For the past eight months, a mysterious man dubbed ‘Flexman’ by his motorist fans has been disabling speed cameras in several Italian regions by cutting their supporting metal poles with an angle grinder.
The angle grinder was invented in 1954 by a German company called Flex, and even today, in many European countries, the angle grinder is popularly known as a ‘flex’. Little did the creators of this useful tool know that many decades later, the flex would inspire the nickname of a vigilante specializing in disabling speed traps on the roads of Italy by taking an angle grinder to the metal poles supporting them. Flexman first made news headlines in May of last year, when he took down his first speed trap on a road near Bosaro, in Italy’s Rovigo region. Since then, he managed to disable at least seven other cameras in Rovigo and Veneto using his signature angle grinder, and authorities still have no idea who he is or how to stop him.
