Yesterday was a NUTTY day. On the way to AM clinic I saw....dead wild boar, dead dog, dead deer, dead raccoon...and a dead dude (who was hit by a pickup truck) on the side of the road. Arriving 2hrs late pretty much the AM was shot.

So, back home, got a call and had to go to another facility in the opposite direction (an hour)...

Anyways, some guy in some pickup truck (Nascar in factory letters on the bed) is trying to invoke a race on a main road (40). I knew that there were three Sheriff cars behind us (as I saw them waiting to turn left from the side, into our direction of travel). Guy finally give up, roars in an apathetic old *** American V8. About thirty seconds later.......he runs a light. This was his victims car.....

 

From the looks of it I'm guessing the pickup was lifted, too, as it hit the victim's car above the bumper. These pickup trucks are a menace on US roads. There are regulations now for regular passenger cars that are very specific on the height of the hood, so in a collision with a pedestrian they don't hit vital organs. Basically you are more likely to just get knee-capped and end up with broken legs, but you'll survive. Not so with pickup trucks. If you are unfortunate to get hit by one, they slam straight into your torso, followed by getting pulled under the vehicle, and chances are you won't survive like the dead body you encountered on your first run. It all gets even worse with the knuckleheads who then go out and jack up their pickup truck. Now when you get hit by one of those, you also end up with a crushed skull.

This is pretty much why I partly don't daily drive anymore. I'm a car enthusiast obviously, but I hate the car dependency in North America and the Armageddon it creates on the roads. From choking traffic to getting potentially t-boned just crossing an intersection because a dumb f**k like this thinks they own the roads and red lights don't apply to them. Coincidently was just driving behind a pickup truck the other day who had zero respect for traffic lights. It was in the evening and not much traffic, so he thought he didn't need to wait until the light turns green and just drove through the intersection and swerve around other cars like he was driving a low slung sports car. It's always the people in the least suitable vehicles weighing 5000 lbs and up that drive like maniacs, not understanding that they have a braking distance closer to a 747 .

 

I don’t get why a driver would want to drive a bigfoot truck, getting 1 mile to the gallon, when he is driving it defensively, which he never does.
It is a recipe for disaster not only for a multi car collision, but just themselves flipping their rig over like a tiddly wink.

 

Marketing! Real man are tough, so must drive tough pickup truck. Just watch any of the commercials for these things. Men who have a need to compensate for something usually buy these monstrosities. The history of how SUVs and all this came about is very telling. The big three American car makers launched marketing campaigns that were specifically targeting these a-hole men, because they knew that they'd buy these things. Nowadays many others buy SUVs, because they no longer feel safe in smaller cars due to all these massive metal boxes on the roads.

 

I don’t begrudge them their bigfoot truck. I actually mildly enjoy watching the mudders, and the rock climbers. To a lesser extent, the car crushers. But why in the world would you drive that on public roads?