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Smart Car Tipping Trending In San Francisco
First time accepted submitter hackajar1 (1700328) writes "Is it a crime of opportunity or another page in the current chapter of Anti-Tech movement in San Francisco? Either way, the new crime trending in San Francisco invloves tipping Smart Cars on their side. While they only take 3 — 4 people to tip, this could just be kids simply having "fun" at the very expensive cost of car owners. Alternatively it could be part of a larger movement in San Francisco against anyone associated with HiTech, which is largely being blamed for neighborhood gentrification and rent spikes in recent years." This sounds like a story that would catch the ears of veteran reporter Roland Hedley.
A lot of things are trending if they only have to happen 1 time for that to be said.
This wouldn't even be an issue if the damn local news didn't report on it. 3 cars?! A night of drunken stupidity. Now it's going to be trending.
I'm Peggy.
Dear poster .. read your own post. At the expensive cost of the car owners? That means these assholes caused damage ... what? damage? Then yes, it is OBVIOUSLY a crime.
A little thinking goes a long way.
Considering a Smart Car is like 12k, gets good gas mileage, and is easy to street park in the city how in the world does this equal HiTech? HiTech workers definitely make enough to afford more spacious and expensive cars along with garage parking.
Is this another example of terrible Slashdot editorial comments distorting original story to "make news" as this alternative theory is not in the original source?
http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/...
It takes more than two people to tip over a smart? Guess they must be little girly men.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
This actually was a fad in Europe for a while - of course it moved to San Francisco.
reading the headline, i thought the story was going to be about people dropping change and dollar bills on smart cars as a way to, i dunno, show their support for eco-friendliness?
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
Is like beating up a blind guy to fight against discrimination against the handicapped. It's fun.
First link, second photo.
HA!
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Owners in the area need to put these in their cars:
http://i1.squidoocdn.com/resiz...
Vandalism and pranks are not new. And this particular form (tipping/inverting/moving_to_weird_places any unusually small/light car) is something I've heard of going back to at least as early as the 1960s. Your grandparents were doing this when they were kids (assuming your grandparents were assholes).
Next on slashdot: someone spraypaints the screen on someone else's phone! It's all part of the new Anti-Tech Movement!! You are totally a square and working for The Man and thinking-inside-the-box and not-cool, if you aren't doing this yet. You probably don't even have an onion on your belt, lamer. Get with it, man!
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
There is a shortage of cattle in San Francisco. These might be the only alternative.
I've seen discussions of having electric cars play an audio track of engine noise to reduce accidents with pedestrians.
And now, when the kids tip it, it will go "MooOOOOOOooo"
Gentrification to me means turning filthy, crime ridden ghettos into clean and safe neighborhoods. I haven't heard any reasonable argument against it that doesn't include hidden racism or prejudice against poor people being morons who like living in dirt.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Speaking as someone who when they first saw a smart car said to themselves "I wonder if i run out into the road and shoulder check it if it would tip over" I don't think the vandals in question are doing this to make a statement. I think its most likely that they had a similar thought combined it with youthful enthusiasm and the great decision making power that only a group of teenagers can have.
obligatory XKCD
We didn't tip them. We put them between poles so the had to do a 300 point turn to get out.
We also came back and removed it when the teacher went inside to call a tow truck.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I think several points are off. For instance, if I look at new cars on cars.com around me, the cheapest fit is $14,370. If I check out the cheapest Civic, it's $18,980. That's 25% less than an already cheap car. The Smart gets 34/38 mpg; the Civic gets 28/36. The Civic is a manual, the Smart an automatic transmission. (At least in the US, many people would consider a manual a deal-killer.) The Civic is bigger, but it's also far from big, and how big would you really need for a daily commute for instance? And the smaller size has a big benefit for people who do a lot of street parking: imagine being able to fit places where almost no one else can, or having a much easier time getting into tight spots.
The thing is that no car is going to be perfect -- there are always compromises in terms of cost, size, performance, safety, etc. But I think the Smart car fills a niche that would be pretty useful. I was just looking at cars earlier today because there's a hopefully-very-small chance I'll need a new one like, now, and if all I did was drive around town to and from work and errands and stuff, I'd seriously consider getting one.
Detroit was once a very nice city. This exact sort of behavior made Detroit the smoking crater it is today. If you drive everyone with money away from your tax base, there won't be anything left. There was a deliberate effort in Detroit's case, and while it took a decade or more to drive out the middle class, and another couple decades to run out of money, it was inevitable from just a few years in.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Excessive gentrification raises housing costs to the point where only wealthy professionals
can afford to live there. There are several disadvantages to this: first, everyone works,
no stay-at-home moms, so there are no eyes on the street during the days. Second,
anyone without a professional-level income can't stay in the neighborhood. Like my
kids music teacher.
Part of your assumption is that gentrification starts with filthy crime-ridden gettoes. It
can also destroy stable, safe, lower- and middle-class neighborhoods. Like mine.
Property taxes and rent rising pushes out renters who have lived there a long time. People like their neighbors and work to establish a safe community only to be priced out of it BECAUSE they made it safe. They end up having to move to a more distant neighborhood which is once again unsafe. Now they have to commute further to work and have less money from the move. Moving to a new apartment generally means paying higher rent in cities if you keep the same level of nice neighborhood, so it's likely a step down.
I mean, it sounds reasonable to me. Not compelling enough for me to not move to a gentrifying area (which I have before and don't feel particularly guilty about), but I understand why it upsets some people legitimately. I do think a lot of it is simply entitlement or making excuses for envy. Obviously tipping over someone's car isn't a rational way of trying to keep prices for long-term residents down: people who have already moved in are just going to hire more cops which will increase taxes which will hasten the poorer residents being priced out. No, those idiots were either simply troublemakers or at best angry because they didn't have a nice shiny smartcar while their neighbors did.
" This exact sort of behavior made Detroit the smoking crater it is today. " The decline of American manufacturing is felt in manufacturing centers.
You're no economist. You're no sociologist. You're no historian.
But what caused the decline in American manufacturing? I can point to certain self-destructive behaviors on both the management and labor side that drove the Detroit auto sector into the ground. Heck, I can even point to the city management and city unions for their fair share. Did they face some hard external challenges? Yes, they did – but the ultimate responsibility of their failure lays in Detroit.
And I can say this as a trained economist and historian. (armature status today, but still.)
One more piece of evidence that San Francisco needs to be nuked to a smoking crater.
Some people there apparently don't like Smart Cars (or maybe those who drive them), and that's a reason to nuke the city and start over? Would you rebuild SF to make it more friendly to Smart Cars?
Or maybe gentrification runs out the poor, hard working population along with the poor, criminal riff-raff.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
I wonder if it's third worlders... jealous of white man's technology...
Oh, wait... that was 'racist' of me, wasn't it. Pointing out the truth - that non-whites hate their own kind, and will do anything to live around 'racists' - sorry - whites...
Well, being factually incorrect in racial claims does make you appear racist. The "third world immigrants" in Silly Valley are upper middle class, for the most part. There's a reason that the average income of Hindus is far and away the highest of any religion in America (well into 6 figures).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Congratulations. You're one of today's lucky 10,000.
We have crime. The building are run down, we need work.
OK, here comes business
WHAT? they're bringing in new business, reducing crime., and bringing in jobs?
the EVIL gentrifying BASTARDS!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
4 cars in a fairly small radius tipped on one evening != a trend
it was a single group of probably young men, deciding to do something stupid.
Now if it continues to happen over a larger area, for some time, then it will become a trend.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
3) Someones insurance rates are going up
Anyone know how much damage a Smart Car can be expected to suffer when tipped like this?
(I'd imagine some crush/scratch damage to whatever body panel(s) are now supporting the car's weight, plus my co-worker says that various fluids are likely to drip out into places they aren't supposed to be)
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
> This exact sort of behavior made Detroit the smoking crater it is today.
Not really.
There may be some parallels, but Detroit was mostly a different situation. The Detroit lower classes did not actively try to push away those with money the way the SF leaches are trying to do. In Detroit, there were decades of major race relation problems that culminated in black riots in the downtown core. This scared the white middle-class who pretty much all picked up and moved to the suburbs willingly.
In SF, the complainers are a small group of mostly young, white folks who are bored, unemployed and looking for handouts to sustain their leach-like lifestyle.
No – those are challenges to Detroit. They might explain why Detroit is no longer the undisturbed, preeminent auto manufacturing center of the world. The rest of the world got better. Those are some of the external factors that I was eluding too. It does not explain the failure to evolve and adapt. The failure to respond is an internal factor that lies on the doorstep of Detroit and the Big 3 - these factors they did have control over.
I feel sorry for the poor person who is simply trying to reduce her carbon foot print, live a physically smaller foot print and have economical transportation in a large city. The people tipping car a simply juvenile regardless of their age.
"But what caused the decline in American manufacturing?"
Unadulterated GREED.
Allowing rich assholes to move manufacturing offshore for free dramatically increases profit margins. The ones that stayed here, those are not assholes.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
So, the German and Japanese bosses who move manufacturing plants to the US are assholes? If that is true, since they are exploiting lower American wages for their unadulterated greed, how come they are not failing like American manufactures?
What caused the decline of the big three was bad management, not necessarily GREED. First they were too slow to take foreign competition in the U.S. market seriously. Then later on, they were too focused on the American market to make the cars they needed to compete in foreign markets. Especially the ones where the cost of gas is higher, and the roads are smaller... which is most countries.
Exactly, I did this in SimCity and eventually a volcano erupted in what was otherwise a geologically stable area. And simulations don't lie.
... in my [favored "grassroots" propaganda organization], the die-hard ["other" group of political extremists] seem to be rooting for and seem to be very satisfied by the friction between the masses of [Group A] and [Group B].
Universalized that for ya.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese