Vehicular litterbugs & other car-related nuisances

Nothing pisses me off more than walking out to my car after a long day of work only to find an advertisement tucked under my windshield wiper (‘cept maybe Kevin Costner movies and the Sprint corporation). I hate those flyer for about a million reasons. I think they should be illegal because they bring more harm than good. When I was a kid, my folks used to make me pass out flyers for their failing restaurant, but that has nothing to do with it.

I’m not a tree-hugging hippie–I like to shower and don’t smoke pot. But I despise waste. And to me, windshield wiper flyers are nothing but waste. They’re unsolicited ads that can’t possibly be efficient. How many windshield wiper flyers have influence your shopping habits? Suppose one in a hundred actually get customers into a store, it’s still terribly ineffective–and I don’t even think that many actually work.

Even more distressing, most folks who find an ad placed on their car don’t have trash cans with them. You can always tell when someone was placing ads on cars because the parking lot is littered with discarded flyers. Most folks simply take the unwanted ad off their car and toss it on the ground. I don’t blame the car owners for that: the solicitors are distributing the unwanted litter.

And maybe this is just me, but I find those flyers to be incredibly intrusive. I don’t want what they’re selling. Whether it be the path to Jesus or a new pizzeria, I don’t care. My car is my business. If I wanna go to your establishment, I’ll find it.

Plus, it’s just a hassle for me. I never asked for the ad. I never gave anyone permission to put anything on my car. Yet I’m the one who has to lift my wind shield wiper up. I’m the one who has to remove the flyer. I’m the one who has to find a trashcan to throw it away. All in all, it’s more work for me…for something I never asked for or wanted in the first place.

I don’t even bother looking at the ads–I’m not going to participate in their unwanted advertising. In fact, I’ve gone as far as not even removing it from my car. I’ll drive around for a couple days and wait for it to fly off. I know it seems silly, but I feel like it’s my little protest to auto advertising. The only way any advertisement is effective is if you pay attention to it. If I ignore the ad, I’ll feel like I’m doing my part to make it stop–even if it takes three weeks to fly off my car. Call me obtuse. Call me stubborn. I don’t care—at least I can feel like I’m doing something by not doing anything.

While I’m preaching, I also hate freeway billboards: I think they should be illegal. The purpose of billboards are to grab your attention to sell a product. In order to stand out from all the other advertisements we’re subjected to in the day, billboards hafta be catchy, enticing, and sometimes even a little flashy–all of which add up to distracting the driver.

There have been way too many times in my life I almost got into a car accident because I got distracted/mesmerized by a billboard. Sometimes it’s an ad slogan I can’t figure out. Sometimes it’s something that I find captivating. Or maybe I’m just drawn to anything with a blinking light. In any case, the billboards took my focus away from driving and I wasn’t paying attention.

I know I can’t be the only person this has ever happened to. Of course not: that’s why billboards are there–to get your attention. I’d be real curious to discover how many billboards are responsible for vehicle collisions. Unfortunately, most drivers would never admit to being distracted (or that feeble minded). The American way is to blame the other motorist. But I’d be willing to bet that drivers are distracted by billboards. Somebody should do some research about that. Not me–I’m lazy and don’t have the time. But someone else should.