there."
Then came the moment that changed everything.
"I pictured it driving down the road and died laughing," he said.
The image captivated him so completely that the checkout line moved without him noticing.
"The lady directly behind me had to tap me on the shoulder," he said. "They must have been thinking, 'Oh my God, is that the first banana he's ever seen?'"
His rule was simple.
"If it makes me laugh now, I'm going to do it."
It still made him laugh.
So he built it.
What he expected to be a parade novelty became his daily driver.
The truck beneath the banana has now traveled more than 250,000 miles.
"I didn't think I'd be driving it anywhere near as much as I am," he said.

Braithwaite displays a cash tip from a passenger who took a ride in the Big Banana Car. Braithwaite funds much of his travel through voluntary donations from riders he meets along the road. (Courtesy: Steve Braithwaite)

Passengers wave from the Big Banana Car during one of Braithwaite's many community appearances. He regularly offers rides and says meeting people is the best part of driving the giant fruit. (Courtesy: Steve Braithwaite)

Braithwaite didn't stop in Wyoming on this trip. He was headed west toward Washington.
But Wyoming still occupies an important place in banana history.
Several years ago, while crossing the state, the Big Banana Car suddenly died alongside a lonely stretch of highway.
"I hadn't realized the distances between towns," he said. "I was in the middle of nowhere."
Parked beside the highway, luggage scattered around him. He "managed to get it running again."
By then he was running out of time to get to Los Angeles for a TV appearance, so he left in a hurry.
But he says there's a chance he might come back.
Braithwaite wants to race the famous Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, and why not in the Rockies?
He has already challenged it, but he says he thinks Kraft won't go for it.
Sooner or later, he figures, some reporter would ask a dangerous question.
"Instead of which is the quicker vehicle, which is the healthier food?"
Then he laughs.
"And they're going to lose that."
Casper car enthusiast Tom Morton says he is curious about the drag race with Oscar Mayer's wiener.
"What's next?" Morton asks, "Asparagus street rods?" Overall, he says "I like it."
What began as a joke has evolved into something larger.
Braithwaite recently drove the banana into Mexico, where he was pulled over five times in three days.
Every encounter was friendly, he says.
Now he's thinking much bigger.
His goal is to drive the Big Banana Car through Central America; somehow get it shipped across oceans and eventually circle the globe.
"I just want to keep going," he said.
He's calling the adventure "The World Needs More Whimsy Grand Tour."
A sign mounted to the back of the vehicle carries the slogan.
"The world is dangerously low on whimsy," says the man hoping to make a difference.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.