The family mini-van has the stick figures of the whole family and if there is a guy driving that mini-van his balls are probably in a holder around the rearview mirror. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about the family.

The single guy has a diver flag sticker on his Jeep to impress the chicks, even though he might not know how to swim.

One time I saw a sticker that said “Honk if you love Jesus” so I honked and the lady in the other car shot me the finger! That wasn’t supposed to happen!

And check this out, they also have “WI-FI detection” bumper stickers! You put it on your window and it lets you know when you have a Wi-Fi signal. I would think it would work better on your dash but hey, you’re trying to look cool so put it on your back window so everyone can see it.

But one thing I also noticed when noticing all these bumper stickers is that I wasn’t paying attention to the road! Bumper stickers are major distractions for drivers across the country. According to the California Department of Motor Vehicles, 80 % of crashes and 65% of near-crashes are caused by some form of driver distractions and yes that includes drivers trying to read bumper stickers! One of my favorites is, “If you can read this, you are too close” and next thing you know, BAM, you hit the person in front of you! If you must share a clever extract make sure it only contains a short sentence like “Obey Gravity, It’s the Law.” Anything more than one sentence can be a distraction, besides who would remember all that anyway?

If you have any comments or suggestions, please send them in. Join me again next week and until then…

Take Care and Be Safe-

Danny Keaton

The post Bumper stickers, they are everywhere! appeared first on Comedy Defensive Driving®.

Speeding is a major cause of motor vehicle collisions in the United States, I’m sure you already knew that. But, did you know that most crashes occur as a direct result of people driving too slow? Yes, you slow, Sunday drivers need to get the hell out of the way! I’m not suggesting you speed up to 90mph! You speed demons need to slow down to a reasonable speed, like the speed limit or maybe 5 over, only highly trained drivers like race car drivers and defensive driving instructors can handle the situation with precision driving techniques and acute awareness to the decision making skills needed to pull this off! It’s not the speed that is dangerous, it’s the things that get in your way that causes the danger, like other cars, animals, pedestrians and trees that seems to jump onto the road out of nowhere! Drivers who drive too slow on a highway entrance ramp or driving too slow in the left lane are the cause of major traffic jams due to crashes, which in turn cost you in fuel economy, when you are sitting idle in gridlock.

Last year in the U.S. 33,808 people were killed in crashes and over 2.2 million people injured. Hey, slow down a little bit, don’t be in such a hurry, it’s better to be late than to be dead, right?! Now I need to take my own advice and be a better driver by slowing down and not eating Burger King while driving. Join me again next week and until then…

Take care and be safe-

Danny Keaton

The post Slow down, Rookie! There’s still defensive driving appeared first on Comedy Defensive Driving®.

“Obey the law” he says. “Stop immediately” and “stay in your car with your hands on the wheel.” Finally, “if your woman is mad at you, leave her at home. There’s nothing she’d like to see more than you getting your [you-know-what] kicked.”

It’s a dead-on spoof of a hard truth: Respect authority. If you don’t, you increase the odds of a pricey ticket.

“Everything in that video is absolutely true,” said Sgt. Matthew Koep of the South Plainfield, N.J., Police Department. “It’s funny, but it’s accurate.”

Citizens who are generally law-abiding are likely to come into contact with the police only under two circumstances: If you’re a crime victim or you get pulled over for a traffic violation.

Police officers are not out to make your life miserable, but to make sure you’re following the rules of the road and not endangering yourself or those around you.

With a few exceptions, and an egregious traffic violation is top among them, cops aren’t mandated to write tickets. Most would rather send you on your way with a friendly warning — that can save you time and money.

But handle the situation with an aggressive or arrogant attitude and you can expect to squeeze an expensive court date into your busy schedule.

Play Nice

First rule: don’t argue.

“I get this all the time,” said Karen Rittorno, a nine-year veteran with the Chicago Police Department. “‘What are you stopping me for? I didn’t do nothing.’ If they try to take charge of the traffic stop, they’re not going to get out of it without a ticket,” she said. “We ask the questions, not them.”

Accept that the police have caught you doing something that’s against the law, such as speeding or gliding through a stop sign.

“All we do is react to what people do when you pull them over,” said Dennis Fanning, a homicide detective and veteran officer with the Los Angeles Police Department. “We don’t instigate the stuff, but we will react to you. The situation will escalate or de-escalate depending on how that person reacts.”

To argue with cops is akin to calling them idiots. Don’t do that. “That’s implying that I pulled you over for no reason and that bothers me,” Koep said.

Keep It Honest

Don’t lie, either. Cops are trained to note the human characteristics of lying, including twitching and looking to the left, and they know the right questions to ask to suss out the truth.

Fanning estimates that nine out of 10 people lie to him. “It’s an attack on our intelligence,” he said.

Moreover, the truth can set you free. Koep recalled an incident when he pulled a young guy over for speeding.

“He looks straight at me and says, ‘You know, officer, I wasn’t even paying attention. I just had the best date of my life. I just met my future bride. I’m just on cloud nine right now.’

“The guy was completely serious,” Koep said. “How are you going to write that guy up after that? Who makes that kind of stuff up?”

Of course, don’t use pejoratives when addressing the police, unless you’re eager for a ticket. But other words may backfire, too. Rittorno works in a crime-ridden section of Chicago where the majority of people she pulls over for traffic violations don’t have licenses or insurance, she said.

“So I get a lot of, ‘I’m sorry, baby. I didn’t mean it, sweetheart,'” she said. “I hate being called ‘baby’ or ‘sweetheart.’ I’m ‘officer’ to you.”

The police don’t like being talked over, either. “Be polite,” said Chicago Officer Mike Thomas. “You have your rights as a citizen, too, but it doesn’t do you any good to talk while he’s talking.”

Cops know that people are nervous when they get pulled over, and they expect a certain amount of jumpiness when they approach a car. Rittorno even admitted she’s intimidated in the same situation. “I’m the police and I get scared if I get pulled over,” she said.

But did you know they’re on edge, too? You know who they are, but they don’t know whether you’re a good guy or a bad guy. “The only thing on his mind when he approaches you is safety,” Thomas said. “You know you don’t have a gun in your lap, but the officer doesn’t know it.”

Rittorno, for one, said she assumes everyone has a gun. “I’m always on 10,” she said, referring to her high level of vigilance. “I take it down depending on their demeanor or what I see.”

Stay Calm

When those headlights go on, it’s best to pull the car to the right, stay in the car, turn the interior lights on if it’s dark and put your hands on the steering wheel.

Don’t make any quick movements, and don’t turn to grab your purse or put your hands in your pocket or under your seat to retrieve your license — until the officer instructs you to. Then, do it slowly.

Don’t move to open the glove box either, until directed. And do that slowly, too. Let the police shine a light inside the box before you reach in. Many criminals hide guns in glove boxes.

“What’s going to cause the situation to get worse is for the fear factor to rise in that officer,” Koep said. “The officer is more likely to cut you a break as long as you can reduce that fear. …If you’re friendly with me, not arguing or denying what happened, that lowers the fear factor and will make me a lot more cooperative with you.”

Don’t boast about who you know, either. That can infuriate cops. They consider it a veiled threat to their livelihoods. Fortunately, most municipalities have laws in place to insure that an officer is not fired or reprimanded for ticketing, say, the mayor’s daughter.

Finally, never try to buy off a cop. “In those instances where they’ve offered me a bribe,” Fanning said. “I loved making those arrests.”

________

Thanks to Jennifer Waters and Yahoo for this great article!

Jennifer Waters is a MarketWatch reporter, based in Chicago.

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