Vehicle Size Creep

[Irrev-Black]

@two dogs - there's another handy hint from some naughty people at another place I visit...

A (pre-written) note, placed under a wiper or the driver's door handle, apologising for bumping their vehicle.

Of course, no real contact details or names should be used.

(03) 8652 1453 is (or was, because I haven't rechecked) the national Rickroll Hotline.

[stylofone]

Fuckin' self-entitled arsehole, parking his penis extension partly on the pedestrian access path from the car park!:
(snip)

I have the misfortune to be broad of shoulder and hip.

Hardly ever do I walk past a vehicle parked like that, without some maladjustment to one or both^* rear-view mirrors occurring en passant.

* = Well, I have to walk back that way, too.

Yes, I do that too. It has added bitterness from me because of the many times I have to guide a person with multiple disabilities including blindness off the footpath and onto the road. More commonly it's the people with strollers and toddlers I see forced to do the same thing, it happened a lot in suburban Canberra where so many people own multiple cars.

Actually on my new street there are a couple of houses with broken down cars on the nature strip. One of the residents didn't bother to dispose of the Nissan SUV before acquiring a very impressive Mustang. The old car has grass growing around its tyres now. I'm not super judgemental, I suspect predatory credit providers or similar miscreants could influence vulnerable people to make some of these bad decisions.

[two dogs]

Fuckin' self-entitled arsehole, parking his penis extension partly on the pedestrian access path from the car park!:
(snip)

I have the misfortune to be broad of shoulder and hip.

Hardly ever do I walk past a vehicle parked like that, without some maladjustment to one or both^* rear-view mirrors occurring en passant.

* = Well, I have to walk back that way, too.

Yes, I do that too. It has added bitterness from me because of the many times I have to guide a person with multiple disabilities including blindness off the footpath and onto the road. More commonly it's the people with strollers and toddlers I see forced to do the same thing, it happened a lot in suburban Canberra where so many people own multiple cars.
...

Although I have little trouble walking around such obstacles on the footpath myself, it just greatly pisses me off that the offenders are so far up themselves that they don't seem to give a shit that someone with a walker/pushing a pram/bicycling to school/.., could be inconvenienced by their selfish act!

[stylofone]

What shall we do about the GFC? Get big utes! What about the pandemic? I know - bigger utes!

Normally a journalist would be very cautious about using a word like "stupid", but in this case it seems justified.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal ... 5ee5v.html

[Irrev-Black]

Big ute is death.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/tall-t ... 023-11-14/

[stevebrooks]

It's just like dinosaurs, they grew larger and larger due to a favourable environment, millions of years of warm, wet Cretacian climate allowed them to grow huge and proliferate everywhere, but things changed and they died out. When fuel hits levels like $10-$20 per liter I expect the same to happen to large fossil fueled vehicles, it'll be a mass extinction of fuel guzzlers when the favourable conditions end!

[Irrev-Black]

Untitled.jpg (97.1 KiB) Viewed 1479 times

https://kolektiva.social/@sdw@mastodon. ... 8022392868

[Irrev-Black]

This sorts out the utility trucks from the phallic symbols.

https://kolektiva.social/@clive@saturat ... 4864878535

4h *
clive@saturation.social
bastardsheep@aus.social
Clive Thompson @clive@saturation.social

I repeat this anecdote a lot so forgive me if you've heard it, but ...

... my Ukrainian-Canadian grandfather ran his dairy farm using a 1960s-era truck ...

which was by today's standards *tiny*: Lower-slung, small cab

But!

It was *more usable* than today's monstrosities

It had a longer bed than today's trucks; being lower-slung made loading/unloading easier

Again: He ran a whole-ass farm with this vehicle; drove over rough terrain

Few people *need* today's bloated, paramilitary trucks

[stevebrooks]

I suspect even today farmers would eschew the bloated phallic symbols of modern SUV's for something practical instead, these huge arse lifted SUV's aren't aimed at practical work at all, they are purely aimed at ego stroking and nothing else.

[stevebrooks]

Ah here it is demonstrated clearly, cybertruck versus an actual truck!