Police in Iceland are warning drivers not to stare up at the night sky while driving despite a possible spectacle of Aurora Borealis, this comes after a series of traffic stops involving erratic drivers. The northern lights are causing some trouble in traffic in Iceland as UK’s Independent brought into focus in a recent article. Morgunbladid reported about the police having to give stern warning to a driver on Reykjanesbraut, on the way to Keflavik airport, as he couldn’t keep his eyes of the sky spotting some Northern Lights. The driver seemed to have trouble keeping the car on the right side of the road and the police thought he might be intoxicated. That did not turn out to be the case. The driver informed the police that he thought “he saw the Northern Lights and couldn’t bring himself to stop looking at them,” according to the police statement. The police promptly directed the driver to pull over if he wanted to observe the Northern Lights; he had to do so from the safety of a parked car.
In a similar occurrence a car was stopped after displaying erratic driving on the Reykjanes peninsula, entering the town of Njardvik. In that instance a group of tourists and their driver had suddenly spotted the Northern Lights. He received the same directions from the police.
The two incidences have caught the attention of the foreign media; the Independent is only one of a few news outlets reporting on the “Northern Light problem” of Iceland.