So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[belfastboy]

There was a story in The New Yorker a few years back on this very topic. Back before backup cameras and automatic braking, suburban cul-de-sacs were among the likeliest places for little kids to get struck by cars. It was attributed to the youngsters being beneath the drivers’ rearward vision and the drivers’ false sense of safety backing out of their own driveways, where, you know, nothing much ever happens.

We had a cul de sac back alley which was the site of our childhood football games, baseball, basketball etc. I had the unfortunate glory of being the only kid to run into and damage a car. Running a fly pattern with my head turned to pick up the ball in flight I ran smack into a car that had turned into the alley, stopped when he saw me running. He neglected to honk the horn....perhaps he thought I would notice him and stop. I did but only after flying onto and denting the hood. Fortunately, back then, they used real metal and he was able to pop out the dent so it cost my parents nothing. No damage to me except scaring the crap out of me and knocking the wind out.

 

[GHT]

Good grief belfastboy, I almost felt that. Back in the early 1960's I was recovering in hospital after being knocked down on a pedestrian crossing. There was surprising number of small boys on the same ward as me, who had ripped or somehow damaged tendons, roller skating. You can only assume that an accident had caused them to do the splits, involuntarily of course.

I think more of us than would readily admit have been that boat at one time or another, though a hammer might have been a bit of overkill. But then again, impatience is the mother of stupidity.

It certainly was last night, impatience being the mother of stupidity, that is. Our highways are repaired at night, often a section will be closed and a detour set up. Last night on one such highway, the traffic cones had been set out to taper three lanes down to one in order to feed the traffic off the highway at the next junction. Impatient drivers were racing each other just for a place or two ahead in the slow moving queue. A terrible collision occurred between five vehicles and now one driver is in the morgue. Hardly trivial I know, but Hercule made a very good, sensible point and that collision shows what can happen when stupidity takes over.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Parking lots are where you should be on your utmost alert, especially since they're filled now with ridiculous oversized vehicles driven by people with cellphones glued to their heads who can't be bothered to look down where they're going. When I'm dictator such ones will be sentenced to spend rest of their lives driving old Volkswagens. The only accidents I've ever had have involved idiots in giant SUVs backing into me in a little Toyota.

 

[tonyb]

Traffic fatalities in the U.S. had been in a steady decline — both on a per-capita basis and in absolute numbers — for decades, until about five years ago.

I don’t think it’s just coincidental that that increase pretty well parallels the ubiquity of “smart” phones.

Unless we find a way to get people off their phones while driving (fat chance), the self-driving car can’t get here soon enough.

 

[Zombie_61]

Parking lots are where you should be on your utmost alert, especially since they're filled now with ridiculous oversized vehicles driven by people with cellphones glued to their heads who can't be bothered to look down where they're going. When I'm dictator such ones will be sentenced to spend rest of their lives driving old Volkswagens. The only accidents I've ever had have involved idiots in giant SUVs backing into me in a little Toyota.

SUVs have, to some degree, become the new Minivan. People with kids think they need one in order to haul their rugrats and all of their junk around easier; people without kids think they're "cool" because you generally sit up higher in one to more easily see which import car you're about to run over. Either way, these people don't seem to take into consideration that an SUV is considerably larger than the pos sub-compact they're used to driving, and that an entirely new set of driving skills needs to be learned; how to properly use the external rear view mirrors, for example. They generally don't bother with that, so...

...Unless we find a way to get people off their phones while driving (fat chance), the self-driving car can’t get here soon enough.

Yeah, I personally can't wait for the "self-driving car" lawsuits to start stacking up, because if Dimwitted Debbie and Danny need a car to drive for them they're surely too stupid to figure out the instructions for how to set up that function themselves when they get the car home that first day.

 

[Trenchfriend]

A middle-aged guy in his black Dodge Ram Regular Cab stands on the "mother-with-kid" parking lot at the supermarket. A younger mother walks by and sees this. Then she goes to the guy and says: "Sorry, Mister, don't you know, that it isn't allowed for you to park kere?"

"Why? My mother is shopping in there."

 

[tonyb]

...
Yeah, I personally can't wait for the "self-driving car" lawsuits to start stacking up, because if Dimwitted Debbie and Danny need a car to drive for them they're surely too stupid to figure out the instructions for how to set up that function themselves when they get the car home that first day.

I may not live to collect, but I’d bet that self-driving cars will prove safer than what we have at present. People will die due to malfunctions, just as people die (very rarely) in commercial airline crashes, but far fewer than die now.

Traffic fatalities are on the rise. It’s good to see law enforcement and traffic engineers and others in that line getting away from calling collisions “accidents.” Negligence and drunkenness and distraction are not accidental.

 

[tonyb]

A middle-aged guy in his black Dodge Ram Regular Cab stands on the "mother-with-kid" parking lot at the supermarket. A younger mother walks by and sees this. Then she goes to the guy and says: "Sorry, Mister, don't you know, that it isn't allowed for you to park kere?"

"Why? My mother is shopping in there."

Is that the same kind of Dodge Ram pickup sold here in God’s Country?

Pickups are best-selling type of personal vehicle over this way.

 

[MisterCairo]

Parking lots are where you should be on your utmost alert, especially since they're filled now with ridiculous oversized vehicles driven by people with cellphones glued to their heads who can't be bothered to look down where they're going. When I'm dictator such ones will be sentenced to spend rest of their lives driving old Volkswagens. The only accidents I've ever had have involved idiots in giant SUVs backing into me in a little Toyota.

I was licensed in 1986 at age 19, and to this day, no driving context terrifies me more than the standard mall or plaza parking lot.

 

[MisterCairo]

Rural internet bandwidth. As in, there isn't any...

 

[Trenchfriend]

Is that the same kind of Dodge Ram pickup sold here in God’s Country?

International joke. But yes. And black Rams are popular in Germany, too. Normally the Regular Cab ones from 3. Generation, not the Quad Cab ones.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Boxspring bed topic. If someone knows about, than of course America!

While having lunch, I browsed in a paper prospect with only boxspring beds, just for fun. And then I wondered.

I always thought from my remembrance, that real (american) boxspring beds got the box, a between matress and the upper matress plus the topper. But all these beds in the prospect had only a (high) box, the matress plus topper, no between matress.

So, what's the real story? Are there two different types on the market??

 

[LizzieMaine]

All I've ever had in my nearly six decades on earth is a box spring and a plain mattress, with maybe a thin foam rubber pad on top. I've never even heard of a middle mattress -- it's a bed, not a Big Mac. But then, I also had never understood what a duvet was until last year. "Wait, you mean there's only one sheet on the bed? That makes no sense at all."

 

[Trenchfriend]

All I've ever had in my nearly six decades on earth is a box spring and a plain mattress, with maybe a thin foam rubber pad on top. I've never even heard of a middle mattress -- it's a bed, not a Big Mac. But then, I also had never understood what a duvet was until last year. "Wait, you mean there's only one sheet on the bed? That makes no sense at all."

I never heard "Duvet", before, too. The name is uncommon in Germany. We just call it down(filled) bedcover plus coloured cover. I love my quilted comforter!

But my remembrance of boxspring beds seems to be wrong, now.

 

[MisterCairo]

Favourite line from Blackadder: "Fortune vomits on my eiderdown once more...".

As in eiderdown duvet.

 

[MisterCairo]

We had a cul de sac back alley which was the site of our childhood football games, baseball, basketball etc. I had the unfortunate glory of being the only kid to run into and damage a car. Running a fly pattern with my head turned to pick up the ball in flight I ran smack into a car that had turned into the alley, stopped when he saw me running. He neglected to honk the horn....perhaps he thought I would notice him and stop. I did but only after flying onto and denting the hood. Fortunately, back then, they used real metal and he was able to pop out the dent so it cost my parents nothing. No damage to me except scaring the crap out of me and knocking the wind out.

"I have realized I have never seen a dead body or a real female nipple. This is what comes of living in a cul-de-sac."

Adrian Mole (Sue Townsend)

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Parking lots are where you should be on your utmost alert, especially since they're filled now with ridiculous oversized vehicles driven by people with cellphones glued to their heads who can't be bothered to look down where they're going. When I'm dictator such ones will be sentenced to spend rest of their lives driving old Volkswagens. The only accidents I've ever had have involved idiots in giant SUVs backing into me in a little Toyota.

Toyota? What happened to the Plodge?

 

[tonyb]

All I've ever had in my nearly six decades on earth is a box spring and a plain mattress, with maybe a thin foam rubber pad on top. I've never even heard of a middle mattress -- it's a bed, not a Big Mac. But then, I also had never understood what a duvet was until last year. "Wait, you mean there's only one sheet on the bed? That makes no sense at all."

I was 62 years old when I got my first brand-new, never-been-slept-on bed. I didn’t feel particularly deprived by this. I had plenty of perfectly serviceable, reasonably low-mileage mattresses throughout my life to that point (and maybe a couple of not so great ones). But the queen-size bed we had had for some teens of years was getting toward the end and we both wanted a king-size adjustable. So we splurged.

 

[Stanley Doble]

A middle-aged guy in his black Dodge Ram Regular Cab stands on the "mother-with-kid" parking lot at the supermarket. A younger mother walks by and sees this. Then she goes to the guy and says: "Sorry, Mister, don't you know, that it isn't allowed for you to park kere?"

"Why? My mother is shopping in there."

They also have special parking for pregnant women. So if she got lucky last night she doesn't have to walk so far to the store.
I always want to ask, where is the special parking for old age pensioners with heart disease and a hernia?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Toyota? What happened to the Plodge?

Still got it, but I don't drive it in the winter. I had all I care for of driving rear-wheel-drive cars in the snow when I was young, to say nothing of the ultra-corrosive road-clearing chemicals used here.