Don’t flick cigarettes out your car window

QI have seen three cars in the last week with cigarette embers being thrown out windows and flying around before landing.

I am dumbfounded by such stupidity given that the Bay Area is surrounded by fires.

It should go without saying: Use your ashtray. Don’t throw it out the window. — Meg Seam, Los Altos

ASadly, others are flipping their butts out of their cars.

QWhile driving to handbell choir practice one night, this idiot in front of me at a stop light was flicking his cigarette ashes out the window of his car. With all these fires burning, you would think people would have a clue not to do stupid, careless things like this but obviously not.

Careless people smoking and flicking ashes out the window just drives me nuts.

Our firefighters are stretched thin enough and working long, long shifts. We do not need more fires. — Sharon Wangsness, San Jose

ASo true. These drivers deserve to be in the Roadshow-Hallof-Shame. Or join an Adopt-a-Highway group and pick up the zillions of cigarette butts that litterers leave.

QI find that just when I think I have seen every bonehead, stupid, clueless, self-absorbed and criminal activity while driving, I find I am mistaken. This is for the young woman in a BMW SUV on Saratoga Avenue near Payne Avenue who one day flicked a lit cigarette butt out her window.

Is she so stupid or unaware of the high fire danger everywhere? What if the butt flew into my car window and burned me? — Vicky Patton, Saratoga

AA few years ago a driver flipped his cigarette out the window while crossing the Bay Bridge, only it flew back into his $30,000 Ford Expedition SUV through an open rear window. It burned down to its frame.

Now on to one of my favorites on this burning issue from a couple of years ago.

QAs a former firefighter, I did my best to do the following if I saw someone flipping a lit cigarette out their window, especially when I was in uniform. When I would be at a stoplight and see this, I would quickly get out of my car, pick up the burning butt and drop it back inside their car stating, “You dropped something and it’s a $1,000 fine for littering.”

Another time at a stoplight I watched an entire ashtray of about 40 butts get dumped. I was able to scoop most of them up with both hands and pour them back onto the woman’s lap. — Thor Poulsen, Hayward

AI bet she hasn’t done this again.

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