I used to drive a 1991 Suzuki Cappuccino - a tiny right-hand drive kei sports car. The first couple of years I drove it, the police pulled me over on a regular basis - no tickets issued but lots of questions asked.
One time while I was waiting for a light, an officer knocked on my window (which is somewhat startling)... I rolled it down and he excitedly asked "What kind of car is this?!"
I was stopped eight times in one day driving my DeLorean "time machine" replica. My friend has videos of the (literally) hundreds of times he has been stopped.
It's always for some made up traffic offense ("your lights weren't working, try them now; oh they are fixed; can me and my partner get a photo with your car?").
In the context of US roads, it's an extremely rare specimen which by itself makes it interesting.
But even beyond that, lightweight, mid front engine, rwd, turbo variants, this is the stuff of proper race cars. Anything Colin Chapman would approve of is automatically interesting.
It's pleasantly surprising how much positive vibes you can get driving an unusual car. On a business trip last year, I arrived late at night to the hotel and there was a rank of the smallest cars I'd ever seen:
The next morning I was able to hire one out to travel to the venue. At a pitstop on the way, another driver followed me into the carpark and excitedly asked me where I found the car so that he could go get one too.
To be honest, it wasn't a comfortable or easy drive. The speed topped out at 90kph and the steering felt gravelly. But it was fun getting in and out of the front of the car.
I hosted Steve on my couch (remember Couchsurfing?) when he was taking his Big Banana Car to a local art festival. Awesome guy, awesome car. I got to ride along for a bit. It was thrilling to see every single person's face light up as soon as they saw it, like a moving happiness machine. I hope somebody sees this and decides to make their own bit of whimsy
In the early 2000s the media ecosystem decided to re-tell every story, but darker & “grittier”. Then 9/11 happened and the darkness became permanent. It would be nice if we were coming out of that phase!
Oh don't worry, if history is any indication it shouldn't be much longer than 30-40 years from now. Basically 2 generations from the previous shift.
In the meantime, be the change you want to see! You don't have to be darker&grittier yourself just because the media ecosystem has decided that's where the current fashion is.
I'm presuming the original headline was some variant of "Giant Banana Pulled Over in Montana: Driver Says Cops Have Stopped Him 100s Of Times" (originally submitted URL, since changed).
Every time he gets pulled over for a selfie it's an abuse of power. If he can't ignore it, they shouldn't be doing it. Wait for a random encounter in a parking lot or gas station like the rest of us.
Finally! A nice story about cops pulling over a 23-foot banana motor vehicle for years without any consequence other than spreading joy to the people involved and years of fame!
No? You could also pull the public tax dollars spent card, or other crimes not being pursued while you're at it but it won't help sour the mood!
> For a moment, x______________ didn't know if he was being serious or not.
I'm still inclined to think that an /s is coming up in later replies. A bad story about cops and a banana motorist is that the motorist is dead, incarcerated or has a bounty on his head and is traveling around the world to ..evade.. his notoriety.
Cops on the road, who drive alone in their car, are entitled to a bit of fun.. or as Braithwaite put it, "more whimsy"!
It certainly isn’t, the police have no right to pull him over, they’re violating his 4th amendment rights. Unless he has committed a moving violation or they suspect him of committing a crime, there’s no cause to stop a motorist.
It’s a good story about a man who hasn’t let police acting illegally prevent him from driving his banana car.
In one of the vaguely-parallel timelines, a defendant is being asked by a judge why they didn't pull over and responds with: "I thought they were going to try to give me an ice cream cone, and I'm lactose intolerant so I didn't stop."
Meh, you might technically be right but the world is better if everyone can have a bit of fun, even police. I’m not super sympathetic to the “I was minding my own business driving a giant banana when the police pulled me over to ask me about it” argument - this guy seems fine with it too, but it’s not like there’s any reason to drive it other than for the attention.
And the “I pulled you over because you peeled out” - I mean it’s fun. Anyway, if it’s harmless I don’t really see the problem.
If you mop floors and you have fun by twirling your broom and humming a tune, you're not affecting anyone.
If we give you a gun and the right to shoot people in the head and go home to sleep in your own bed, then we can ask you to lock in a little more than that and not pull over people because it's funny.
If being a positive presence in the community isn't enough incentive to be that, you don't deserve to be police.
And if that sounds hackneyed and like a ridiculous standard, you're damn right it is: we let them have outsized influence in our existence as otherwise free people. Their standard has to be a double standard.
Over here in reality, when a man with a badge and a gun pulls people over for a bit of fun: Refusing to play along with whatever game it is that they have in mind is a criminal offense.
If cops want to be a positive presence in the community then they shouldn't regularly extort and abuse citizens and protect their violent and murderous coworkers.
It is crazy to me that the banana car driver seems to like the attention from cops, but here in the comments we are rewriting the narrative because all cops must be evil people.
It's crazy to you because other people are applying critical thinking and you're not.
The cop comfortable with pulling over the funny looking car (that looks like a banana) is the same cop with unreasonable understanding of the responsibility they're given.
It wouldn't matter if the banana car man has a sign that says "I love cops free donuts in the back"
What's really crazy to me is that someone is working over time to try to police (literally) other people's negative feelings about cop misconduct.
What inadequacy leads someone to see others upset at an obvious misuse of power and think "I need to stand up for the guys misuing it!"
> What's really crazy to me is that someone is working over time to try to police (literally) other people's negative feelings about cop misconduct.
It’s crazy to me that you view it as “policing” your opinions rather than simply seeing my viewpoint as just that, and opposing viewpoint.
I’m not policing you. Just offering a different perspective.
I apologize for speaking up. So much for free speech :)
But I’ll say it once more: it’s a freaking banana car. Lighten up bro! Very confused why you’re more upset than the driver of the banana is (who seems to want the attention and is getting it, the desired effect)!
> the world is better if everyone can have a bit of fun, even police
Police have plenty of ways to have fun that aren't Fourth Amendment violations.
If you wanna give out free ice cream cones, station a cruiser with a sign saying so. People can come to you just fine, without the "what the fuck, why am I getting pulled over?!" worries. The banana guy at least has an inkling of why there are flashing police lights in his rearview, but that doesn't make it OK.
Sure, I agree about the ice cream cones for random people. But the banana car guy is basically opting-in to getting lots of attention.
(And, yes, I realise that this is exactly the same shape of argument that turns into victim blaming when it's about cat calling or worse. No, I don't have a principled way to distinguish the two cases.)
Opting in to getting attention shouldn't imply anything one way or the other about how often you get pulled over. In the real world it does, because the police are a collection of humans and will misuse powers they are able to, but that has no bearing on what's supposed to be right or wrong - it's just the realistic expectation you'll have to deal with.
What the public wants is part of that picture, sure, but what the public accepts is a different thing than either right/wrong altogether. Namely "what you can realistically get away with".
The thing is, you can be reasonably sure when you pull over a big banana car, that the driver won't be a curmudgeonly prick who invokes the fourth amendment.
I had a car that was pulled over dozens of times so the cops could take pics with it. Most of the time it was cool.
Two times pissed me off: one time a cop had just pulled me over on the highway for a pic, okay cool, I pull back onto the highway and went maybe a mile before I was pulled over a second time by his buddy.
Other time I was just rolling into LA for a comic con, it was 3am and I'd been driving for about 14 hours. I was minutes from my hotel and of course here come the cops. I had to make a big detour to find somewhere safe to stop. The next day someone said "Oh, I think my buddy stopped you last night!" so I had him call his cop friend and was able to safely cuss him out from a distance :)
On the other hand I had one awesome experience with the cops in Oxnard when we put my car on the train tracks and accidentally set off the barriers and caused an enormous tailback in each direction at the railroad crossing. I thought the cops would be mad, but they were hilarious and promised to figure out the traffic snafu for us.
Then an hour later when I was driving the car down the tracks again another cop walked up on me all mad and told me he was writing me a ticket for driving on the tracks, but when I read the ticket he'd written it out to Marty McFly and had a great laugh about it. Here's a pic of him booking Marty haha
In some purer version of the universe where laws are absolute, you might be right.
In the world as it is, with laws interpreted by humans along notions of what society generally finds acceptable: if you drive a funny car or where an especially funny hat, expect to get a lot of attention from all kinds of people, including cops.
I enjoyed this, in all of its silly big banana energy.
I have an overdeveloped anti-authority streak, and I did not like to read that he was pulled over so often, but... I mean... that surely isn't a surprise, right? It's almost like reverse entrapment of the officers :)
What do you do for your hands and feet especially, and if you wear glasses, the inevitable frosting of them. Heck, if you don't wear glasses, what do you do for windburn?
I've biked as low as about -15C, though it's much more comfortable keeping it above -10 -- -5 or so.
Some heavier Thinsulate gloves were always enough for me. Maybe a pair of those thin fabric cheapies underneath.
Boots were just my regular winter boots. I think they all say "comfortable" down to -40C at this point. Comfortable is probably overselling it, but I still have all of my toes.
I don't remember my glasses ever really fogging up until I'd get inside. I don't like things on my face, so usually just a hat with ear flaps. Add a scarf for neck and lower face. Perhaps a beard helped too. It and my mustache have certainly frosted up.
When I was doing it regularly, those days just weren't common enough to justify doing anything special. I could generally keep the rides short which really helped out.
None of my cycling / running gloves cut it. I didn't get to buying heavier winter gloves last season. Layering gloves, using hardware-store work and waterproof gloves has also come up. Key is to combine insulation, a wind/vapour barrier, and possibly something rugged on the outside against wear/falls. I can't find the reference I had in mind, though this one is similar: <https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/hiking-and-b...>.
Feet aren't as much an issue for me, but insulated booties would be good. I have a pair, but they didn't fit over my most recent cycling shoes. I did find a lower-profile older pair recently, might get lucky with those.
I wear a Spandex balaclava, which tends to direct breath toward my specs. That's also a problem walking in cold weather (which I also do a lot of, particularly when my glasses fog too much to ride ;-), and I'm leaning toward over-the-specs ski goggles or something along those lines.
I hate that we have to ask this question but I'm wondering like cj...what made the post sound breathless? I type like OP pretty often. His post has plenty of valid punctuation. Commas, periods and dashes that(IMO) make me think it isn't LLM-written.
I would honestly be surprised if it turns out it was written by an LLM.
In large sections, every sentence is its own paragraph. I don't know what it would be like without all the extra linebreaks, but as it is, it feels like the author is getting their breath back in between sentences.
(I've also seen this style on an LLM-written site.)
Poor guy. He just wanted to spread some joy and now he's risking his life repeatedly. One of these police stops it's not going to work out. There are just too many US police eager to use physical violence for no reason.
It could never be against the police officer themselves due to qualified immunity. They are free to break the law however they wish. And that completely lack of accountability creates the risk inherent in every (US) police interaction.
He’s totally fine. He’s driving a car that basically no minority would ever drive, plus it has an open cockpit to facilitate the officer’s “trust but verify” instincts.
There's almost a zero percent chance of a police officer harming him during one of these stops. Annoying him a perhaps violating his civil rights, possibly, but not harmed.
Traffic stops can and do go bad. Each is a risk, even if small. If they discover something like a bag of drugs in the back, it raises clear Fourth Amendment issues.
Cops shouldn't be putting law-abiding citizens at risk for a selfie.
I would probably pull him over too but arguably he should be pulled over less than normal, right? The risk that he’s some criminal is probably pretty low since not a lot of criminals would chose a car like that to travel.
On the other hand it probably has an increased likelihood to have technical problems that make it reasonable to pull it over though.
The cops should know that trick by now - the "distraction car" is literally the plot of "Smokey and the Bandit" from 50 years ago. Nevertheless, you may be right :-)
I used to drive a 1991 Suzuki Cappuccino - a tiny right-hand drive kei sports car. The first couple of years I drove it, the police pulled me over on a regular basis - no tickets issued but lots of questions asked.
One time while I was waiting for a light, an officer knocked on my window (which is somewhat startling)... I rolled it down and he excitedly asked "What kind of car is this?!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Cappuccino
That's just not enough motive to waste someone's time.
And, no offense intended, that car is not that interesting. I guess policing must be boring.
It’s notable mostly for being tiny. With a human for scale: (sorry, it’s an instagram link)
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNI1TfAxyIZ/?utm_source=ig_we...
I was stopped eight times in one day driving my DeLorean "time machine" replica. My friend has videos of the (literally) hundreds of times he has been stopped.
It's always for some made up traffic offense ("your lights weren't working, try them now; oh they are fixed; can me and my partner get a photo with your car?").
In the context of US roads, it's an extremely rare specimen which by itself makes it interesting.
But even beyond that, lightweight, mid front engine, rwd, turbo variants, this is the stuff of proper race cars. Anything Colin Chapman would approve of is automatically interesting.
It's pleasantly surprising how much positive vibes you can get driving an unusual car. On a business trip last year, I arrived late at night to the hotel and there was a rank of the smallest cars I'd ever seen:
https://www.drive.com.au/news/microlino-battery-electric-bub...
The next morning I was able to hire one out to travel to the venue. At a pitstop on the way, another driver followed me into the carpark and excitedly asked me where I found the car so that he could go get one too.
To be honest, it wasn't a comfortable or easy drive. The speed topped out at 90kph and the steering felt gravelly. But it was fun getting in and out of the front of the car.
I guess you wouldn't really want to go any faster in this kind of car?
I guess it's slightly safer than a motorbike.
I'd wager a motorbike is much safer traveling at the same speed
I feel like we’ve got to at least link to the guy’s website: https://bigbananacar.com/
Let me be the first to say that this is a lovely website in a lovely, slightly modernized turn-of-the-millennium style.
Gloriously boring WordPress, too.
Loads instantly too, just like text+pictures should.
It’s like looking at an adult Richard Scary tale.
* Scarry
But you're right!
Agreed, the lede should be unburied! I've made that the top link and will put the submitted link in the toptext. Thanks!
"current project is a “Diesel punk” vehicle called the Starfield Dragonwing Intergalactic Speedster"
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXfDQb7EmU4/
I hosted Steve on my couch (remember Couchsurfing?) when he was taking his Big Banana Car to a local art festival. Awesome guy, awesome car. I got to ride along for a bit. It was thrilling to see every single person's face light up as soon as they saw it, like a moving happiness machine. I hope somebody sees this and decides to make their own bit of whimsy
The movement is still alive. I hosted a couchsurfer last week.
https://www.bewelcome.org/
https://www.warmshowers.org/
https://www.trustroots.org/ for the more alternative folks
> World Needs More Whimsy
100% that! When did everything get serious and look-alike? Anyway, I am taking off, shopping cart racing in the mall...
In the early 2000s the media ecosystem decided to re-tell every story, but darker & “grittier”. Then 9/11 happened and the darkness became permanent. It would be nice if we were coming out of that phase!
Oh don't worry, if history is any indication it shouldn't be much longer than 30-40 years from now. Basically 2 generations from the previous shift.
In the meantime, be the change you want to see! You don't have to be darker&grittier yourself just because the media ecosystem has decided that's where the current fashion is.
TV Tropes puts the start of darker and grittier more into the 1990s. See https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarkerAndEdgier
And some even in the 1980s or 1970s. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/DarkerAndEdgier/Batma...
I don't think the 2000s were especially darker and grittier?
Well this headline is certainly a crash blossom: https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/crash-blossom-words...
Mainly because the colon from the original was omitted, imo.
I'm presuming the original headline was some variant of "Giant Banana Pulled Over in Montana: Driver Says Cops Have Stopped Him 100s Of Times" (originally submitted URL, since changed).
English has a lot more of these crash blossoms--not just in headlines--than eg German or other more inflected languages.
It's sometimes charming, sometimes annoying. (But it makes for some cheap joke material that tends to make Poms think they are especially funny.)
Every time he gets pulled over for a selfie it's an abuse of power. If he can't ignore it, they shouldn't be doing it. Wait for a random encounter in a parking lot or gas station like the rest of us.
Yup. That's a clear Fourth Amendment violation.
Same with the "pulled over to give you an ice cream" feel-good ops they do. https://abc7ny.com/post/video-police-hand-out-ice-cream-inst...
An illegal detention is still an illegal detention if it's being done nicely.
Finally! A nice story about cops pulling over a 23-foot banana motor vehicle for years without any consequence other than spreading joy to the people involved and years of fame!
No? You could also pull the public tax dollars spent card, or other crimes not being pursued while you're at it but it won't help sour the mood!
> A nice story about cops…
This is not a nice story about cops.
> A police officer marched up to the banana and delivered the news.
> "'The reason I pulled you over, that light back there, you peeled out.'"
> For a moment, Braithwaite didn't know if he was being serious or not.
> "He said it so straight-faced," Braithwaite recalled. "And I'm like, 'Oh yeah.'"
> The banana jokes, he said, are "never-ending."
> Fortunately, so are the laughs.
..Are we discussing the same article?
> Braithwaite recently drove the banana into Mexico, where he was pulled over five times in three days.
> Every encounter was friendly, he says.
This is a great international story about cops!
> Now he's thinking much bigger.
> His goal is to drive the Big Banana Car through Central America; somehow get it shipped across oceans and eventually circle the globe.
> "I just want to keep going," he said.
> He's calling the adventure "The World Needs More Whimsy Grand Tour."
> A sign mounted to the back of the vehicle carries the slogan.
> "The world is dangerously low on whimsy," says the man hoping to make a difference.
That last paragraph hits it out of the park.
> For a moment, Braithwaite didn't know if he was being serious or not.
This is not a good story about cops. This is a good story about a guy, that includes cops as part of its plot.
It's like those "kid sells his toys to fund parents' cancer treatment" stories local news does as a feel-good segment. Great kid! Shitty system!
> For a moment, x______________ didn't know if he was being serious or not.
I'm still inclined to think that an /s is coming up in later replies. A bad story about cops and a banana motorist is that the motorist is dead, incarcerated or has a bounty on his head and is traveling around the world to ..evade.. his notoriety.
Cops on the road, who drive alone in their car, are entitled to a bit of fun.. or as Braithwaite put it, "more whimsy"!
Don't they? Help me understand..
> Cops on the road, who drive alone in their car, are entitled to a bit of fun…
No, cops are not entitled to Fourth Amendment violations as fun. Turn on the radio or something.
I am entitled to fun, too. That doesn't mean I get to pick kicking you in the shin as my fun.
It is not whimsical when the other party can legally kill you for non-compliance, no.
> entitled
Exactly the right word.
> This is a great international story about cops!
It certainly isn’t, the police have no right to pull him over, they’re violating his 4th amendment rights. Unless he has committed a moving violation or they suspect him of committing a crime, there’s no cause to stop a motorist.
It’s a good story about a man who hasn’t let police acting illegally prevent him from driving his banana car.
There was a security incident in 2002: Trooper Fears the Wurst, Stops Wienermobile in DC -- Hot doggers grilled near Pentagon
In one of the vaguely-parallel timelines, a defendant is being asked by a judge why they didn't pull over and responds with: "I thought they were going to try to give me an ice cream cone, and I'm lactose intolerant so I didn't stop."
Meh, you might technically be right but the world is better if everyone can have a bit of fun, even police. I’m not super sympathetic to the “I was minding my own business driving a giant banana when the police pulled me over to ask me about it” argument - this guy seems fine with it too, but it’s not like there’s any reason to drive it other than for the attention.
And the “I pulled you over because you peeled out” - I mean it’s fun. Anyway, if it’s harmless I don’t really see the problem.
No, they can't have fun this way.
If you mop floors and you have fun by twirling your broom and humming a tune, you're not affecting anyone.
If we give you a gun and the right to shoot people in the head and go home to sleep in your own bed, then we can ask you to lock in a little more than that and not pull over people because it's funny.
Such a negative attitude is incredibly counterproductive.
You want police to have a positive presence in the community. Innocent engagement with a banana car helps with that, doesn't hurt.
If being a positive presence in the community isn't enough incentive to be that, you don't deserve to be police.
And if that sounds hackneyed and like a ridiculous standard, you're damn right it is: we let them have outsized influence in our existence as otherwise free people. Their standard has to be a double standard.
There's a lot of anger towards police coming through in your comments. It's just a banana car.
It's a banana car that has been pulled over illegally hundreds of times.
Yeah I'm a Black immigrant with a funny name, I have a lot of anger about what we tolerate of police vs what we should.
Are you under the impression all cops are known for is harassing banana cars?
> You want police to have a positive presence in the community.
Can they not pull up alongside and wave? Give a thumbs-up? Roll down the window?
That sounds nice.
Over here in reality, when a man with a badge and a gun pulls people over for a bit of fun: Refusing to play along with whatever game it is that they have in mind is a criminal offense.
If cops want to be a positive presence in the community then they shouldn't regularly extort and abuse citizens and protect their violent and murderous coworkers.
Except it is literally not innocent. They are violating an innocent person’s rights.
It is crazy to me that the banana car driver seems to like the attention from cops, but here in the comments we are rewriting the narrative because all cops must be evil people.
I appreciate your anger, but it’s misplaced here.
It's crazy to you because other people are applying critical thinking and you're not.
The cop comfortable with pulling over the funny looking car (that looks like a banana) is the same cop with unreasonable understanding of the responsibility they're given.
It wouldn't matter if the banana car man has a sign that says "I love cops free donuts in the back"
What's really crazy to me is that someone is working over time to try to police (literally) other people's negative feelings about cop misconduct.
What inadequacy leads someone to see others upset at an obvious misuse of power and think "I need to stand up for the guys misuing it!"
> What's really crazy to me is that someone is working over time to try to police (literally) other people's negative feelings about cop misconduct.
It’s crazy to me that you view it as “policing” your opinions rather than simply seeing my viewpoint as just that, and opposing viewpoint.
I’m not policing you. Just offering a different perspective.
I apologize for speaking up. So much for free speech :)
But I’ll say it once more: it’s a freaking banana car. Lighten up bro! Very confused why you’re more upset than the driver of the banana is (who seems to want the attention and is getting it, the desired effect)!
It becomes policing when you say:
> "I appreciate your anger, but it’s misplaced here."
Weird mix of narcissism to think anyone cares if you appreciate their anger, and arrogance to think you know where it belongs.
You're definitely confused. We can leave it at that.
I don’t mind the insults. I’ll let the downvotes speak for themselves.
> the world is better if everyone can have a bit of fun, even police
Police have plenty of ways to have fun that aren't Fourth Amendment violations.
If you wanna give out free ice cream cones, station a cruiser with a sign saying so. People can come to you just fine, without the "what the fuck, why am I getting pulled over?!" worries. The banana guy at least has an inkling of why there are flashing police lights in his rearview, but that doesn't make it OK.
Sure, I agree about the ice cream cones for random people. But the banana car guy is basically opting-in to getting lots of attention.
(And, yes, I realise that this is exactly the same shape of argument that turns into victim blaming when it's about cat calling or worse. No, I don't have a principled way to distinguish the two cases.)
Opting in to getting attention shouldn't imply anything one way or the other about how often you get pulled over. In the real world it does, because the police are a collection of humans and will misuse powers they are able to, but that has no bearing on what's supposed to be right or wrong - it's just the realistic expectation you'll have to deal with.
Well, especially in a democracy what's supposed to be right or wrong is heavily influenced by what the general public wants and accepts.
What the public wants is part of that picture, sure, but what the public accepts is a different thing than either right/wrong altogether. Namely "what you can realistically get away with".
The thing is, you can be reasonably sure when you pull over a big banana car, that the driver won't be a curmudgeonly prick who invokes the fourth amendment.
I had a car that was pulled over dozens of times so the cops could take pics with it. Most of the time it was cool.
Two times pissed me off: one time a cop had just pulled me over on the highway for a pic, okay cool, I pull back onto the highway and went maybe a mile before I was pulled over a second time by his buddy.
Other time I was just rolling into LA for a comic con, it was 3am and I'd been driving for about 14 hours. I was minutes from my hotel and of course here come the cops. I had to make a big detour to find somewhere safe to stop. The next day someone said "Oh, I think my buddy stopped you last night!" so I had him call his cop friend and was able to safely cuss him out from a distance :)
On the other hand I had one awesome experience with the cops in Oxnard when we put my car on the train tracks and accidentally set off the barriers and caused an enormous tailback in each direction at the railroad crossing. I thought the cops would be mad, but they were hilarious and promised to figure out the traffic snafu for us.
https://imgur.com/a/pBcLKqz (we didn't realize the barriers automatically detect stuff on the tracks)
Then an hour later when I was driving the car down the tracks again another cop walked up on me all mad and told me he was writing me a ticket for driving on the tracks, but when I read the ticket he'd written it out to Marty McFly and had a great laugh about it. Here's a pic of him booking Marty haha
https://imgur.com/a/vm0ud5y
Well yeah, all the ones who were too easily annoyed got weeded out over 100k miles ago!
Do some reading on all the 1000X-worse abuses of police power which are sadly routine in America.
Banana cars getting pulled over for selfies is a massive improvement.
In some purer version of the universe where laws are absolute, you might be right.
In the world as it is, with laws interpreted by humans along notions of what society generally finds acceptable: if you drive a funny car or where an especially funny hat, expect to get a lot of attention from all kinds of people, including cops.
The "(s)he was asking for it" defense is fairly ripe here. I'd say we can all let this one slip.
Straight out of Richard Scarry's "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go": https://a.co/d/0778Ou0A
If you are a parent of a small child, you will be amazed by the depth and fun of this book. I am always surprised it is not more commonly read.
We have a lot of the richard scarry books. I've gotten so many laughs out of them with my child.
> you will be amazed by the depth and fun of this book
+100. These are so fun to read and look at. There are stories in stories. These books are a treasure.
(1) Obtain a vehicle that commands attention. (2) Enjoy everyone's attention! (3) There's no point three.
The issue is false pretext
ACAB (All Cops Appreciate Banana)
I enjoyed this, in all of its silly big banana energy.
I have an overdeveloped anti-authority streak, and I did not like to read that he was pulled over so often, but... I mean... that surely isn't a surprise, right? It's almost like reverse entrapment of the officers :)
Get on the horn to British Intelligence and let them know about this!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WCoRGbT3CM
If he were my Uber, I would tip so much.
Also of note, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienermobile
Merry Pranksters Bus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merry_Pranksters#Eastward_bus_...
Related: Pear-shaped scooter that's making the rounds on TikTok https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a71446039/florida-man-pear...
I bought the ninth Mini Cooper in Illinois in 2002. My former wife got pulled over in Chicago. They just wanted to look at the car.
If you are on reddit, https://old.reddit.com/r/whatisthiscar/ is excellent for this sort of content :)
Open cars worry me. How do they handle the wind, rain, snow, hail, etc.?
As someone who rides bikes most of the time, the right question is how you handle it.
This. I’ve ridden a bike year round in southwestern Ontario.
In general, I’m fairly waterproof.
-30C was pretty cold, especially moving, but rare enough I could dress for it and keep my body parts.
Snowstorms are always fun. Free physics lessons included. How much traction can you get? Whoops, I’m laying on the ground.
Thunderstorms and hail you might want to avoid.
What do you do for your hands and feet especially, and if you wear glasses, the inevitable frosting of them. Heck, if you don't wear glasses, what do you do for windburn?
I've biked as low as about -15C, though it's much more comfortable keeping it above -10 -- -5 or so.
Some heavier Thinsulate gloves were always enough for me. Maybe a pair of those thin fabric cheapies underneath.
Boots were just my regular winter boots. I think they all say "comfortable" down to -40C at this point. Comfortable is probably overselling it, but I still have all of my toes.
I don't remember my glasses ever really fogging up until I'd get inside. I don't like things on my face, so usually just a hat with ear flaps. Add a scarf for neck and lower face. Perhaps a beard helped too. It and my mustache have certainly frosted up.
When I was doing it regularly, those days just weren't common enough to justify doing anything special. I could generally keep the rides short which really helped out.
Thanks!
None of my cycling / running gloves cut it. I didn't get to buying heavier winter gloves last season. Layering gloves, using hardware-store work and waterproof gloves has also come up. Key is to combine insulation, a wind/vapour barrier, and possibly something rugged on the outside against wear/falls. I can't find the reference I had in mind, though this one is similar: <https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/hiking-and-b...>.
Feet aren't as much an issue for me, but insulated booties would be good. I have a pair, but they didn't fit over my most recent cycling shoes. I did find a lower-profile older pair recently, might get lucky with those.
I wear a Spandex balaclava, which tends to direct breath toward my specs. That's also a problem walking in cold weather (which I also do a lot of, particularly when my glasses fog too much to ride ;-), and I'm leaning toward over-the-specs ski goggles or something along those lines.
Power to you though!
Is this LLM-written, or is this just the sort of annoying "breathless" style of writing that LLMs were trained on?
I hate that we have to ask this question but I'm wondering like cj...what made the post sound breathless? I type like OP pretty often. His post has plenty of valid punctuation. Commas, periods and dashes that(IMO) make me think it isn't LLM-written.
I would honestly be surprised if it turns out it was written by an LLM.
In large sections, every sentence is its own paragraph. I don't know what it would be like without all the extra linebreaks, but as it is, it feels like the author is getting their breath back in between sentences.
(I've also seen this style on an LLM-written site.)
I would love to be able to rent it out and have the guy drive me around. I would dress up like Donkey Kong, too.
Poor guy. He just wanted to spread some joy and now he's risking his life repeatedly. One of these police stops it's not going to work out. There are just too many US police eager to use physical violence for no reason.
While absolutely and sadly true, something tells me that rogue banana drivers are not the ones most likely to be killed in a traffic stop.
Besides, his family would surely win the resulting case… on a peel.
Well done, sir. clap
It could never be against the police officer themselves due to qualified immunity. They are free to break the law however they wish. And that completely lack of accountability creates the risk inherent in every (US) police interaction.
> rogue banana drivers are not the ones most likely to be killed in a traffic stop
...until the bananas go brown, of course.
You are my comedy hero, tremon. This is the joke I was looking for and failed to find.
He’s totally fine. He’s driving a car that basically no minority would ever drive, plus it has an open cockpit to facilitate the officer’s “trust but verify” instincts.
There's almost a zero percent chance of a police officer harming him during one of these stops. Annoying him a perhaps violating his civil rights, possibly, but not harmed.
"Violating his civil rights" is harm.
Unless having their rights violated in this way is one of their kinks.
And as far as we can tell from the writing, it is. (Not in a sexual way, I guess. But he seems to like the attention.)
Yes, you're totally right, I was referring to being beaten or killed on the side of the road. I should have been clear.
Gee golly whillikers!
Pigs are abusing their authority! Oh whatever shall we do?
Traffic stops can and do go bad. Each is a risk, even if small. If they discover something like a bag of drugs in the back, it raises clear Fourth Amendment issues.
Cops shouldn't be putting law-abiding citizens at risk for a selfie.
My answer is to fire their lardasses for due cause and make them unhirable across the nation.
But this country's courts said this shit is cool. And so is highway robbery by pig. And they don't need to come for help if you call 911.
Oh and qualified immunity means they can what the fuck ever they want.
If RICO act was serious, they'd shut down all pig stys (police stations).
Frankly, this sounds like a really fun time. Sometimes the simple things just hit harder.
ohk
Alternative title:
Person who wants to get noticed indeed gets noticed
I would probably pull him over too but arguably he should be pulled over less than normal, right? The risk that he’s some criminal is probably pretty low since not a lot of criminals would chose a car like that to travel.
On the other hand it probably has an increased likelihood to have technical problems that make it reasonable to pull it over though.
Yes but every good police officer had watched Arrested Development and so knows that there’s always money in the banana stand.
Wow you waited from 2012 to crack this joke with that username
worth it.
If im a drug smuggler I'm definitely driving the most boring, common car directly BEHIND the banana car.
The cops should know that trick by now - the "distraction car" is literally the plot of "Smokey and the Bandit" from 50 years ago. Nevertheless, you may be right :-)
However, the distraction car is breaking the law in Smokey and the Bandit. It’s not incorrect for them to try and pull it over.
What possible technical problem would a cop be qualified to not only recognize and diagnose, but also have any useful input on?
Cops shouldn't be pulling over anybody without either direct evidence of a potential crime or a warrant.
Probable cause being it might be an illegal vehicle on public streets?
Are banana-shaped cars illegal to use on public roads? Which laws prevent their use?