MSN and State Farm team up to bring you an automotive risk index.

My car, a Ford Escort, is one of only two cars in the Ford line to have a 0% safety percentage. Granted, the one listed is a two-door while mine is a four-door, but even so. The good news is that I am not a danger to other drives (average mark for liability), but am in great danger myself (the lowest possible mark).

I’ve been a bad boy. I managed to get my car and driver’s license registered in Estacado a while back, but only yesterday did I finally move my auto insurance. I’ve been paying lower Deseret rates and was running the risk of not being adequately covered if I’d gotten into an accident. My new agent, however, assured me that they would have covered me regardless. That’s really good to know.

We’d been intending to get married-couple auto insurance, but procrastination has gotten the better of us (just as it has with our separate bank accounts). Anyhow, no more. Estacado law apparently requires us to register together. It’s apparently a community property issue! Without a legal separation we are apparently forbidden from denying access to our cars from one another. Because we have to be able to drive one another’s cars, we have to be insured to. So we have to be registered together.

The good news is that I have been with my carrier for a very long time and I am subject to all sorts of discounts. Clancy is covered by that money saving Gecko. She has been inclined to shop around, but I’ve always gotten very good service from State Farm and am inclined to pay 10-15% more to go with the known quantity. With my discount, I may not even be paying more. At the very least my renter’s insurance history makes me ligable for a 20% discount for homeowners when we buy a home. I don’t often get the impression of being a “valuable customer”, but I do get that impression from each of the agents I’ve dealt with. The fact that my family has been covered by them since 1972 actually seems to count for something.

There was one oddity, however. Apparently according to the driving record they have I was in an automobile accident in 2004. I am almost certain that was not in an automobile accident in 2004. I don’t believe I ever got into one in Deseret, either reported or otherwise. Unfortunately the record didn’t have any details. My new agent struck it from my record, though, along with a 2003 ticket (didn’t matter, I was already eligible for safe driver’s discount). I just don’t know why my record would report me in an accident I am 90% sure I was not involved in.

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Speaking of cars, I am considering getting the lock changed on my car. Right now I am keeping valuables out of the car and keeping it unlocked because of the hassle of the current configuration. Essentially I do not have a key to the lock of my driver’s side door, meaning I either have to reach across the car to unlock it or I have to spin in from the passenger’s side door. That’s more of a hassle to do than you might realize. So I don’t leave anything in the car that I’m worried about being taken. But after the last break-in I still find myself worried that someone is going to break in and take my car stereo sans the faceplate. Since faceplate replacement is so expensive that it would negate the pawn value of the radio itself, I don’t know why they would, but I still find myself concerned.

I talked to The Worthless Dealership about replacing the locks on the car. They quoted me at about $300, which was pretty excessive. So I’m thinking about replacing only the driver’s side door and keeping two keys on me. I think next time a lock on my car breaks, I’m just going to get it replaced on the spot rather than spend years making it a hassle to lock my car.

I wonder who else I could get to do it other than The Worthless Dealership, though.

On the other hand, a locked car in Colosse usually just meant a broken window. So what’s the point, again?

-{Note, due to a mishap on my part, this post temporarily disappeared. So if you saw that, you’re not crazy}-

Many states in the US have banned smoking in the car when there is a minor present. I don’t have strong opinions one way or the other on the subject, but probably lean towards the law being more of a good idea than a bad one. India, on the other hand, has gone a step further and banned smoking in cars at all:

Declaring “New Delhi roads dangerous to human life,” the city’s High Court on Monday imposed a slew of new measures aimed at deterring habitually bad drivers, including the smoking ban and a prohibition on using a mobile phone while at the wheel.

“Anything that distracts the attention of driver is dangerous. The human mind cannot do two things simultaneously,” said New Delhi’s traffic commissioner Qamar Ahmed…

Fortunately for car-smokers in America, this law originated in India. Had it originated in Europe, a bunch of anti-American Europhilic snobs would be aching for it in the US so that we can catch up to Europe in maturity or whatever. Had it originated in Japan, a bunch of anime geeks would be agitating it… which might not actually be such a bad thing because where they lead no one else will follow. If it were Singapore, conservatives would have eyebrow cocked. But I don’t think there’s any demographic in the US that wants us to emulate India, so we’re probably okay.

Honestly, I think that a safety case could be made for smoking. I have not been a car-smoker in quite some time, but when I was there were times that it proved hazardous when a cigarette was dropped or a cherry came flying off (into my ear, once!). But that’s generally pretty rare. Contrary to the article, it’s not comparable to being on a cell phone or even, in my opinion, listening intently to the radio.

But no doubt the moral scolds* will seize on this opportunity to portray smokers as the scum of the earth. Not only do they have that filthy habit, but they’re also worse drivers. So, ha! But they will do this while assuring us that they’re not targeting smokers specifically except insofar as smoking in the car is dangerous so they’re just targeting dangerous behavior. And they have a point.

But only if they propose to ban eating in the car, too. Eating is a much, much, much more distracting activity by just about any measure. But that will almost certainly never happen because nobody thinks that they can’t eat and drive at the same time. People that have absolutely no experience with smoking in a car will tell you that’s much more dangerous.

It’s not a debate that I look forward to as the smokers’ losing streak continues.

* – I have recently been informed that “scold” is an offensive word to use as a noun because its roots are somewhat sexist. I’ve been using the word most of my whole life and not any more at women than men, as far as I know, so I’m not going to stop using using it. Suffice it to say, however, that I am using the term to describe moral nannies of both genders.

If you go to a used car lot, there is a certain class of car that you can get pretty cheaply: The Yankee Car. A Yankee Car is a car that has all the fixins from a CD/DVD player to automatic door locks, but no air conditioning. I call them Yankee Cars because it’s almost a certainty came from points north of my southern home town and almost equally a certainty is that they lived in Dixie for all of two days before they decided it was time to buy a car that wouldn’t give them heat exhaustion.

As it turns out, I spent most of my driving formative years without air conditioning in my car. It takes some getting used to. For instance, if you’re going to be in the car for more than half an hour you have to have a change of shirts. You get used to a stripe of sweat where the seat belt went across your chest. Sometimes you get as involved as to have a particular “driving shirt” that you change into when you get in the car and then change out of as soon as you get wherever you’re going. I remember when I got my first car with air conditioning… I wasn’t allowed to use it in weather under 100-degrees for fear that it would break. 100 degrees in the Gulf weather belt is very, very hot.

So now we flash-forward to the present. It is my new theory that you haven’t lived in a place till you’ve had your car broken into there. I lived in Colosse for many years and my car stereo bills reflect it. My car was broken into three times in the last two years* I was there. It got to the point that I didn’t even bother locking my car in hopes that they’d spare the window. Ironically I never had a problem in my shabby apartment on the wrong side of the tracks… it was when I moved into a slightly more upscale apartment that it started. Then in Deseret my car was broken into**. And yesterdayI officially became an Estocadan

I actually spent a good portion of yesterday waiting for the shoe to drop. Every time I’ve had my car broken into, there was always something in there that it hurt to lose. My laptop, a ZIP drive (back when they cost something and were actually worth something). I was less concerned about the gaping hole where my car stereo used to be and more about the completely cleared out glove compartment. I didn’t have my car title in there, did I? Checkbook? Check from Ed McMahon for a million dollars? Knock on wood, none of the above. They did get my car’s registration papers, though, and maybe a birth certificate. And irony of irony, I actually had some gloves in the glove compartment from when I needed them in Deseret.

They did get my CDs, which is 95% not a problem as they were mostly burned***. There were a couple new ones in there, but I had ripped them… onto the hard drive that died a few days ago. So I have to buy those over again. It includes one CD I don’t even like that much, but it’ll be the third time I’ve had the buy the CD cause it was in my CD player the last time it was jacked. It’s good enough to buy back, though only barely. Part of me wishes that they’d taken a CD of greater personal import. Of course I say that and once upon a time they did: I had the only CD in existence for a band that my best friend was in.

More inconvenient than the lack of a car radio, however, is that the Ford Escort is a dumb car. For some reason they decided that instead of having a CD player like just about every other car in existence, they would put it in a ovular-shaped console and it would share said console with the Air Conditioning, so I’m without AC. It was because of the AC rather than the radio that I needed to take it in pronto. It’s a good time of year to be without AC, but you never know how long that’ll last. So I took it in and had the console repaired… except the AC, which they said they couldn’t do. I wish they’d have told me that I’d have to take it to the dealer anyway $300 earlier.

So I’m still without AC, which should be fine at least for another couple of days. It actually reminds me a bit of back in the day. Except not half as miserable. Yet.

* – This was back in the good old days before the recent PD manpower shortage, population boom, and crime-wave. I’d actually be more worried about my car these days.

** – This was a very instructive thing about living in semi-rural Deseret versus urban Colosse. In Colosse, the cop seemed genuinely annoyed that I called the police about $3000-worth of property lifted from my car. In Deseret I was less than $200 out and the cops gave me weekly updates on their investigation and I got a letter from the District Attorneys office letting me know that if they found the guy they would make him pay.

*** – Technically, according to the RIAA I now have to destroy my CDs because I’ve now illegally distributed their music. No joke, that is their stance on the issue.

All three tales you are about to read are 100% true.

Once in my life, I have been witness to what happens when someone did something blindingly stupid, and probably lost their life for it. On my way to work about 4 years ago, at an intersection that involves some ill-timed stoplights and a freeway underpass (leaving cross traffic a good 150 feet or so to get up to speed before the second intersection), I watched a small car try to run a red light.

Said small car was promptly compacted to probably 1/3 its former size by the dual impact of a Dodge Ram and a Ford F-250, both of which hit it on the drivers’ side. Said small car, after these impacts, flew forward and wrapped its remaining mass (minus almost all the glass and at least one door and a wheel) around the post for the traffic lights.

Twice in my life, I have been fortunate enough to have blind cosmic luck save my life.

The first time was in the first car I ever owned. It was a huge boat of a car, not that that mattered. It was probably about 10 at night, and I was on my way home from something I forget what. I’d just filled up at a gas station, and was getting ready to pull out to drive home when the car stalled. Half a second later, while I was trying to restart it, an 18-wheel Semi with two trailers attached to it blew right past my front bumper at probably double the posted speed limit of 45.

The second time was this morning; I was coming through Colosse’s downtown area (the freeways were all messed up) on the edge, to get to work. Stopped at a four-way intersection, checked both ways… clear. Hit the gas, let back on the clutch, and realized I’d forgotten to shift back to first gear.

While I was shifting, a car came down the road, again obviously speeding, and blew right through the intersection, right through the place where my drivers’ side door probably would have been.

I’m alive. My nerves are shot, and there’s this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that something or someone is REALLY watching out for me… but I’m alive to tell the tale, which is probably more than I could say had either event not happened, and it’s probably more than I can say of the person who ran the red light in my first tale.

A few weeks ago I locked myself out of the apartment. I had to walk to Clancy’s work, get some keys, and walk back. Luckily it’s not that far of a walk, but it still caused me to miss my company’s Christmas Party. I decided at that point that I needed to get a set of spare keys. One set of spare keys still sits in a police evidence locker in Deseret (long story) and another disappeared during the move down to Estacado.

In Deseret, we lived in a sleepy suburban-style neighborhood and there was little to fear. And for the most part Zarahemla was the kind of town where you could leave your car unlocked, if you wanted to. I left my car unlocked in the big, bad city of Colosse, too, but that was primarily because I was tired of criminals breaking my window (value=$250) in order to get the stuff in my car (value=$100). And I left my apartment unlocked because apartment management never gave me a key to the doors I actually used and I figured that I didn’t want to have to clean broken glass off my rug any more than I did broken glass out of my car. Turned out not to be a concern because no one, save for a mentally disturbed ex-girlfriend, felt the need to sneak into my apartment without an invitation.

The neighborhood that we currently live in Santomas demands that we keep an eye to security. As for my car, that means more-or-less keeping it free of contents that anyone would want to steal. I have burned CDs which I take care to leave open so that any potential criminal knows that they are of no value. The apartment, on the other hand, is another story. At the same time, locking myself out of anything is not a perpetual hazard because of my forgetfulness. I could keep a key to the house in the car, but I’m afraid a thief might be smart enough to figure out that the housekey in the car may go to the house whose car the driveway is parked in. Criminals are deviously clever like that.

So I ended up getting one of those magnetic keyholders that you hide on the car out of view. They’re handy little things. There’s only one problem with it: the blasted thing has a giant gold key insignia on the front of it. For a split-second I thought that it might be helpful in case I forgot where I hid the thing. Then the thought occured to me: why would I want something I am hiding from potential thieves to have an advertisement as to its contents. Obviously, if they were to see it they would figure out what it was. But seriously, the stupid key insignia reflects light. I can understand the desire to advertise on your product, but this does strike me as something where discretion may be the better part of valor.

Luckily, I think I have it in a place where even if they do go below the car with a flashlight they probably won’t find it.

Which means that I probably won’t be able to find it, either.

One of the arguments against SUVs is that they are unsafe to other drivers on the road and create a sort of arms race where people that buy more ecologically and economically responsible motor vehicles are put at a disadvantage. I drive one of those more ecologically and economically responsible motor vehicles and will until buying an SUV or something makes more sense (which, if we settle down in the mountains of the west, we just might).

I got into a car accident yesterday. Traffic from the access road of the freeway merged straight in to my lane. A woman about to enter either didn’t know this or didn’t care as she was obviously unconcerned. I looked in my mirrors and changed lanes, missing the giant SUV that was sitting in my blind spot.

We both pulled over to a nearby apartment complex. Since her car had hit my door, my primary concern was to make sure that my door could open, which it could. I jumped out of the car to make sure that she was alright. She was driving an SUV. Of course she was alright. But the accident was my fault and feigning concern might make her less likely to sue for the pain and suffering of having to touch up the paint of her vehicle. Turns out I didn’t even really ding her paint.

My car, on the other hand, is quite bruised. The door opens and closes and locks and unlocks. I haven’t checked the windows to make sure they go up and down, though. Even so, the police were never called, I didn’t get a ticket, and I will take whatever damage my car might have sustained.

Which brings me back to SUVs. Had I run in to a lesser car, mine would almost surely have done some damage and I would face a ticket and possibly an insurance hike. So I am quite grateful about the superior force of SUVs. Regardless of who is at fault, better my car gets damage than theirs cause I don’t care about my car except to the extent that it gets me from Point A to Point B. And I am a relatively (though decreasingly) a young male and my safety isn’t of utmost concern, so better I be injured than I injure someone else.

Right up until kids enter the picture, at which point I will demand all SUVs off the road immediately! Or I’ll just get a Volvo.

Still mostly maxin’ and relaxin’, but stopping in for a not-so-quick post while I’m thinking about it.

A couple thoughts, observations, or revelations gleamed from driving across Delosa:

1. You can still rent cars that have a tape player in leiu of a CD player.
2. You can tell a lot about a person by what kind of music is on his mix tape. Or was when he was fifteen.
3. Letting a girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, or wife listen to a mix tape you made when you were fifteen may be a better sign of emotional trust than anything else in existence.
4. An advantage of blogging anonymously is that you can admit that once upon a time, you liked some of Michael Bolton’s music. To quote our esteemed President, when I was young and irresponsible…

Though I didn’t know they made them anymore, the rental car only had a tape player available. Since we visited my folks’ place first, though, the drive across Delosa to Clancy’s was accompanied by a bunch of radio-swiped mixed tapes.

It’s sort of a long story, but I only really got in to music in my junior high years. I made the transition from “adult contemporary” to “Top 40” to “Alternative Rock.” By the time I got to the second and particularly the third phase I was already purchasing CDs. Prior to that, I obsessively recorded stuff off the radio. I may write more on this whole process later, but what’s important is that I started migrating away from tapes in my high school years and so most of the stuff I had was from junior high when I listened to Sunshine 98.7 FM, the easiest easy listening in Colosse.

So the antiquated radio system on my car gave me a little time capsul as I listened to my few remaining tapes from the early 90’s that provided what was actually an almost scary glimpse into who I was at the time.

I’ve never been one for happy music. I don’t know that I’m a hugely pessimistic person, but it’s always seemed to me that story thrives on conflict and a song about loving someone so goshdarn much almost inherently lacks that conflict. The happier songs (or at least not-unhappy ones) are ones where there is a conflict, but it is somehow resolved or that provide a sort of sensation and you don’t know how exactly it’s going to turn out, but it’s exhilarating at the time the song is sung.

But what I found interesting about the music, and the subject-matter therein, is how it was wave-on-wave depressing. As she listened, Clancy said she didn’t know what was more disturbing: that I would have a Michael Bolton on a mix tape or that I managed to even find a depressing Bolton song to complete my depressing setlist. The pattern was unmistakeably clear.

What’s telling, though, is not just that the music was depressing, but that (a) I did not seek out depressing music, (b) it was depressing with subject matter that I had not experienced, (c) at the time I did not even consider it depressing.

The most common theme was a love-had-but-lost. That’s the source of most sad love songs, so it’s hardly surprising that my tapes would be populated with that theme. Even considering that, though, I found my ability, as someone that had never had love much less lost it, to relate to it interesting. Well it’s not that I could relate to it exactly.

I could relate to it the same way that I could relate to comic books. It was a sort of imagination twitch. A tilt on reality where everything was different, except that life somehow went on the same. All of these amazing things happened, and yet life went on so much more normally than seemed possible. Just as I could sort of imagine some comic books as the way things might be if some of us had extraordinary gifts, I saw some of the songs as what might happen if I someday actually got into a relationship.

Even allowing for eventually getting into some relationship somewhere along the line, I saw the result being heartbreak. In the same way that some heroes ultimately give up their mantle to resume a life of normalcy, I saw a relationship being terminated so that I could return to my normal state of being — abject loneliness. But I had a sense of appreciation, born more out of naivete than wisdom, of the ride. The old maxim that having loved and lost was better than never having loved at all rang true — as someone that had never really had love I could in a way attest to just about anything being better than that.

When I did “have” and did “lose” of course, my perspective would change greatly. But at the time I actually understood bittersweet before I had ever fully experienced the bitter or the sweet.

While most of the tapes and CDs I actually bought hold up to some degree or another even in my earliest purchases, most of the radio swipes do not. They were good for a nostalgic kick, an introspective look at who I was and a blog post, but not a whole lot more than that. I find it a bit ironic that easy listening music is often called adult contemporary because I outgrew it as I became an adult and once I started experiencing what they were singing about, it all became less magnificent and the blandness of the lyrics exposed as the mystery was peeled off.

The songs were depressing, but listening to them actually make me happy and it was in a way perfectly appropriate for the holiday season. When I was half as old as I was now, I had no idea that I would ever experience what I have experienced. I had resigned myself to a life of loneliness that I moved beyond rather quickly. My life has been so much more wonderful, colorful, and love-infested than I could ever have dreamed it being. Clancy is twice as good as I ever thought I might do. Same for Holly before her. Even Julie, who I left heartbroken because she wasn’t enough, was more than I could have dreamed of.

And so I am flushed with a thanksgiving for the things I have taken for granted. Not only now, but a perspective on what I didn’t realize I had then that made me ready for the wonders that awaited me: a loving family, an adequate education, a complicated and creative mind, and a good upbringing.

If there is a better place to realize this than with Clancy in Delosa with all of my families, I’m not sure what it is.

On a couple of occasions, Barry and I have discussed the gas price hikes during hurricane season. For the most part I came to the defense of big oil, explaining that there really were reasons why gas prices would climb so quickly other than the obvious profit motive. The short argument is we have inadequate refining capacity huddled right down hurricane alley. In fact, I am relatively sure that a fair number of gas stations were actually selling it at a loss. There was a flattening of prices for a while, with name gas stations charging only a few cents more than the discounters and only a few cents difference between Delosa (where oil is generally cheap) and Deseret (where it is not so cheap). That’s usually indicative of gas prices running up against an artificial barrier (in this case, the $3 mark. The same thing happened when it hit $2). Gas stations by and large make their money through the convenience stores they’re attached to, and I am guessing that some of them were willing to lose a bit on gas to get people to come in to their stores. Or at least willing to forego much of any profit.

But that’s over now.

I believe my earlier position to be sound, but the situation has changed. The Washington Times outlines it all quite nicely. With the uncertainty gone, the prices should have dropped almost as quickly as they rose. The damage was less than feared (and fear was one of the big things driving the prices upward).

Even our oil-friendly Congress are getting a bit anxious about the prices, and concerns about record profits by the oil companies. I try to avoid getting too political on this site, but it seems to me some assurances of cooperation might have been a good thing to get before the Energy Bill that they got through that was very, very generous to those they are worried about being associated with.

This guy reminded me of something. He’s talking about those annoying “I ______ and I vote!” with the blank filled by some cause that the person fervently buys in to.

I’m not much of a bumper sticker person. I’ve got a Southern Tech Alumni sticker on my window, but that’s about it. I do not have nor will I likely ever have anything remotely political on my car. I generally believe that a philosophy that can fit on a bumper-sticker is poorly developed. To each their own, though.

Anyway, what I think would be cool would be to have one of those “And I Vote” bumper stickers with some absolutely stupid belief or detail. “I was abducted by aliens and I vote!” or “I believe in cannibalism and I vote!” or just “I can’t dress myself and I vote!”

It would be kind of fun… for about two minutes.