Making Us All Look Good

I was channel surfing before heading to bed last night and when I finally found a channel that wasn't airing a commercial as I worked the remote up through the numbers I found a network that I didn't know existed: truTV. A show aptly named SPEEDERS was on, and just when I was about to let it go to look for something better they ran a teaser that made me stick around while they ran their own commercials.

What made me sit through their pukey ads was this - in the teaser a numbskull with his left arm full of packages was being pulled over by an officer in a squad car. While the commercials droned on I got the camera ready and sat down like a hunter in the woods where he'd been baiting game during the off season and now was waiting for them to appear in his gun sight.

I don't remember what state this happened in but the officer explained on camera that a scooter there doesn't need a tag, doesn't need to be insured, and that even unlicensed drivers can ride them. While he pulled the jerk over, it seemed that there was nothing much he could do except explain to the scooterist that what he was doing was unsafe.

Every time the scooterist opened his mouth something more inane than the statement before it came spewing out. He seemed to be at the rock bottom of the food chain and I shuddered in thinking of what he might be making viewers think of scooterists in general.

There were even more packages on the scooter than could be seen from behind. Apparently the guy had three or four more of them tucked between his legs. In the end the officer loaded the packages into his patrol car and drove them to the post office where the scooterist met him.

In the scooter forums one often finds laments when a state like this one starts to require scooters and their operators to be licensed and insured, but after seeing this episode of SPEEDERS I'm all for it. Face it. Most of us with scooters also drive cars and you know who'd be liable if an idiot like this one ended up on the ground because he got off balance and brushed against one of our bumpers.

Operating a motor vehicle of any sort is a privilege, not a right. At the bare minimum maybe an I.Q. test should need to be passed within the average range before one can take to the roads on anything, even a bicycle. I think that would help to make funding mass transit self sufficient.