Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Driven insane

Everything about driving cars in cities is fucked up. There, I've said it. Someone should take all the cars off the road. It wastes a phenomenal amount of resources, it makes people fat because they drive to the shop that's a block down the fucking road instead of walking (don't even get me started about the McDonald's drive-thru) and worst of all, most people on the road CAN'T FUCKING DRIVE!

Actually, screw all that hippy shit, my only problem with cars is the number of them being driven by ignorant fuckers who shouldn't be let out of the house, let alone on the road. Any time I feel insignificant I just go for a drive because I start to feel like I'm the centre of the universe simply because it can't be a coincidence that every other car on the road is trying to ruin my fucking life! My car does not have the button next to the ignition that switches my brain off while I'm driving - why does every other fucking car seem to have this function?

At least there's variety - there's no single stupid thing other drivers do to piss me off. I get every single colour of the stupidity rainbow whenever I drive to work. Some drivers are aggressive and obnoxious, some are timid and tentative and some of them apparently suffered a traumatic head injury recently. I'm all for rehabilitation but if you've lost the majority of your cognitive ability (as seems to be the case with the idiots I see every day) then thinking you can drive a car competently is a little, shall we say, optimistic.

It's really hard for me to pick the type of idiot driver that pisses me off. The aggressive ones are probably the worst simply because they're more likely to kill people. These types seem to be male about 90% of the time and under 25 about 75% of the time (although there are exceptions - that 70 year old lady who screamed at me the other day to "get out of my fucking way if you aren't gonna go at least 90" seemed pretty serious). They zip in and out of lanes, cutting people off, they ride your back bumper, they floor it if they get 5 metres of open space in front of them and then slam on the brakes 2 seconds before they hit someone (if you're lucky).

These dicks make everyone's life a misery. In Australia, there are actually lots of laws aimed specifically at giving cops an excuse to nail these idiots; they're normally known as "anti-hoon" laws. I'm usually not in favour of expansion of police powers but fuck these guys. When they do get pulled up for driving like idiots in their unroadworthy cars with their shit music playing on their stereos at headache inducing volumes they say something like: "Aw moite, thees ees persekewshen. Nuffin wrong wif moi cah - it's fully sic moite." That might not translate well, but that's how Australian hoons talk.

We need a way to make it easier for cops to spot these pricks with too much testosterone and not enough brains and I think I know what it is. Cars should be fitted with a cannon that fires LED "throwies" (look it up if you've never heard of them) so every time on of these pricks charges straight through a give way sign or tries to run you off the road you can mark their car. You thought I was going to say the cannon should fire missiles, didn't you? Don't worry, it crossed my mind.

Everyone should have a limited number of throwies (say, three a month) in order to limit abuse of the system. That way you'll save them for some arsehole who really deserves them. And if the cops spot a car with more than about half a dozen throwies attached they can pull them over and take their car away. The car doesn't need to be doing anything wrong when the cop stops them, the throwies are considered evidence enough that this yob is too much of a dickhead to be allowed to drive.

There will obviously be some "false positives" but you know what? After the drive I had this morning I don't give a shit. Anything to get a few fucking cars off the road.

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