Today I saw a girl, who I am going to guess was roughly 18, driving a Hummer through the streets of Naperville. Nothing about this scenario is even remotely acceptable.
1,745,289- That is the number of parking spots wasted during one year in Naperville due to two interesting societal phenomena.
1. The majority of people cannot parallel park.
2. People insist on having these massive SUV's
Granted I understand some people have a legitimate reason to have such massive vehicles, but seriously? Tomorrow morning I will likely see a plethora of individuals drinking lattes, while talking on cellphones, while putting in their Top 40 cd's, while loading How to Train Your Dragon into their overhead blu ray players for their kids, while parallel parking. This type of convergence will have an interesting outcome no theorist has yet written about to my knowledge... I will see this and develop an ulcer.
Totally agree. In fact, I think if we were serious about energy conservation we'd TAX the HECK out of SUVs, Hummers, trucks and other vehicles with low MPG averages.
ReplyDeleteThis post hits home for me. The first day back at NCC for winter term I parked on the street at North Ave. My car was sideswiped by a Jeep Commander for no apparent reason. I was lucky that I actually got to see the incident happen so that I could make sure the other driver didn't leave and a proper report was filed. I was almost to my car when I saw with my own eyes the Commander crash into the front side of my Wrangler. There was no traffic, my car was parked fine, no reason for the accident other than terrible control/awareness from the other driver. There was plenty of space for a large SUV like that to get through, but the larger the car the more difficult to know where the side of it is I guess.
ReplyDeleteI also agree that driving is a potentially dangerous activity and that there's no place for distractions like DVDs and media centers. The car is transportation device, not a media suite.
Rather than converging navigation with satellite radio and iPods and Facebook I feel there should be a strong push to integrate text-to-speech software into all vehicles. The campaign against texting/cellphones and driving is failing. Legislation banning these activities hasn't stopped repeat offenders. If people are going to text, they need a hands free way to text. You'd think this would be actually calling the person, but people still insist upon texting. What some automakers are considering, Ford is the leader thus far in development, is a system that translates the texts you receive to audio and sends your voice out as a text. There's all sorts of issues with merging cellphone service with cars but our only real option may be to fight negligence/stupidity with superior technology.
WOW!! that number is really BIG!!! that's why I can't find a parking there! :O
ReplyDeleteI think people should use their vehicle wisely. It is ok to have a SUV, if you have a large family, but I think there should be some small cars as well to use it when you are not going out with all your family members, because that does not make sense to me that one person drives SUV around!!! I don't think that was the idea behind making that car!