I recently experienced one of the things on this list. See if you can figure out which one it is:
Things that don’t go together easily:
That’s all I’m saying.
A man in a wheelchair was struck by a semi, but instead of being run over, he was pushed for 4 miles at speeds up to 50mph in an unbelievable stroke of luck. Totally crazy. The driver didn’t even know he was pushing the guy until he walked around the front of his truck after being flagged down by an undercover state trooper.
There were so many 911 calls about it that the call center had to go to backup systems.
The man in the wheelchair was completely fine, and apparently unfazed. Good thing that wheelchair had a seat belt!
Technorati Tags: amazing stories, safety, seat belts, trucks
I just ran across a blog that offers “Tips for Life”. In two articles, they provide perspectives on how to deal with police officers if you are pulled over for any reason (though they both show a focus on DUI).
The first is one lawyer’s advice: A Lawyer’s Advice: How to deal with Cops >> Dumb Little Man
The advice here is basically: keep your mouth shut and ask for a lawyer.
The second covers reactions to that advice, and further advice, from cops themselves: The Flipside: A Cop’s Advice on How to Deal with Cops
Here’s the meat of the cop’s advice:
“Here is what I tell my family and friends (I AM NOT A LAWYER, THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE):
If you drink and drive and get arrested for DUI, do everything the officer says. Take all the tests, take the breathalyzer. On the first court date, meet the prosecutor. Tell him you want to represent yourself and that you’ll plead guilty TODAY in exchange for a rescission of the summary license suspension and a small (say $500) fine. The prosecutor gets to immediately clear a case from his workload, and you get to get on with your life with a hand slap. And no greasy lawyer gets thousands of dollars of your money so you can take a plea six months from now anyway. When all is said and done, you pay $1500 in towing fees, fines, court costs, etc. rather than the $4000-$7000 you’d pay with a lawyer.”
Interesting reading. Here’s my advice, simplistic though it may be: don’t do something that gets you pulled over.
Technorati Tags: dui, traffic stops, lawyers, police, advice
I talked about this one before, but I had to mention that I just watched a Mythbusters episode on the Discovery Channel that confirmed that impairment is at least as bad, if not worse, while driving and talking on a cell phone, as while driving drunk.
The participants/testers drove a driving course three times. Once with no distractions, once on the phone while answering questions they had to think about, and once with a blood alcohol level of approximately 0.07 (i.e., just below the legal limit).
They each passed the course on the non-impaired trial, failed more than half of the course on the cell phone, and failed about half the course while drunk. In other words, they did slightly worse while on the cell phone than they did while drunk.
Now… how many of you will stop talking on the cell phone in the car? Those of you with your hands raised: I applaud your intentions. I also don’t believe you for a second. But maybe you’ll spend less time on the phone, and that’s good.
People need to learn how to drive.
I was in a traffic jam this morning in the right lane of the highway. Dead stop. I was not happy.
Meanwhile, in the left lane, people were moving at about 20-30mph. This confused me. After a few minutes I found a break in the left lane traffic and I managed to move over and get going. Then I finally reached a sign that described the problem: “Left Lane Closed 2 miles.”
Now I finally understood the stupidity of your average driver. These people in the right lane were sitting in a 3.5 mile one lane parking lot because they didn’t understand the simple rule “Use both lanes to merge point.” As I travelled down the left lane, from time to time someone would stop to try to merge into the right lane—still over a mile from the merge point. Whatever… that’s just one less person driving slow in front of me.
Eventually, I approached the merge point, alone in the left lane. I matched the speed of the right lane traffic (moving finally, albeit slowly), put on my turn signal, and tried to find a spot to merge. The car I was going to merge in front of decided he wanted to be first and sped up to get in front of me. That’s fine, I figured, I’d just get behind him. But then he slowed down right next to me, intentionally blocking me out. So I kept slowing down further, and he slowed as well, blocking me until I was almost on top of the cones. Apparently satisfied with himself, he continued, and I still got in behind him. After we got through the 20 feet of construction area, I pulled back into the left lane and passed him, and received a rather rude gesture from the driver (hidden from the kids in his back seat).
While I understand that he was most likely not in a great mood from sitting there in that traffic for so long, there are a few things that bother me about this.
Some people (including the guy in that car, probably) are going to say that I was rude for driving past all those people and “cutting in line.” After all, we’re all taught in school not to cut in line, right? To those people I say, nice sentiment, really wrong application.
I have no problem waiting my turn*. But I see no reason to sit there when there is an alternative. And if other people had done the same, there probably wouldn’t have been a 20 minute wait for the people in the right lane. Instead of me getting through almost immediately, there would have been maybe a 1/2 mile backup in both lanes and everyone would have gotten through with a minimal wait.
Actually, if people would truly be civil to each other and take turns, there would barely be a backup at all. Traffic would keep moving, slowly, because one lane wouldn’t have to stop to account for three people trying to get through in the other lane without a break.
So what conclusions can we draw from this?
a. People are rude.
b. People are stupid.
c. Stupid people don’t like to be proven stupid.
———-
* okay, that’s not really true. It does bother me. But I am willing to endure it.
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