A picture is worth a thousand words and leaves no doubt as to who the subject is. Got into trouble in the past with word descriptions of this....

Is the documentation and riducule of these guys on an ego trip is what really bothers you? I occasionly need my right hand to use the 5-speed. Numerous people people phone and drive for minutes, but you are so concerned when someone picks up a digital camera in their passenger seat ready-to-go and takes a picture within ten seconds.

David Harville, can you explain to us why leaning one forearm on a steering wheel like the guys pictured disturbs you far less than me taking a picture of them with one hand firmly on the wheel? Let's not forget one of them was on a cell phone. You choose to go after me over cell phone drivers and the guys pictured as a greater hazard? Do you want to dodge the question and end up looking as silly as the guy in the Dodge Ram?

BTW, I'd rather illustrate these guys than to fume about them. I wish local news stations would put their mugs on the air and embarrass some of them to their senses....

 

You're doing an unsafe thing in order to criticize people doing unsafe things. That's what concerns me.

Nice straw man with the mention of needing your right hand to shift gears. That's a necessary part of driving a car with a manual transmission, not an unsafe act.

I can't "go after" the people in your pictures, but I can point out that taking their pictures while you're driving does not make the road one bit more safe. The fact that their acts are MORE unsafe does not justify you doing something that is also unsafe. That's the old "he did it first" argument, and we all know that doesn't work.

That's my last post on this topic.

 

My final words (playing the Stones Sympathy for The Devil):

• My actions were a brief, calculated risk. Unlike the guys pictured, I'm driving safely the vast majority of the time. I'm still more alert with the camera than the guys pictured.
• You have a blind eye to cell phone users that do far worse distracted driving more often.
• Your mindset reminds be of people that rant about a police officer that slapped a murder suspect with overwhelming evididence he did that crime and was convicted of past offences. I'm not claiming to be a cop....
• Quoting Edmund Burke - "All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing". So let's all pretend we are Gandhi and not even document the misdeeds?
• I should trade-in my Insight as it's so unsafe in a crash, relative to what is out there on the road.

Rather than to get angry seeing these pompous guys, I'd rather make them poster boys of what's wrong on the road. If you have not noticed, a number of people laughing at them too.

 

The photos are hilarious. I see it around here now and then.

I'm afraid I'm not deep enough to consider the "danger" in your taking the pictures while driving. I kind of assumed that you had done what you could to mitigate the risk or taking these pictures while moving and since you are here posting them you are probably in one piece and alive.

On the subject of unsafe acts while drive. If we are going to ban cell phones while driving, we should also ban smoking while driving (they are loonier than the cell phone people) and let's also include eating and drinking while driving too. Note, in Germany you can't do any of those things when on the road. Nobody would try anyway when you are doing over 100 mph most of the time.

 

Hi Delta Flyer:

___Great thread!

___Although they move our goods from one end of the country and continent to the other, I see OTR’s (Over the Road - drivers) routinely hitting 70 + mph in 55 and 65 mph zones here in the Chicago area. It is not like the 5 mpg’s they are receiving vs. the 6 - 7 mpg’s they could achieve mean that much but in the bigger scheme of things, that 1 + mpg savings means much more to all of us then most would imagine. I believe most OTR’s drive very heads up but it’s the high speeds in a vehicle w/ a Cd of ~ .6 (they do not have to travel that fast) with the obvious hideous FE because of it that bothers me the most

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes

 

my step borther used to h ride around with his seat leaned way back... whenever he had to move my car if i was parking someone in i'd know becuase the seat would be leaned way back. rather rediculous if you ask me, especially just to move a car a few feet.

 

• I did not take pictures if there was heavy traffic or lane-changers
• My next digital camera will not have a zoom lens. While it's "ready-to-go", I must wait three seconds for the lens to zoom - depriving me of many a "Kodiak moment".
• I'm usually going 60mph, so I have to speed up to get a shot. Either that or get lucky and catch them while they are approaching from behind and click the shutter just right....
• Traffic on the Bush Tollway is about 70-75mph
• Sometimes people realize they are about to be "on Candid Camera" and "behave".
• I don't discount that some of these guys might put two-and-two together and figure the guy in the Insight is out to get a ridicous shot of a monster truck driver full of himself. I consider he might resort to road rage.

 

I for one really enjoyed the pictures.
If someone placed a cardboard in the rear window of a sedan with a round hole cut in it to peek a camera lens (Used as a mask) - It could make some really great candid shots.
I wouldn't limit to only large vehicle drivers. Newspaper readers, makeup painting, shaving their mug.... and all those things would be subject to the lens!

Thanks Delta Flyer.

 

It's a great site Delta Flyer.

I wish I could of got a video of the guy behind me yesterday. We were in bumper to bumper traffic and he was going balistic waving his arms around and screaming. My guess was he had an earpiece on his phone and was having a "heated" discussion with someone on the phone. Still, I felt as though he was screaming at me for doing nothing.

I saw a video the other day where a guy walks into a store having a heated discussion on his "handsfree" and when he gets to the counter he tells the person on the other end of the phone "You're getting robbed, did you hear me? YOU'RE GETTING ROBBED!" The cashier sees him in the video screen and thinks he's talking to him. He grabs a bat and hits the guy with the handsfree when the guy's wife grabs a tazer and zaps the guy. Moral of the story? I guess think about who's watching you when you are using a handsfree phone.

Great site and I can't wait to see more pics. Maybe you can get a couple worthy donations.

 

Hi laurie; nice Pic of Hybrid and the Owner.

Terry