Tag: cars

Draconian Punishments: driving with cell phones

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been driven to my wit’s end because of people constantly driving around while distracted by their cell phones.  It doesn’t seem to matter that such behavior is classified as illegal and ticketable by a police officer, but the reality is that there simply aren’t enough cops out there monitoring for this shitty behavior, and they’d most likely be disinterested in ticketing people for cell phone use when there’s speeders and even more reckless drivers on the road to keep vigil for.

At least once a day for the last few weeks, I’ve identified situations where I’ve nearly been merged into, witnessed someone absent-mindedly drive into a potentially harmful situation, or simply not gone on a light-turned green, if not multiple of the above.  My favorite (read: the shit that infuriates me the most) are the people whom you can see their heads dipped down, as the foot comes off the gas when their eyes leave the road, and they slow to dangerously slow speeds while they check something on their phones, and then resume driving like a retard when they realize they need to pay attention to the fucking road again.

Needless to say, I have laid down on my horn on nearly a daily basis, and I’m absolutely sick and tired of people on the roads who can’t seem to get the fuck off their cell phones.  Such doesn’t change much on people outside of their cars, but at least the repercussions of their idiocy aren’t necessarily potentially lethal (as much).

Regardless, the only way that this behavior is ever going to improve is to integrate draconian punishments for those caught violating the rules.  Fear of tickets and fines aren’t good enough, as it feels like 80% of drivers are still content to drive around with their eyes anywhere but the essential view ahead of them, so I think we the world, need to change things up.

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Now this is a tragic spill

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Unfortunately, it didn’t happen in Georgia, so it can’t be the mother of food payload spills, but it still warrants a few words, just because of how tragic it is.  But a truck full of DiGiorno and Tombstone frozen pizzas tipping over and spilling its delicious cargo all over the highway?  That’s a god damn shame.

Seriously though, I’ve often waxed poetic about the sequence of trucks spilling on Georgia highways making some sort of mythical banquet, but just about every combination of things from Georgia’s list would pale in comparison to a gigantic, Cici’s Buffet-caliber buffet of frozen pizzas.

Because pizzas are among the world’s most perfect foods, encapsulating everything into a fairly compact and often well-combined entrée, and considering no utensils are necessary, once you get the pizzas, all you really need are occasional beverages.

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Add sour rancid milk to the list

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Worse than carcasses: truck carrying 48,000 gallons of milk crashed and overturned on GA-316 involving several other cars and trucks, causing numerous injuries

It has been hot and humid as hell lately.  I’m not sure whether or not it’s at all record-setting, a fact that I’ve pretty much been endlessly working on things involving a lot of physical movement, or a combination of all of the above, but it’s been hot, humid and miserable as shit over this summer.

That being said, if there was absolutely anything at all that would be a miserable truck-full-of-food-spill, milk would undoubtedly have to be at the top of that list.

On its own, milk is already a volatile, diarrhea-inducing agent, now imagine it spilled all over the roads, baking into the surfaces under the hot and miserable Georgia sun?  Rapidly souring, going rancid, and cooking its way into the asphalt and soil.  Bacteria growing like a petri dish, and the sharp odor soon to emanate from everything that the shit spilled all over.

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Would love to cross-reference this with demographic data

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Kars 4 Kids conducts survey to determine grades of courtesy of all 50 United States

I came across this article that declared Georgia amongst the rudest drivers in America, so I was curious to what the criteria actually entailed.  Ultimately, the sample size was way, way, way too small at 2,500 correspondents considering the fact that the United States has a population of nearly 320 million, so I don’t think this is nearly that accurate of a survey.

Especially the ranking of Maryland, which somehow scrapes into the top-half of the spectrum as “friendlier” drivers, because the reality is that Maryland has some of the worst drivers on the planet who would rather let entire third-world nations die of genocide before letting you merge in front of them.

However, it’s still not entirely inaccurate either, and despite the strokes being very wide and broad, it’s still entertaining to see the obvious correspondence with stuff like population densities and demographics in relation to how certain places graded.

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Oh, Georgia #607

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Macon gas station runs promotion where cash buyers could get regular unleaded for 99¢ a gallon, resulting in massive lines, long waits, frustrated customers and ultimately police intervention

A few years ago, I went up to visit my parents, and I was driving around running some errands with my dad.  His tank was running low, so he said he needed to get gas, and proceeded to go to a station that he preferred, because it was the cheapest place.  We arrive at the gas station, and it’s an eight-pump station that is in fact ten cents cheaper than everywhere else, but every single pump is occupied, and there were a few other cars precariously circling the premises like a hungry shark stalking an opening.

My dad said that this was the norm.  I said that if he’s really hard up on the dollar he’ll save by going to this station as opposed to the numerous alternatives surrounding the area, I’d be happy to give him a dollar to go somewhere else.  Since I was the one driving anyway, we went to the Shell station down the street that was completely open, filled up, and was right back on track doing our own things, as opposed to joining the feeding frenzy at the cheap station, risking road rage, headache and fender benders all in the sake of saving, a literal dollar for ten gallons of unleaded.

Time, is worth more than money.  Piece of mind, is also worth more than money.  Definitively, for both.  And it astounds me that there are people that don’t seem to understand this.

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Not sure if fan of dumping V6s

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Honda is dumping the V6 engine from the Accord, replacing with turbo-charged four

Despite its fairly vanilla existence, I’ve often held the Honda Accord in relative esteem.  The first time in my life that my family got a new car, it was a 1990 Honda Accord.  White, naturally, as Asian people loved cars that were either white or champagne color.  It was like the coolest event in the world back then, and the Accord seemed like a spaceship compared to the dated old Toyota Celica that it had replaced.

Years later, my family ended up getting another Accord, a 1998 model.  I remember this one, because I thought that the car was intended to be for me, but ultimately ended up with my dad absconding with it, when he was working away from home, out in Chattanooga for a few years, which led to a lot of sour grapes on my end.  For a while, my dad drove the shit out of it before he ended up barely driving it at all, and when he traded it in a little over a year ago, the car was nearly 16 years old and never crossed the 100,000 mile mark, which for a Honda is barely half its lifespan.  Along the way, my mom got a used 1994 Accord that she ran into the ground, but the point is that my family has had a lot of Honda Accords. 

Ultimately, I view the Accord as a trustworthy reliable car, in spite of its vanilla existence, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned more recently, it’s the de facto car of choice for Indian families; seriously, the sheer amount of Honda Accords in my apartment complex belonging to Indian families is almost an anthropological marvel.  But the Accord is a name that people associate with affordable, safe, and decently performing, and if I were at that stage of my life where I wanted a family-friendly automobile that I’d feel good about anyone driving and wouldn’t be too much of a chore for me to drive myself, the Honda Accord wouldn’t be the worst choice in the world.

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Too easy

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Readers formerly known as my six readers might know that I have this strange fascination with trucks full of food stuffs crashing on the highway.  And throughout the years, especially in Georgia, we’ve seen quite a smorgasbord of food overturned onto the roads, from hams, beer, potato chips, more beer and turkeys spilled in magnificent messes, due to mostly the negligence of the drivers of these delectable consumables.

And throughout it all, I’ve always had something to say about each such incident, mostly overly sarcastic remarks about how the food spilled onto Georgia highways could amount to one massive banquet had the food not been declared inedible on account of it spilling onto asphalt.

But this incident, with a truck full of watermelons spilling onto the I-85/I-985 split up in Suwanee?  I got nothing.  Sometimes, there are some things that just write themselves, or the pictures do all the talking, and when a truck full of watermelons dumps its entire load onto the highways, resulting a temporary but complete closure of the road so that GDOT crews can basically sweep red sticky sweet slush and rinds off of the road, there’s really not much to add, without the humor going very inappropriate in the process.

What a visual though.  It’s absolutely everything that you’d expect to see upon hearing a watermelon spill.  I’d imagine that if I were trying to leave the city northbound, and then came to a complete standstill for reasons unknown, I’d probably eventually become livid.  But upon the even the eventual crawl through of ground zero, and seeing wet roads, red slush and rinds all over the shoulders, I’d probably end up laughing maniacally at the ironic reveal.

Whatever though, add it to the list!  Watermelons.  Might make a decent dessert option in the never ending buffet of food lost to the Georgia highway system.