This Is The Tasty New Face Of Civil Disobedience
Distracted driving is a problem, and if you don’t believe us, just ask Sally Kurgis’s dad. (Miss Kurgis, by the way, got a sweetheart deal from the Columbus courts, something that is currently being hotly debated within the city itself.) Because distracted driving is a much safer and easier arrest to make than, say, drug dealing such a danger to the public, many police departments in California and elsewhere have a laser-like focus on punishing anyone crazy enough to touch a cellphone while operating a motor vehicle.
A Los Angeles comedian has decided to gum up the easy-ticket-money works a bit —- but there’s some genuine irony involved.
What if such a blessed event were to actually occur? What if the police of Los Angeles and elsewhere woke to a world where everyone was talking on a cookie? Would they arrest everyone they could on unrelated charges? Would their puppets in the state legislatures enact laws making it illegal to joke about using a mobile phone, the same way you can be detained and imprisoned for criticizing the TSA at an airport?
The truth is that they wouldn’t have to: hysterically-conceived bad legislation cracking down on eating, looking away from the road, and even talking to your own children is already in progress in New Jersey. If it succeeds, the long-hoped-for goal of making every driver a criminal subject to arbitrary enforcement will have finally come true. The day will certainly arrive where holding an iPhone-shaped-cookie is as much of a crime as talking on an iPhone while driving. When it does, just remember: It’s for your own good.
More by Jack Baruth
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- TheEndlessEnigma These cars were bought and hooned. This is a bomb waiting to go off in an owner's driveway.
- Kwik_Shift_Pro4X Thankfully I don't have to deal with GDI issues in my Frontier. These cleaners should do well for me if I win.
- Theflyersfan Serious answer time...Honda used to stand for excellence in auto engineering. Their first main claim to fame was the CVCC (we don't need a catalytic converter!) engine and it sent from there. Their suspensions, their VTEC engines, slick manual transmissions, even a stowing minivan seat, all theirs. But I think they've been coasting a bit lately. Yes, the Civic Type-R has a powerful small engine, but the Honda of old would have found a way to get more revs out of it and make it feel like an i-VTEC engine of old instead of any old turbo engine that can be found in a multitude of performance small cars. Their 1.5L turbo-4...well...have they ever figured out the oil dilution problems? Very un-Honda-like. Paint issues that still linger. Cheaper feeling interior trim. All things that fly in the face of what Honda once was. The only thing that they seem to have kept have been the sales staff that treat you with utter contempt for daring to walk into their inner sanctum and wanting a deal on something that isn't a bare-bones CR-V. So Honda, beat the rest of your Japanese and Korean rivals, and plug-in hybridize everything. If you want a relatively (in an engineering way) easy way to get ahead of the curve, raise the CAFE score, and have a major point to advertise, and be able to sell to those who can't plug in easily, sell them on something that will get, for example, 35% better mileage, plug in when you get a chance, and drives like a Honda. Bring back some of the engineering skills that Honda once stood for. And then start introducing a portfolio of EVs once people are more comfortable with the idea of plugging in. People seeing that they can easily use an EV for their daily errands with the gas engine never starting will eventually sell them on a future EV because that range anxiety will be lessened. The all EV leap is still a bridge too far, especially as recent sales numbers have shown. Baby steps. That's how you win people over.
- Theflyersfan If this saves (or delays) an expensive carbon brushing off of the valves down the road, I'll take a case. I understand that can be a very expensive bit of scheduled maintenance.
- Zipper69 A Mini should have 2 doors and 4 cylinders and tires the size of dinner plates.All else is puffery.
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For those putting their hopes in enforcement to enhance safety on the road, please read the "Affluenza" post just above this one. *That's* how our system works.
There is a update to Mr. Lidtke little prank. It seems he decided to play with a cop when he spotted one and used his cookie phone, took a bite like he said he would, cop went back to his car....and found our Mr. Lidtke had some unpaid parking tickets. He isn't going to be doing that again. Moral of the story; If you're going to prank the police, make sure your record is clean. http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/comedian-unsurprisingly-regrets-pranking-cops-iphone-shaped-cookies-172900407.html