Police catch overloaded car with piano on a bike rack — on the Autobahn

Overloaded cars get caught regularly by traffic police — there's just so much you can cram inside a car or attach on top of it safely, especially if you've misjudged the carrying capability of your car during a trip to IKEA.

This Mercedes-Benz wagon, which was pulled over on the Autobahn near Stuttgart on Saturday morning, was pretty easy for police to notice: Not only did the roof rack have several sets of tires and some bicycles on it, making the Benz quite a tall ride, but it also had a bike rack mounted on the tow bar, and on that bike rack teetered a piano. Topping it off was an office chair, as we can see from the photo released by the police and reported by the newspaper Die Welt.

The police put the S202-generation Benz on a scale, and the result was telling: the car was overloaded by nearly 900 pounds over its rated payload. Not to mention the items were precariously attached and posed a risk to other drivers like the Florida plywood guillotine we reported this week.

The 46-year-old piano-transporting man got off cheap with a 95-euro fine.