A woman from Perth has been fined NZ$1250 and banned for driving for three months after she was filmed driving with her toddler on the roof of her car along a busy suburban road and highway in Sydney in January.
Erica Shadforth, 36, pleaded guilty to driving dangerously and failing to ensure that a child was properly restrained after she was seen driving on roads with the child on the car's roof rack at speeds of up to 100km/h, according to ABC News.
The mother-of-six told the court that she had put her four-year-old son in the driver's seat before going back inside her home. When she returned to her vehicle, she had presumed the child had jumped into the rear seats with two of her other children, who had been restrained in child seats.
She then drove around 13 kilometres over the span of 18 minutes as motorists attempted to alert her to the child, before eventually stopping at an intersection and placing the boy in the car, unrestrained.
At sentencing, Magistrate Steven Malley called the case "just mind-boggling" and said it was not "an act of ill will or recklessness" but "carelessness in the extreme".
"Seeing something like a four-year-old sitting on top of a vehicle is probably something that will stick in your memory for a long time," he said.
While dangerous driving does not carry a mandatory disqualification of a driver's licence in Australia, Shadforth was disqualified due to the seriousness of her offences.
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