Andrew's Rants.

DUMB ASSES IN CARS

This past week we spent a while in the local hospital with a relative who is a Dumb Ass. His is a situation that so many people find themselves in. He is 16 and his parents bought him a Corvette. He immediately went out and began to engage in races with other Dumb Asses in the area. This city I now find myself living in has a mind numbing fascination with car racing. In the next city over is what is termed the fastest track on the NASCAR circuit, The Bristol Motor Raceway. So every weekend during the Spring and Summer there are hoards of red necks in campers doing the tailgate party thing along the Bristol highway and filling up all the hotels and local campgrounds. All the local populace might not be able to tell you who the Cabinet Members of the current Administration are, or even who the Vice President is, but they can list every driver on the National Circuit and what they had for lunch. All the local punks deem themselves professional racecar drivers just due to proximity association. My nephew was no different. We begged and pleaded with him to stop hotroding but the skinny little mouth just postured and said, "What use is a fast car, unless you drive it fast?" There are places to race don’t get me wrong. In fact, the local raceway provides several nights a week in between the regular events when locals can run drag races with whatever they can drive onto the track. Cost 10 dollars per race. Betting is not officially sanctioned but happens anyway. But Mr. Know-it-all, like many others of his age group, spurn this safer environment to race in and choose instead the twisty winding back roads of the local countryside. You will come around a corner doing the speed limit minding your own business and be facing two Dumb Ass teenagers who are racing taking up both lanes. Needless to say it has caused many deaths, wrecks and boundless loss of property. My wife’s nephew, who I now refer to as "Dumb Ass", was on a road that is generously called "two lanes" but falls far short of the actual measurements. It has turnouts to pull over on when you meet oncoming traffic. He was racing an opponent, another Dumb Ass teenager, and somehow became airborne as he shot off the road and flew over 90 feet through the air to embed his car in the side of a 2-story brick house. He broke his back in three separate places and it is still to be seen if there will be permanent loss of motor control. The house obviously suffered extensive damage and his car is totaled. His cohort in stupidity managed to escape relatively unscathed taking out only a yield sign and causing minor damage to his car. Dumb Ass is sticking to his story that he was just passing the other car.
First of all it was a no passing zone and second according to the police examination he had to be doing in excess of 85 MPH in a 20 zone. Just the week before we had been questioning Dumb Ass if he had purchased insurance and given him advice on not racing. His reasoning was he was young and his reflexes were so fast he could extract himself from any situation and didn’t need insurance. He denied the accusations of racing even though we had reports to the contrary. Now the stupid fool will have his license suspended for a minimum of 2 years and since he had no insurance he will have to pay off the new car and the damages to the home as well as any fines levied by the courts. What else is a fast car for if you aren’t going to drive it fast? Hell, I have a gun, it’s made to shoot people but to date I have yet to do so. It’s called common sense and restraint. Just because a car will drive 130 miles per hour doesn’t mean you blast around all day trying to prove it can go that fast.

I think this preponderance to be a Dumb Ass with a car must be inherited. Because his father was the same way, His father, Jim, had a Dodge Shelby Cobra when he was 18 if you can believe that. What a fantastic car. A collector’s item. His father, a hard working man of impeccable morals and values, allowed him to have an open line of credit at a local service station under his father’s name. Jim racked up a five hundred dollar tab at the local convenience store on gas because he was out racing that cobra. When the store called his father about the size of the bill he confiscated the car and sold it to the first buyer for the cost of the gas. $530.00, Can you imagine the luck of the person who picked that beauty up for that price. It just goes to show you that he was a Dumb Ass when it came to cars and now his son has proved himself likewise. Fortunately he didn’t kill anyone. If someone had been in the room his car smashed they would have been killed.

I am all in favor of teenagers being restricted on their driving privileges. For instance several states are trying to pass laws to prohibit 19 and under drivers from driving after dark. Or changing the driving age to 18 instead of 16. Hell, my kid is turning 15 this month and will be eligible to get a Learners Permit and he can’t remember to flush the commode or put the milk away. I am positive he won’t be able to remember what a Stop Sign is or any of the dozens of rules involved with the operation of a motor vehicle. I told him he could drive when I was dead. Case closed. One less Dumb Ass out there trying to kill me on the road. But not all Dumb Asses in cars are teens. Many that manage to not kill themselves off in the early years manage to learn enough to survive and become a bigger danger to the rest of us than teens ever were. Case in point, the little old geriatric ladies in their huge land yachts. A huge 4 door mid 80s Cadillac or Buick Roadmaster. They are hunched forward in the seat and peering over the wheel. Their eyesight gone, the reflexes nonexistent, driving a virtual tank of a car and woe and be damned anything that gets in their way. If you think I am kidding just go to Scottsdale, Arizona on one of those rare days when it rains. This happens about twice
a year there. I have seen this phenomenon myself and was warned about it and didn’t believe it until I actually saw it happen and was almost killed in the process. All the nearly dead mummified old people who move out to Scottsdale for the dry air and year round warmth drive huge lead sled cars. The roads are always hot and the tires get really good traction. As a result none of them ever change their tires when they get bald because they never notice a loss of traction. It’s like having racing slicks on a hot track. But when it rains the ground is so dry and hard packed the water just stands on the surface rather than soak in. The roads have a film of water on them and the tires have no tread. You see where this is going don’t you? They all get out after a rain and its hydroplane city. Crashes and pile-ups everywhere. The best any sane person can do is run inside the nearest building when it rains and stay there for hours after it stops until the living dead crawl back home that evening to go to bed.

Others that pose a threat to us all are the ones that have a cell phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other trying to juggle them around constantly and drive in traffic at the same time. Or perhaps the Pompadour Lady with the Poodle on her lap bouncing around while she is trying to drive. Then you get the Soccer Moms who are trying to retrieve something constantly from the back of the vehicle by twisting around and even though the vehicle is still traveling forward. They are looking in the backseat digging around for who knows what or perhaps beating a kid. Or the couple so interested in sucking face they pay no attention to the world around them. My God people, if there is something that important that you need to be distracted from the task of driving then pull over and take care of it. I’m not saying that accidents don’t happen; but, that’s what they are . . . accidents. Just don’t increase the chances of you having one at my expense. Pay attention and don’t be a Dumb Ass.