I'm not sure if I can figure out which aspect of the little-girl-in-street 3d decal emplaced by Sanctimonious Canadians Against Transportation bothers me the most:
The way it trains attentive drivers to cheerfully run down small cartoon children, orAt the same time, however, it earns my grudging respect for the way it uniquely combines finger-wagging scoldery, morbidness, and velvet-Elvis tackiness in nearly equal amounts.
The way it will cause inattentive drivers to suddenly swerve into telephone poles when the illusory child suddenly looms from the pavement in front of them?
Yes, that's the point. If you can kill a child while it is young, you have a considerable cost savings under socialized medicine.
ReplyDeleteBesides, it's a well-known fact that Canadians hate kids. Has something to do with the two stomachs and gizzard, makes them extra hateful.
Shootin' Buddy
You know, if I'd run out in the street like that when I was a kid, if a car hadn't killed me, my Dad would have. In point of fact, I got the razor strop the one time I did, and I never forgot it.
ReplyDeleteWhatever happened to parental responsibility?
Ain't no "Kids Dart Drive Smart" campaign that is ever going to manage to get you stopped in time when a kid bursts out of nowhere in front of you. I once saw a guy hit a kid who ran out between parked cars on College Avenue not far north of Fall Creek Parkway, and but for the grace of God and another couple of seconds it would have been me who hit that kid. There was no way the other guy could have stopped. Hell, I damn near hit him when he stopped.
No question that drivers need to be vigilant, but kids need to be taught not to play in the frakkin' street, and parents need to pay attention to what their kids are doing.
And remember: "Slow children at play grow up to be slow men at work."
ReplyDelete+10 to Nathan.
ReplyDeleteWhen our kids were little, their play friends lived just across a residential street from us. We were constantly drilling into them to stop and look both ways before stepping into the street. Like most kids, it was "yeah, old people, nuthin's gonna happen..."
Then one day our daughter ran out into the street, thinking only of getting to the good times ahead. The ex- and I were standing at our front door and watched her run into the street without looking. Suddenly there was a Volks Beetle right there! Fortunately he was able to lock them up and skidded to a stop so close to Jenny that her legs were nearly touching the bumper and her hands--throuwn out instinctively--were well over the front hood. Fortunately the Volks driver was going fairly slowly, as is fitting for a residential area, so the only damage was to the various adrenal glands involved--and he had to restart his stalled Beetle.
After that, she never again failed to look both ways before entering the street...
Sometimes talking to the kids just doesn't work.
cap'n chumbucket
So, are they going to pay for the accidents caused by folks who come up on this unexpectedly with another car behind them?
ReplyDeleteHow @#$^&*#@! stupid can people be?
ReplyDeleteNow, when a child just stands in the street and defiantly looks at the coar coming toward him or her, he or she will get run over because the driver will assume there's another decal on the road.
How long till someone splatters a not-so-holographic child and claims that they didn't stop because they thought it was just one of these decal things? This is a BAD idea in so many ways.
ReplyDeletes
"I was just trying to tromp l'oil spot!"
ReplyDeleteAnd RACIST!!!!
ReplyDeleteWhat, there aren't any children of colours there?
And remember: "Slow children at play grow up to be slow men at work."- I am so gonna steal that.
ReplyDeleteSeems like a bad idea to habituate drivers like this. The Law of Unintended Consequences is shaking it's head and laughing already.
No worries--some creative kid with paint and markers could turn it into a zombie.
ReplyDeleteI saw an article somewhere on the net where the proponents of this horrific idea said that if you swirve and crash because of this decal you didn't have the necessary skills to be driving in the first place.
ReplyDeleteThings like this make my hippie and bureaucrat beating arm twitch.
The bastards who painted this are just plain cold.
ReplyDeleteAs far as stupid, check out a site called "lucky No Lucky" and loo up "train accident". two people crossed a double track crossing in front of a stopped train, and missed seeing the speeding train behind the first one. He stopped in time; she didn't. The impact threw her wit such force toward the camera that I'm surprised she didn't come at the camera in pieces. Needless to say, she did not survive.
Well, if this idea doesn't work, I guess the Canucks will just have to ban Private Vehicle Ownership and put everyone on Public Transportation. After all, it'll be good for the Environment, and it'll save countless Children's lives. Wait a minute...aren't Children just a Parasitic Invasion that'll destroy Mother Gaia? That was what the Discovery Bomber Asshole was fuming about, wasn't it? So to save the Earth, we actually need more cars to run down Children. But cars cause so much Enviromental Damage... Got it! Ban Cars, use Bicycles! Tam, hop on your Bike and head for the nearest playground! Do it FOR the...err, TO the Children, Mother Gaia will thank you! : )
ReplyDeleteSeems to me that a car swerving to avoid the decal might just jump the curb and hit a kid on the sidewalk.
ReplyDeleteGives me another reason to NOT visit Canadia-- just what I don't want to come up upon at night, headlights barely illuminating the road, and that illusion pops out making me slam on some brakes. Plus that whole "ya get used to it" conditioning, that will backfire when a real kid pops out someday...
ReplyDeleteBubblehead Les - ban private ownership for mandated public transportation? I'm sure they've already thought of that one and are drooling at the opportunity to implement same. After all, "only the government is highly trained enough to safely operate (insert DEA joke here)."
ReplyDeleteHigh-tech realization of very, very bad ideas doesn't make the idea any more palatable. For free men, anyway.
I can't see this being of any use except in the spot they are using it. After a bit of research the decal is in a school zone where the speed limit is 30kph (~19mph). If you swerve into a pole where it is positioned you were probably going considerably faster.
ReplyDelete-Tim D
At least they have the NHS to deal with the medical consequences caused by these adrenaline spike-inducing works of art.
ReplyDeleteOn a lighter note, how long will it be before pranksters paint a point value on each one of these decals?
"On a lighter note, how long will it be before pranksters paint a point value on each one of these decals?"
ReplyDeleteA little "+100" floating above the decal's right shoulder would be full of so much win!
Tam,
ReplyDeleteAnd they learned it all from California.What you missed was Ecole' Pauline Johnson.
That's a french immersion school named after a Mohawk Poet.The Mohawks always had a way with french but it involved a hawk and knife not a circumflex.
I'm irritated at how this is now inuring drivers to disregard what is apparently a child in the street, as simply another false reality.
ReplyDeleteWe are literally training a new generation that reality isn't real, and that Those People Don't Matter.
It's almost as if we've set about a grand plan to develop a generation of sociopaths.
Literacy is dead, even (or perhaps especially) at CNN:
ReplyDelete...with some claiming it could lead drivers to swerve or break abruptly in a school zone.
So, will the drivers shatter or just crumble?
"Sanctimonious Canadians Against Transportation"
ReplyDeleteS.C.A.T.
I see what you did there!
Seriously, it's government-level fail here. It will call single-car accidents in the short term and teach drivers over time to not hit the brakes the instant they see a child (Is that a real kid? I think one of those fake things is two block-" splat). And it costs money! And needs government workers to apply it! And it will need replaced often as blood/flaming car parts make the image fade!
The real charm is that scumbags will use it as an excuse for hitting kids and parents will sue the government for some of that free money that doesn't come from taxpayers. It's an infinite regress of fail.
It's not my attentiveness and driving skills this puts into question so much as the idiot behind me. I hope these idiots are bankrupted by lawsuits over rear-end accidents.
ReplyDeletewv: sundeite. Sorry, no Apollo worshipers here.
A design mentioned here will slow down drivers without training them to run over children.
ReplyDelete