Lockdown Aw Gone? Otay Mes Amis! Let the Carnage Continue! The return of “Driving Fails” for 2022. Now with more implied gore than ever before.
Warning: the above is beyond bumper cars.
I try to avoid getting sucked into the endless gyre of “Dashcam Disasters” on YouTube, but every so often I relapse. Long, long time ago when “Dashcam Disasters” was a fresh YouTube genre replete with the always ribald Russian “I fall drunk in front of your car” Dash Cams I found it amusing in a kind of pie-in-the-face way, but you have to take your amusements where you find them in this life. That was then. Yes, way back before the Chinese Crud crippled the globe and the Stupids started clog dancing on center stage. Now it’s not such a harvest of boffo humor. This year’s first crop of carnage seems darker and more deadly than I remember Dashcam Disasters being even a few years back.
And it is only January.
Of course, this could just mean something as trivial as a long lockdown and rising gas prices reducing our population’s mean driving intelligence and skill by 10 points. Then again palpable increase in lethal-looking clips could signal a new and much less law-abiding, less patient, and less polite society; one in which it is understood that any spoils in the new world order will go only to the fast and the furious. What once was detached bemusement has become grim and even grisly. So be warned.
UPDATED: American Driving in 2021: Reckless and Wreckful
The role of the racial reckoning in getting motorists and pedestrians killed by turning elites against safety enforcement should not be ignored. For example, from The Urbanist’s coverage of Seattle:
But in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic combined with that summer’s protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder prompted the department to reassess the role of relying on police enforcement as a go-to tool. Those emphasis patrols stopped. [Seattle Department of Transportation] Director [Sam] Zimbabwe, appearing back at the city council in 2021, spoke to the shift in the department’s thinking.
In case you are wondering, Sam Zimbabwe is a white man who used to be named Sam Zimmerman-Bergman.
“It’s time to daylight the uncomfortable reality that relying on an enforcement-heavy approach in transportation can also lead to disproportionate financial impact, injury, and death for Black and brown community members across our city and across the country,” [Zimbabwe] told city councilmembers less than two years after the same team had been touting its police enforcement strategy….
Unfortunately, the situation on the ground is not improving while this shift takes place. 2021 will replace 2019 as the most deadly year on Seattle’s streets since 2006, with a preliminary tally of 31 fatalities.
Police traffic stops have been in bad odor with the Establishment since Ferguson. As you may recall, the Obama administration turned the Ferguson PD inside out to find the racism it knew must be there. After it found nothing, the Department of Justice then announced that, well, okay, the late Michael Brown did try to wrestle the policeman’s gun away, but Ferguson was operating…a speed trap! This was considered giant national news for a while.
Gerard Van der Leun
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“Omigod”
The American Exclamation
The authentic British dressing-down at 1:05 is worth the price of admission. Eric Idle couldn’t have done it better.
One of these is at the freeway (I-5) onramp 3 blocks from my house. I feel like I take my life in my hands at certain times of day at that intersection.
These vacationers with their trailer homes… this is amateur stupidity. Vacation… OVER!! Be on the look out. I hear the vaxx has quadrupled accidents.
You can see it at every left turn signal. There’s one halfway between my apartment and my job. Before the pandemic, people were still turning left fully three seconds after the left turn signal turned to a red light. They would just dare people to accelerate through a green light. I would always just wait a couple of seconds, knowing these psychos were itching to get on to the critically important thing they were doing, like getting cigarettes or heading to Olive Garden.
People have lost the ability to understand that everyone on the road is not conscripted to make sure you get to your destination on time. We all are going somewhere. Lower traffic is one of the saving graces of the pandemic. These psychos are staying at home and being self-important in front of their laptops.
I have a dash cam that comes on, connects to, and records to my iPhone whenever I start my car. Haven’t had to use it yet, but I live in (relatively) placid Provo (UT), and I largely work from home.
Even so, watching this video has me thinking about upgrading to a two-camera rig.
You can be the world’s most perfect driver, but as soon as you venture out onto public roads your life is at the mercy of every other driver. He might make a simple mistake that costs you your life. Oops. I was that “perfect driver”. Almost 50 years on the road with no tickets or wrecks. I figured I had better get out while the getting was good. Sold my vehicle and relied upon bicycles and my two feet. So far, so good.
There were 1089 deaths by bicycle in the US in 2019. Bicycle deaths are up 37 percent over the past 10 years. I never—but never—ride on busy roads. When riding around Oklahoma City it is always through residential areas and on bike paths. When bikepacking hundreds of miles from home it is on dirt, gravel, Jeep trails, forest roads and old pavement. I am overly cautious and have never come close to being struck by a car. My bike and I—230 pounds. The average car—3000 pounds. I always keep that arithmetic in mind.
As my late father told me before I ever took Driver’s Ed or took a test for a Driver’s License:
“Drive like everybody else out on the road isn’t paying attention and doesn’t know how to drive. Half of the time you’ll be right.” 😲
Years after I got my Driver’s License I took flying lessons and got my Private Pilot’s License. I thought back to how little “training” I got in high school to drive a car versus learning to fly an airplane and I scared myself. 😨
@6:49 … That time that Ted Kennedy tried his hand at stock car racing …. I’ll probably have to pray a decade of the rosary for that one
NAH, God loves a good kidder.
True. That’s why He made Biden. And Hunter. And Jill. And Pelosi. And…what the Hell, the entire Democrat Party.
“When you realize God is a low comedian, everything makes perfect sense”
(Gee… I wonder where that came from? 😉 )
You can tell people, but you can’t tell ’em much so “slow down, stay away from the other guy and watch what you’re doing” generally fall upon deaf ears. But, so said, I always put that bug in my children’s ears and pray that somewhere between that reminder and the other distractions they encounter while driving those words are always at the forefront of their self conscious.
There are hundreds of vids like this on YT and all horrible reminders of just how fragile cars and people are. But, the motorcycle crash vids are visceral and I have used them for as long as I can recall to remind me to stay away from motorcycles….viz, don’t even think about it.
Many questions, did medical issues behind the wheel cause many of those traffic collisions.
Or was the driver on their phone. Many of those crash’s were kill shots.
Most folks simply don’t comprehend the blunt force trauma created by 2500/6000 pounds of mass metal at forty fifty sixty or greater.
I’ve thought for years now that a standardized testing should apply. Our kids are learning to drive via Grand Theft Auto computer games, don’t understand their action, or lack off,,,,,,,have very real consequences.
Dirk
Some years ago while walking on a sidewalk next to a busy street, this kid—may 14 or so—tried to cross the road. He almost made it. A car struck him maybe at 20 mph. The kid was thrown onto the roof, fell onto the bumper, hit the ground and then got up and ran off. The next day I saw the same kid riding his stingray bicycle. On the sidewalk.
Mike I’ve seen it aswell. I was once hit by a young man riding his bicycle the wrong direction, as I pulled from an alleyway. As I watch him fly over my hood, and continue maybe thirty ft into the active roadway.
Landed in the road and rolled, a city bus locked it’s brakes up, and I’m watching the buses front right wheel inch closer to this young man’s head. The forward motion of the bus stopped inch’s from the bike riders head. He pops up and runs off down the street. “The young man had felony arrest warrants” wasn’t about to let almost dying, from impeding his freedoms. That’s focus!
This happened in like three seconds.
Zero damage to my cruiser, his front wheel, hit my front right wheel. He later found me, turned himself in.
Before jail I took him to lunch, kid weighed like 98 pounds, was a dope addict. I bought him lunch, as we leisurely eat our meals . He admitted he was high on CR, knew he had warrants, but knew I’d be fair with him.
When I explained just how close he came to dying he laughed, said I won’t see thirty Dirk.
I worked often with this young man, he finally grew up and I see him from time to time. We always shake hands. He has my phone number knows he can reach out to me if he’s in a jam. He won’t be. He learned from his early life’s lessons.
I relive that once a year, suspect it’s on or near the day he almost got his head popped by a bus.
VI
At 8:10 there’s a tire rolling down the exit ramp all by its lonesome self, past a bunch of row houses. Whoa! I recognize those houses.. So I go to googlemaps street view to check, and sure enough, that’s the exit ramp from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway onto Northern Blvd. My uncle Richard lived 10 blocks down from there.
Coordinates are 40.7534565,-73.897853
the split left to get on the turnpike out of the Lincoln Tunnel /Jersey City, too.
In Las Vegas, and I suspect many other immigrant friendly cities, there are whole industries where people are recruited to stage and cause accidents. Those on the take includes lawyers, bodyshops, chiropracters, pill mills and professional plaintiffs. Just another g(r)ift of diversity.
Try negotiating the old iconic Highway 39, Beach Boulevard, which is Orange County’s drive to surf-city (aka Huntington Beach). Drivers must put up with close to a hundred traffic lights on the 20 mile drive, but worse is passing through the lair of the Asian Driver, which is most of OC these days. Right turns from the left lane are commonplace. So is stopping with the front wheels in the left turn lane and the ass end of the car in traffic. Stop two car lengths behind crosswalk. Speed limits? Never go that fast, never. And always check phone, adjust safety mask, check phone, adjust mask, check phone again.
JWM
“In case you are wondering, Sam Zimbabwe is a white man who used to be named Sam Zimmerman-Bergman.”
Jimmy Mcgill tells W.W. explains why his name is Sam Zimmerman-Bergman … i mean Saul Goodman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqMq6jLUcg8&t=77s
Art imitates reality.
Ozzy Man’s compilation of dodgy driving:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AppyZs8Lapc&ab_channel=OzzyManReviews
I just lost an hour of my life I will never get back! I especially like the smash-ups involving travel trailers and RVs.
I’m gearing up to tow a 25′ travel trailer to Oregon this week. And now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t stay home instead.