June 22, 2026
Peel crime or prime comedy?
Giant Banana Pulled Over: Driver Says Cops Have Stopped Him 100s of Times
Even the internet split over whether the real crime was the banana—or the writing
TLDR: A man says police have stopped his giant banana car countless times, and his latest Montana pull-over ended without a ticket. Online, people were less shocked by the fruit-mobile than by the article itself, with some celebrating weird art cars and others roasting the writing style.
A man driving a 23-foot banana car through Montana got pulled over again, and the internet instantly treated it like peak Americana: part road-trip comedy, part police ritual, part meme factory. Steve Braithwaite says cops have stopped him hundreds of times over 15 years and 250,000 miles, often just to chat, snap photos, or deliver painfully irresistible banana jokes. This time it was a license plate issue, but no ticket was handed out—because apparently even law enforcement cannot stay mad at a rolling fruit.
But in the comments, the banana itself was only half the show. One camp chimed in with the chill, artsy reminder that this isn’t some one-off fever dream—there are plenty of so-called art cars, with one commenter dropping a documentary link like a museum curator entering a food fight. The other camp? They swerved hard into media criticism, with one especially savage commenter blasting the article’s short, punchy style as “3rd grade/Buzzfeed-style.” Ouch. So yes, the giant banana got pulled over, but the writing got dragged.
The funniest energy came from the sheer inevitability of it all. A cop once told Braithwaite he’d “peeled out,” and commenters seemed delighted that reality had finally become a dad joke with wheels. The community mood was basically: this story is absurd, wholesome, and somehow still enough to start a mini war over journalism, internet taste, and whether a banana belongs on the road or in an art exhibit.
Key Points
- •A police officer in Billings, Montana, pulled over Steve Braithwaite’s 23-foot Big Banana Car, citing a license plate issue and issuing no ticket.
- •Braithwaite says he has driven the vehicle for 15 years and more than 250,000 miles, and that police have stopped him many times because of the car’s unusual appearance.
- •He said officers often stop the car for photos or conversation rather than for serious violations.
- •Braithwaite conceived the banana car in 2008 after watching Top Gear and then deciding to build the vehicle after imagining it on the road.
- •The banana car, originally expected to be a parade novelty, became Braithwaite’s daily driver and has traveled across states including Montana, Wyoming, West Virginia, and toward Washington.