Ozzy Osbourne Gives Up Driving After Freeway Fender Bender
Ozzy Osbourne has done plenty of crazy stuff in his life, but even metal's Prince of Darkness isn't too much of a madman to know when the risks outweigh the rewards — and he recently proved it by handing in his keys and giving up driving.
Osbourne's decision to stay away from the wheel wasn't prompted by a high-speed chase or death-defying car crash. Instead, as his son Jack told the U.K.'s Daily Mirror, Ozzy came to the conclusion that he didn't want to drive anymore after suffering what sounds like a pretty minor bump in traffic on the highway.
"He had a little bumper kiss on the freeway with someone and he was like 'You know, I don’t want to drive anymore,'" said the younger Osbourne. "He was already driving less and less. I think he is of that mindset he’d rather not have the responsibility."
It isn't just being responsible for a vehicle that started getting to Ozzy. What really worried him was the risk of attracting a lawsuit if he ever did end up doing some real damage behind the wheel — a prospect frightening enough to outweigh the three decades the Mirror says Osbourne spent pursuing his driver's license.
"Think about it – Ozzy bumps someone and it is like next thing you know, 'We are going to sue for a billion' – because people are silly," added Jack. "His thing was more like ‘I don’t want to be liable, that’s it.'"
The 69-year-old Black Sabbath singer accrued a collection of cars that included the Ferrari he was driving when he had his fateful "bumper kiss," but it may not be such a bad thing that Ozzy isn't driving anymore — as fans no doubt recall, he nearly died after getting into an accident while tooling around the grounds of his estate on an ATV in 2003.