ONLINE SHAMING
Bad driving can go viral
Recently, Driving writers came clean about their dumbest antics behind the wheel. I had a few beauties in my mail from readers who didn’t wish to make their admissions quite so public, though let’s just say any shenanigans that involve playing The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald at top volume are OK by me.
While we all claimed in our admissions that they ended without incident, sometimes Stupid Driver Tricks play out in a more public forum.
The British woman caught on camera circling a gas pump, like a hawk futilely searching for food, probably wished she’d never left her house that day. Admittedly, being spatially unable to ascertain which side of the car your gas cap is on after four tries should mean a remedial course in something, but I have to look for the little arrow by the gas pump on the dash whenever I pull into a station. I’m usually driving a different car every time, but still. Occasionally, I’ve had to move my car.
Before the discussion launches too far in the direction of women, and blondes, one story out of Detroit was pretty funny, until the dude ended up dead. It gives whole new meaning to the term distracted driving. It would be distracting to be driving without your pants on. It could be distracting to not be wearing your seatbelt. A partially open sunroof at 3:30 a.m. in January in Detroit could be distracting, especially as you’re getting onto the interstate. But all of those things pale in comparison to the part where he was watching a porn movie on his cellphone and rolled his car. Talk about needing laws regarding hand-held devices.
Sometimes it’s the things that happen outside the car that drive the story. Australia has a law on the books that forbids hanging your arm (or anything else) outside the window. Side-swipe injuries are real, and even get their own section in some medical texts. It’s as gory as it sounds: Car A side-swipes Car B, and driver who was dangling his arm has it ripped off at shoulder or some similar grossness.
The study that produced that law goes all the way back to 1959, when roads were narrower and cars were wider. In Canada, specific statistics aren’t maintained regarding this type of injury, and the urban myth about a kid being decapitated this way while riding a school bus is just that: a myth. But tell your kids to keep their bits and pieces inside a school bus anyway; they’re most likely to be leaning out and hooting with friends outside the bus, at just around the exact height of signs and poles.
Of course things can get crazy when nature injects itself into the situation — and the car. Well, at least if you consider penning tigers up in a zoo and calling it a safari adventure as “nature.”
Back in 1996, a date to African Lion Safari in Rockton, Ont., ended with a little more action than either participant expected. I’ve driven through this place and watched members of some primate family rip a hood ornament off a Chrysler LeBaron. I’ve seen mirrors and roof racks bent. I’ve seen car occupants shrinking in horror. But one couple on a date was attacked inside their Honda Civic and lawsuits would eventually award them a couple of million dollars, despite conflicting testimony that a window had been lowered to take pictures.
The story drew worldwide attention at the time because the young lady was a stripper (the headlines wrote themselves), which covered with a snicker the real danger of thinking you’re bulletproof inside your car. Or tigerproof.
If you’re a Game of Thrones fan, you’ll know that editor Katherine Chappell was mauled to death in 2015 on a South African lion safari — as she rolled down her window to take a picture. Hey, people? Don’t roll down your windows when you’re told not to roll down your windows.
The other kind of nature can be devastating, too. Flash flooding is becoming more common in many parts of the world, and for some reason, drivers either misjudge their clearance or they watch too many movies. The famous pic of the floundering Ferrari during the 2013 flooding in Ontario was just sad-making. It also drove home an important lesson if you find yourself out and about and contemplating fording a small body of water: Let the other guy go first, and reach the other side. Water can be as deadly as a tiger.
We have to go Florida to ask a better question, however. Would you rather have a tiger in your car or your wife on top of your car?
A couple of weeks back, Richard Addy left his wife in a restaurant after a few drinks because he was peeved at her. Claims he heard her banging on the roof at the first intersection, but kept driving.
Problem was, it took nearly 10 kilometres of driving for a cop to stop him. Addy claims he didn’t call the police because he didn’t have a cellphone. I think it took tremendous restraint to not add a hand-held device charge to the wife-on-roof one. I mean, the reckless-driving one.
In 2012, The New England Journal of Medicine offered up perhaps the most intriguing evidence of bad things that can happen in your car under the Wow, No Way category. The picture of the trucker with sun damage to just one side of his face means you should remember the sunscreen, even if you keep all your parts inside the car.
Or even on top of it.