Bob S. 1984 Silver

Wow.

As probably the oldest guy who regularly posts here, I find this thread quite revealing. I will not agree or disagree with any of your opinions; you have the right to post what you like; this is a free country. However, I do find the personal attacks a better indicator of mindset than any other factor. I now have a more complete picture of many of you, and many of those pictures are not pretty. Tolerance is not a long suit here.

Sure, there are incursions against individual freedoms, some of these in the name of the greater good for society. Is this correct? Probably. Is it fair? Depends on your point of view. However, let's look at the absurdity. What if someone thought that driving on the right side of the road violated his or her rights. How would the rest of you feel about this? Would you like the fact that this individual's protest against the status quo might wind up with an engine block in your lap? Personally, I think not. What we have is a continual increase in the number of people on the street, many of tham driving vehicles which exceed their ability to control them. (some of these are on this board, whether you want to admit it or not). Out there also are people driving 5,000 pound behemoths, rug rats squalling in the back seat, and a celphone in the driver's ear. And there you are in your close to the ground 944 minding your business and following the rules. Suddenly you no longer exist. Oops...three months license suspension and Community service..Accidents will happen...Too bad...

A few of the posters stated that a large part of the problem is lack of a sense of personal responsibility. I agree with this. Consider the fact that what the other person does affects you whether you want it to or not. Your neighbor has a number of accidents, your insurance rate increases. Your neighbor drives a 8mpg tank; the price of a gallon of gas goes up for you. The world is no longer a place where all individual behavior can be tolerated; it is integrated and interdependent. It is an interlocking society.

Let's accept this fact and act accordingly.

Cheers

Bob S.

Dave E

I must agree with Bob, The main problem is indeed personal responsibility and poor driver education. Here in Ma. there is really no driver education and the state policeman who signs off on the final approval of a license is a product of this same poor system. In europe they have confronted and dealt with the inevitable fact that the continued rise in population requires more extensive driver ed. It is time we did it here. It would lower accident rates and correspondingly our insurance rates, not to mention keeping the truly incapable off the road.BTW not all people in Ma. are socialist... but the guy who wrote the column lives in what is known around here as the peoples republic of cambridge. I had heard many bad things about driving in L.A. but on a recent trip, I found the drivers out there to be FAR superior to what you find in Ma.

Robby

Can't believe I'm replying here again, but here's my last book on this subject:

Bob- you stated the rising population as a prob- I mentioned this in one of my books, uh, posts Overpopulation's the biggest prob we face- we've reached critical mass w/6.2 - 6.3 BILLION. I'm not volunteering to leave for the benefit of the rest of the world, nor do I expect anyone else to, but we HAVE to start thinking about ways to reduce the population through education & incentive. We reward the wrong things in this country, our priorities are for sh**, and the justice system has become a mockery- ex: "oh, my 5yr old somehow climbed your fence, jumped in your pool and drowned- I'll sue" If anything, the pool owner should sue the parents- he's the one who's going to have to remember the event for the rest of his life, and the parents ARE 100% to blame- for not watching their kids. Parents & people in general, are more irresponsible- their kids tend to grow up the same- a hideous cycle that gets worse & worse...

Why not have car control clinics, driving schools, etc, that are more readily available and affordable- the government could find a way to set-up affordable ones w/talented drivers- would create new jobs. It could be mandatory to take at least one class to get a license. Then, insurance reductions could be incentives to take more- also reductions in registration fees, maybe vehicle taxes. I'd even like to see it happen to the degree that people could move up to levels that give them special licenses to drive faster- maybe the highest would mean NO SPEED LIMITS I know- I'm dreaming now

BTW, IF YOU LIVED TO BE 100YRS OLD, THE TOTAL # OF SECONDS YOU HAD LIVED WOULD BE 1/2 OF THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF PEOPLE ALIVE ON THIS EARTH RIGHT NOW. Think about it...

Danno

I think DaveE and Robby hit the nail on the head here. A lot of it comes down to driver skill and responsibility. You ever see how they drive in Europe, especially the little countries in eastern Europe? Or in Asia like Vietnam or the Philippines? Not to mention S.America, Columbia, Costa Rica in particular comes to mind.

I think in general, Americans have had it so easy with good, plentiful and uncrowded roads (compared to the rest of the world) that as a group we've never developed slice-and-dice watch-your-as* style of driving that it takes to survive elsewhere. The kind of driving that requires attentiveness and awareness as well as personal responsibility. Then when these complacent SUV-driving, cell-phone talking, hog-the-whole-road clueless drivers see a really skilled driver fly by 10mph faster than them, all of a sudden they're freaked out and think it's dangerous. Well, if they had been paying attention they wouldn've have seen that car coming up for over a minute beforehand, idiots!

Keith, I think that should be "right-wing fundamentalists" that we would categorize that guy.

Anyway, I don't think we need anything drastic like the driving-schools they have in Europe or Japan. Just a little tweaking with the existing system we have would do I think. Something like raising the passing level to get your driver's license to 95-100% instead of 70%. After all, if you made 30% mistakes in a 20-minute drive, how many accident-prone mistakes will you be making every day as you're driving, eh? Then maybe a car-handling skills test should be added. Things like maximum-braking effort test, and a quick lane-change maneuver test through cones, etc.

We should drop this Car-Talk moron off in the middle of a European autobahn with his 'sports car' and see what he thinks of some real driving...

Paul Kroenke

Yes my second response was supposed to be a personal attack. I thought that was obvious. I was putting up an arguement that he would recognize, a meaningless dribble meant to point out how the other person sucks, while not actually saying anything useful. The first arguement was for those of a higher evolutionary scale than bates. As for your response bates, I was hoping for some clever zinger or two, but its all very predictable and boring. You are getting old. Predictably you once again did not think about any of the facts, but rather used half the story to support your rather narrow train of thought. A typical ignoramus.

rihaa

Many of you have referenced the penalties for SUV's plowing through other cars. Coming from Southern California the way it works here is if there is a trafic fatality there are immediate investigations set up to look into vehicular manslaughter. This is a serious offence, yet people still don't pay any attention to their driving.

California has also come up with charges like attempted manslaughter. Manslaughter deals with accidental death and as such attempted manslaughter is a bit of a paradox for me. What exactly does it mean?

It is sad to see that in a state that claims to be progressive as California that they still have not instituted a law prohibiting the use of cellphones while driving. I would be perfectly happy if people had to have hands free phones, but I have seen people who are talking with their hands while on hands free cellphones, and neglecting to hold the wheel. That scares me more than anything is the fact that people don't feel that they need to pay attention to the road in front of them at all times.

In reply to some of you calling the person who wrote the article a right winger, he is anything but an extreme conservative. If he was an extreme conservative he would be saying that there should be no laws regarding safety equipment and even that there shouldn't be speed limits. He is infact part of the bleeding-heart liberals who think that the closer we get to a socialist republic the better. Some of these people should read the Constitution and The Bill of Rights sometime to figure out that this country was founded on the idea of having as little governmental control as necessary to provide for the safety of its citizens.

Sorry for the long post but people like him really tick me off.

icat

Here's where I sent my reply.
<a href="http://www.cartalk.net/Mail/3500.html" target="_blank">http://www.cartalk.net/Mail/3500.html</a>
And I still say it's a far left attitude - us "right wingers" would prefer as little government control as possible - and this don't qualify!

SamGrant951

[quote] Overpopulation's the biggest prob we face- we've reached critical mass w/6.2 - 6.3 BILLION <hr></blockquote>

Well be at 12.4 billion in year 2055.
we hit 1 billion in year 1850..think about that
somebody figured roughly that 3.5 bill was the carrying capacity..we hit that in the late 60s or around there...

also the good ole us has 5% of the worlds population, and uses 26% worlds energy resources

Mr. Bates - Masta2U

Paul
being called an ignoramous by a little boy that cant control his toy is a compliment.

Tell me the facts again, you werent speeding, the weather was clear and you lost control. no no your car got taken over by some mysterious force that took it out of your hands and then....

I may be an ignoramous but you are a few fries short of a happy meal. good luck to you and my you live longe enough to learn and reflect on your stupidity.

and paul, there are many people on this forum complaining about the government mandates that require us to buy a car with passive restraints and accident avoidance technology. They are right, we shouldnt be forced to buy things we dont need. unfortunately you need the government mandated safety requirements, but are to young (i wont call you stupid or ignorant here i will give you the benefit of the doubt)to realize your government is protecting you from yourself.

brh986

[quote]Originally posted by Bob S.:
<strong>Before we get too hard on the guy, where would the 944 series fit in his scale? (especially the N/A variety)

Cheers!!

Bob S.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Who cares, like we wouldn't all rather have a ferrari if we could afford it?

brh986

[quote]Originally posted by Robby:
<strong>ME <img src="graemlins/cussing.gif" border="0" alt="[grrrrrrr]" /> <img src="graemlins/cussing.gif" border="0" alt="[grrrrrrr]" /> <img src="graemlins/cussing.gif" border="0" alt="[grrrrrrr]" /> I CANNOT STAND people like this! I was trying to find it again (I lost it b/c my computer shut down on me- it's having probs, like usual ) .</strong><hr></blockquote>


Yep, I hate them, liberals all of them. Same mentality all of them. Same BS different subject. Self-righteous schmucks think they and the government "know best" for everyone. Those idiots dont' even know what's best for themselves!

brh986

[quote]Originally posted by Thaddeus:
<strong>Everybody just calm down. This is the kind of legislation that's dead on arrival. He has a right to post his opinions, however misguided they may be, and THAT's what America is all about.

Fact is, very little regulatory legislation ever happens that impacts the general public directly. You feel about 2% of it, the rest of the pain is felt by business. That's why most environmental regulation is targeted at big co.s, not individual polluters. One example: the average suburban lawn causes more pollution in a nearby river(in the form of pesticide and fertilizer runoff) than gets placed there by a typical factory... it's because a factory can hide the costs of regulation and the impact to the general public, and so is regulated; but if people were regulated on a personal level, there'd be hell to pay.

There's another principle at work also: the principle of directed lobbying. One person, if fervent and insistent enough, can make more happen in the legislature than a whole lot of indifferent people. If this sort of thing tried to go through, a lot of very angry and fervent people would be calling, writing, complaining... it would be a hell of a fight if it was introduced. Every 'car person' would be screaming, every libertarian, the car co.s, etc. It's a fight nobody's seriously going to pick. There's too much other 'low hanging fruit' in the car safety tree to go after, before going after cars with a high power-to-weight ratio.

Bottom line: chill out. Enjoy the weekend. If it's introduced in Congress or whatever, then you can go ape****. But it's premature now.

my 2 cents

Thaddeus</strong><hr></blockquote>


You're right about most of what you said but taht comment about only big businesses feel the pain of regulation.... well DUH, who do you think they pass their pain onto? The consumer of course. Do you think of the government hits them with some new bull**** tax they just say ah well, we were making too much money anyway? Of course not, they raise prices. Everyone should understand the "Get the big bad business" or "Get the rich guy" concept just doesn't work, rich guys and big businesses make the economy go round - it may suck but it's fact.

brh986

You can send these car talk tools mail here:

<a href="http://www.cartalk.net/Mail/3500.html" target="_blank">http://www.cartalk.net/Mail/3500.html</a>

Thaddeus

OK, since people persist in misunderstanding me, I guess I'll clarify.

Of course people feel the pain of regulation; higher prices for goods and services, etc. But it's an indirect tax, one that's made invisible because there's a degree of separation between the regulatory act, the directly affected entity, and the downstream consumer.

Most regulation relies on this degree of separation, because directly regulating the general public would evoke too much anger. So businesses are regulated directly, and the consumer isn't directly dinged... just indirectly.

Of course businesses feel the pain. I spend a lot of my time getting my employer ready to comply with HIPAA. It's going to be very painful. You won't know anything about it unless you work in the health care industry; but it will show up, ultimately, in higher insurance premiums. That's a classic example. When I say "you only see about 2% of it" (yes, a SWAG) I mean: you only get dinged directly on a tiny percentage. The other effects are (deliberately) hidden.

Because of this, I just don't think a law that -directly- impacts the general public like limiting cars with high power-to-weight ratios is too likely. The regulators tend to be sneakier than that.

Thaddeus

Thaddeus

One last point: liberals aren't the only ones that try to regulate what they don't like, though Lord knows there's an awful lot of liberals whose sanctimony is awfully hard to take. Seems like every time I turn around the conservatives are trying to make their worldview mandatory fodder in the public schools, or trying to incorporate thier religious beliefs into the government, or telling people what they can and can't do with their own sex lives. And if anybody disagrees with a conservative, the conservative starts calling the person they disagree with 'un-American' or unpatriotic or whatever. It's no different than what the busybody liberals do, it's just a different agenda.

What we need in this country is more tolerance of every kind and fewer busybodies. That's my politics in a nutshell, and if I win the Powerball jackpot it will be the first plank in my Presidential platform. I look forward to your support.

cheers

Thaddeus <img src="graemlins/bigok.gif" border="0" alt="[thumbsup]" />