I read an article today about a recent study that essentially concluded that the more bumper stickers you have on your car the more likely you are to be a total nutjob and try to run somebody off the road.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/15/AR2008061501963.html?sub=AR
The basic premise is that the more people personalize their vehicles with bumper stickers, the more they view that car as an extension of their personal space and the more likely they are to beat you with a tire iron if you, literally or metaphorically, get up in their grill.
I can buy that to some extent, although I’ve got to give a pass to those crazy cars you see with 500 bumper stickers that essentially have become a combination of paint job / tape holding the bumper to the chassis.
Usually these people are just poor college kids trying to make their crappy looking car seem hip as a means of standing out from the crowd. On second thought, maybe you should avoid these cars. I drive by a community college on a regular basis and let’s just say that the driving there is a car repair center’s dream. I would say that on average, I personally witnessed a fender bender once a week. Maybe it’s because they were trying to get up close to read the bumper stickers.
Anyway, the report indicates that the more bumper stickers you have, the more likely you are to be territorial and therefore the more likely you are to take out your marital problems on the person trying to pass you on the right. This is probably true, but I think the people that scare me the most are those who have only one bumper sticker. Now I’m not talking about those folks with the
“my kid is an honor student – nice kid – attendee - at Hoover Middle School”
bumper stickers. Those parents are either very proud, or more likely, were guilted into putting the bumper sticker on their car. I’ll also give a pass to folks with a single bumper sticker supporting their political candidate, church, union, sports team etc. We all have things we support, even if it’s sometimes a little irrational.
No, my concern is the people who have a single bumper sticker on their otherwise pristine car that says something really random. How often have you driven past a car with one bumper sticker that says something like
Jesus is Coming - Look Busy
I brake for Penguins
Ever stop to think and forget to start again
I had a great time at Wonder World
Calvin peeing on a ford symbol
These are far from the funniest bumper stickers out there, some of them don’t even make sense (why exactly is Calvin peeing on a Ford symbol?) Here’s my concern. If you have a hundred bumper stickers on your car, then having one that says
“Visualize using your turn signal”
is just one more amusing tidbit, but if that’s the only thing on your car, then that is the only thing I know about you. It leads me to believe that either turn signals are the most important thing in your life, or that this was, in fact, the funniest thing you had ever seen in your life and that you just had to buy it, OR, more likely, that you’re an idiot.
People who wear stupid t-shirts like
“Your boyfriend is a good kisser”
or
“This isn’t a bald spot, it’s a solar panel for a sex machine”
look like morons, but, presumably, they’ll put on a different asinine shirt the next day to at least mix it up some. People who put a
“Driver Carries no Cash, He’s Married”
bumper sticker on their car just look like unfunny jerks all the time.
Again, I feel like these are the people to avoid while driving. The people who could have chosen a million different bumper stickers to put on their car, supporting a million different causes or issues and instead just slapped a
“WXBQ – Home of Today’s Hot Country”
sticker on are the ones that scare me. What does this say about you? That you love country music more than anything? That your most closely cherished belief is that WXBQ is truly THE home of today’s hot country? Or, most likely, that you are a person of questionable judgment and that you should be avoided at all costs.
Random bumper stickers – God’s little signal to give this person a wide berth on the highway.