BE WARY OF THE JERKS
Roads are filled with them
Driving is a team sport. You’re sharing the road with a lot of other people you know little about, yet your fate could lie in their hands. As someone who reads a lot of what other drivers have to say online and elsewhere, I have become more afraid. The following comments are pulled straight from several horses’ mouths, including spelling and grammatical errors.
“… Just another stupid law made by the canadian government to get more out of tax payers. it goes the same for seat belts in my eyes. who’s really at risk? are you indangering anyones life? no … its a choise you make for yourself. it isn’t harming anyone other than yourself.”
This comment is, obviously, sic — full of errors. The commenter is talking about aftermarket window tint on cars. In researching an in-depth piece on the topic, I keep stumbling over rants like this one and it reminds me what regulators, manufacturers, lawmakers and the cops are dealing with.
And the rest of us? The rest of us are dealing with this mindset, too.
One commenter notes he was in a residential area and “pulled out to pass a slow car … I’m in the left lane he put on his turn signal and turned at the same time, minor whack in to the rear of his car … I was not at fault, I got charged anyhow.”
If you hit someone from behind, you’re going to be hard-pressed to prove you weren’t following too closely, no matter how stupid they are, no matter if they “suddenly” mashed on their brakes. You know why? Because they might have screeched to a halt to avoid hitting a kid. No matter how “suddenly” they did something, your job is to anticipate they might “suddenly” do anything.
“I’ll get the mechanical (pass) with the fenders, then once I get the plates and inssure it, take em off and play ignorant if I get stopped.” (As inspectors everywhere wince.)
This is an excellent example of the lengths some will go to circumvent a law they think is stupid or shouldn’t apply to them. Getting around something often takes more energy than simply doing what you’re supposed to do.
Articles about drivers who block the left, or passing, lane are always fertile ground for dissension.
But you simply cannot get around the comments that always, always show up, proving points of view can be as blinkered as surely as any parade horse.
“They may not be oblivious to the traffic behind them, they may simply be doing the speed limit. Please remember that the speed limit is the maximum speed that a vehicle is to travel at, taking the road conditions into account. If they are doing the speed limit there is no reason for them to move over since anyone that wishes to pass them is committing a traffic offence.”
Don’t be the person who says things like this. Such rigid thought doesn’t work in the real world and shades of grey was a concept in learning how to navigate life long before it was a bad dirty book. While you won’t get stuffed into a locker anymore, there are still people who will want to do that to you.
The seatbelt diatribe is one I cannot believe still has legs. This is the civil liberties hill you choose to die on? You’ll happily let insurance companies track your every move so you can save a few bucks; we have red-light cameras and photo radar digitally forcing you to obey traffic laws; but when the choice is all yours, you’re cool with turning yourself into a human catapult against all scientific evidence about your odds of surviving a plummet?
In Canada, 95 per cent of occupants wear seatbelts. In 2004 to 2008, 36 per cent of fatally injured drivers and 38 per cent of fatally injured passengers were not wearing their belts at the time of the collision. And, yes, I’ve heard the oft-repeated myth of the friend of a friend who only survived a fiery crash because they refused to buckle up.
Aftermarket exhaust systems are an awesome barometer for measuring the hate level in a room. The town of Caledon, Ont., recently banned loud pipes, much to the chagrin of motorcyclists who say their safety will be thwarted.
Exhaust is always polarizing: “Had dinner at Red Lobster. On the way home I got pulled over by a straight up **** of a cop. He said my exhaust was too loud … and that ANYTHING other than factory is illegal in Oklahoma … as he was stating this a Neon with a fart-can drove by that I pointed at and he said he will get him later. I said politely ‘Sir, this truck is high mileage from up in the Ohio area, and the stock exhaust had rusted out … but that it was replaced with a D.O.T approved replacement. It still has cats and mufflers. He then says, ‘I’m not an idiot, there are no tips out the back!’ … He said I can take it up with the judge … all of this on my BIRTHDAY … I know this was just one of those JEALOUS, duschebag (sic) cops. …”
I have no idea if Dude’s pipes were illegal or if the cop was a straight-up anything, or even if it was his birthday, but the words “politely” and “sir” stood out more than any others.
It’s usually the cosmetic accoutrements that raise the most fuss among car lovers.
You’ve probably seen those neon lights that make a vehicle look like it’s sitting atop a cloud made from crushed unicorns. Laws vary — like everything else — and forums prove that confusion reigns.
What also reigns? The value of those laws: “Lawmakers are morons. How is a car with neons going to distract someone. … Besides a hot girl is much more distracting. I can recall several times in which I had to swirve (sic) because of someone hot (or i thought was hot at 40mph).”
Such a drag to “swirve” for a girl you only thought was hot at 40 m.p.h.