Whoopee.

Today I am 33. Nothing has changed. You may all go on with your lives.

Pleh.

Ummm

Lest anyone think quarterbacks are smarter than other football players, Ben Roethlisberger has been seriously injured after crashing into a car on his motorcycle.

He wasn't wearing a helmet. He apparently feels:

"It's a choice," Roethlisberger added, referring to his riding without a helmet. "I just get out there and relax, I don't try to take too many risks. I just go out and enjoy myself."

And yet: he wears a helmet when he plays football.

Is all I'm sayin'. PHYSICS, PEOPLE!!!

Charm City

One of the blogs I read with some frequency is AutoBlog, because I am a car nerd. They've touched on this particular subject a few times, usually setting off roughly the same storm of comments.

The text, for those too lazy to click, is as follows:

British SUV owners may return to their parked vehicles only to find a ticket decorating their windshield. But they aren't parking violations, they're shame awareness tickets from an environmental group chiding owners for driving resource-hungry vehicles in cities like London. Advocates say they're warning consumers of the genre's potential effect on future generations, as well as those in the present (read: safety issues).

While hardly at the same level of popularity as their U.S. counterparts, UK SUV ownership has skyrocketed in excess of 40 percent in the last half-decade - this, despite increasingly stiff tax hikes that target the vehicles.

The tactic is hardly new, having been reported around the U.S. for some time, in articles like this August, 2002 New York Times piece.

What do you think about guerilla awareness campaigns like this? Have you ever been on the giving or receiving end of a fake ticket?

And, predictably, the comments followed... this time, however, there's this one:

I have a BIG dodge pickup. I live in the heart of Baltimore. I use it a dozen times a year to tow my race car and trailer. I use it several more times a year to get through the snow-covered tertiary streets the city WONT plow. I park on the street. Should I get one of these bullshit self-rightous sham tickets? What about when the farmer has to go to city hall for the day? Should he be "ticketed"?

NO.

The problem with these tickets and the eco-NAZI's behind them is they ASSUME the owner has no legitimate purpose. They paint all SUV owners with the same brush. THAT is fundamentally WRONG. This kind of automatic guilt belongs only in facist states, not free nations.

Posted at 8:40PM on Jun 8th 2006 by Big Friggin Dodge

Ignoring his predilection for rendering random words in all-caps while failing to capitalize proper nouns, ignoring random spelling errors like "self-rightous" and "facist" and "WONT"...

I live in the "heart of Baltimore". Several of my neighbors have BIG trucks. A few of them use these trucks as work vehicles, some of them every day, some of them only when needed, and some have another, less cumbersome vehicle for daily use. They all suck to try and park behind, because my parallel parking muscle memory is based on parking behind mid-size sedans, and when I actually have to think about parking, it always takes forever. Plus, at least one of those trucks takes up a space and a half, because it has a full-sized bed, and my street is already hard-up for parking.

That said, I do think these tickets would be foolish if stuck on random non-car vehicles without regard for possible justification, but I also don't imagine that the "eco-NAZI's" are likely to put one on a pickup truck filled with construction material. I'm also not entirely clear why a farmer would be going to City Hall, since I don't think there are any farms within the city limits, but whatever. The point is valid, were such a person to be "ticketed", but I don't believe this would happen; these "tickets" go on Hummers and Excursions and Escalades, commenters claiming they've seen them on Hybrid Escapes notwithstanding. Which is not to say that the "eco-NAZI's" aren't just well-meaning idiots wasting paper, but NO ONE needs an SUV in London (or in Baltimore).

I also don't think that owning a truck just to use it a dozen times a year makes good financial sense, since full-size pickup trucks have a lousy unloaded ride and provide lousy fuel economy; it would make much more sense to rent a truck 12 times a year or own a daily driver as well. That said, I understand that not everyone can afford multiple vehicles (or even one) but I have three, and the total purchase cost for all three was less than $12,000. Two of them get abysmal mileage but are fun as hell to drive, and one gets good mileage but is The Devil.

More importantly, SUVs are NOT work trucks; most of them advertise a "car-like ride" which means that they're useless for loading, and most of them are fully upholstered, meaning you can't put anything messier than a dog in them. No one uses an SUV for a "legitimate" purpose; they're all big, poorly-designed replacements for vans, minivans, and station wagons. They handle worse, often have less usable cargo space, get worse gas mileage, and cost more to buy and maintain.

Mostly, though, and I say this as someone who drives either a 30-year old rear-wheel-drive car or a bald-tired light sedan: there has never been a snow in Baltimore that required me to have a truck or other winter-capable vehicle, EVER. And there never will be. Global Warming, BOO-YAH!!!

Still, though, big ups to the 'hood.

A Placeholder

I may or may not get to post any of the miscellaneous ramblings that are currently ricocheting around in the vast empty space between my ears, but meanwhile, this makes me unaccountably happy.