When Monster Trucks Go Bad
Yesterday near Chicago:
“A monster truck plowed into a crowd of spectators during a demonstration in DeKalb Thursday. Ten people were hurt including a mother and child. Investigators are still trying to figure out what caused the accident.”
What happened?  Uh, a bunch of people lined a side street next to a Napa auto parts store to watch a Napa-sponsored monster truck drive over some flattened cars as a form of entertainment. How perverted is it that parents take young children out to see the power of these trucks? I doubt these same parents take their kids to see pedestrians on a city sidewalk or commuters using rail transit. A once strictly utility vehicle (the pickup) has become something different in modern culture.
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I think the men who drive trucks with oversized tires are simply overcompensating for um, shortcomings, in other areas.
News Reports:
“I doubt these same parents take their kids to see pedestrians on a city sidewalk or commuters using rail transit.”
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHA!!!!!!!
“I doubt these same parents take their kids to see pedestrians on a city sidewalk or commuters using rail transit.â€
Wow you really need to come down and check out reality once and a while. Does everything that happens in the world have to be filtered through the lens of urban transportation patterns? What if we had a monster moped powered by biodesiel that raced around a miniature version of a new urbanist downtown St. Louis. Instead of crushing cars it would crush big box developments and any house with a garage in the front. Would you take your kids to see that?
I think the lessoned to be learned here has absolutely nothing to do with urban design and everything to do with basic life-safety requirements while operating a giant truck.
-Brent
now here’s a thread with potential. I suppose I should make the obvious honrable boring point that people will always be fascinated by anything loud, shiny, fast, powerful, and flashy. Whether it’s monster trucks, nascar, firetrucks, construction equipment, locomotives, fireworks, or fighter jets people will always stop to look, espicially the kids. You can NOT change human nature.
Brent you forgot your tags.
I’m with WWSPD-that’s hilarious (the pedestrian spectators). Of course, living on South Grand, my kids get to participate in the activity while they watch. Team sports, as it were.
Easy there, Steve. If you start portraying everything as a transportation and urban planning issue when it’s clearly a “dumb people get hurt” story you’ll lose credibility. Not everything is part of the problems you seem hellbent to resolve. This and many other things are not related in a substantive way to the issues you discuss on your excellent blog. You should probably leave these stories to Fark unless you want to express some of your own dark humor. Just my $.02 but you have to remember how easy it is to lose all the political credibility you have gained from intelligent criticism can be easily lost if you give your opponents the chance to call you a “quack” or zealot.
Steve, you are always welcome to join me at Gateway Raceway next month for Midnight Madness open drag racing and drifting. I am sure you would find it perverted that people watch such overpowered and dangerous vehicles.
What about cross dressers or drag shows? The conventional usage of womens lingerie was hijacked by gay men and turned into their own form of art and entertainment. What used to be used for women can now be used by men, and is accepted, just as trucks were once utility vehicles and some are how heavily modified for entertainment.
Granted I have never heard of injury at drag, but why are you devoting a post to rant against people who like Monster Trucks? Granted you hate cars, and I do as well, but getting people to dislike Monster Trucks because their are dangerous is rather unlikely. Human beings like danger and horsepower.
Steve’s offf the mark on this? Maybe, but it is indicative of how poor government decision making impact the general public and then there is an absurdity issue. PERMIT ISSUED (the NAPA store had obtained all the correct permits for the event) City Manager Biernacki said “This is the first time we ever had this particular event here.†COMMUTER TRAFFIC STOPPED:DeKalb police Sgt. Jason Leverton said train traffic on the railroad was shut down for about an hour and a section of East Lincoln Highway was closed for about half that. ABSURDITY: The worshipping of horsepower and the fact that these monsters consume over seven gallons of fuel per mile (some per minute) is acceptable? Comical? Great role models wouldn’t you say?
Hey, through these lenses it seems as though NASCAR could set the precedent in lowering vehicle emissions. Likeley the best techs & engineers available, right?
The ability to create does not give the right to be wreckless with the creation.
Steve, one, I agree with your original conclusion. Two, I’d put this more in the realm of “natural selection at work”. And three, I’ll repeat a well-worn joke:
Q: “What’s the last thing a redneck says before he (or she) dies?”
A: “Hey, watch this!”
‘nuf said.
I’m not going to dignify this idiotic post with a response.