OCTOBER 28, 2020 – To improve your driving, I suggest you slap a presidential campaign sticker onto your vehicle’s back window. Personally, I’ve found that our “BIDEN/HARRIS” sticker has made me a much more careful, courteous, and lawful driver. Whether the car behind me is Democratic (say, a Prius) or Trumpian (a Ford F-150 with American flags flapping away atop lengths of pvc sticking up from the cargo box), I like to project a positive connection between exemplary driving and the Democratic candidates for president and vice president.
Conversely, I don’t want to do something dumb—turn without signaling; cut someone off; drive 50 in a 35 zone—and have a Trumpian, in particular, associate candidates for decency with indecent driving.
Based on my general observations, vehicular campaign stickers are less prevalent than they were a generation ago, despite the fact that today’s versions are much more easily removed when the show is over. I might be getting too far out over my skis, but I’d say this trend away from driving around with your political affiliation on your sleeve—I mean window or bumper—has been accompanied by a corresponding decline in driving etiquette. Arguably, some of the bad driving can be attributable to sunroofs, heated seats, cell phone calls, fast food meals, and other distractions inside cars. I’m betting, however, that there’s some kind of association between fewer candidate stickers and more bad drivers.
On the other hand . . . it might be that broadcasting your political affiliation produces a negative effect on the part of drivers with opposing political views. I’m thinking of the guy in the red pickup flying twin Trump flags off the back of his rig plus a big TRUMP sign across his back window. As he passed our car with our little ol‘ 4 x 6-inch Biden/Harris sticker, he stomped on the gas to shake his muffler and rattle our cage. “Was that really necessary?” I said through a heavily tinted window to his unhearing ears. But then he raced ahead as if by doing so his candidate would finish ahead of ours. To my ears it sounded a lot like unmasked people at a Trump rally shouting, “Lock her up!”—no longer referring to Hillary Clinton but to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (not her would-be kidnappers!).
The Trumpian’s antics reminded me of the time driving in rural Wisconsin in early 2017—with a leftover CLINTON sticker on our back window—when a driver roared past and the woman in the passenger’s seat glared at us as she made the “Loser” sign with her thumb and index finger over her angry, intolerant forehead.
Perhaps I should conduct a balanced test of my theory by slapping a TRUMP/PENCE sticker on our car to see if a Prius driver with a BIDEN/HARRIS sticker might try to kick road salt into our windshield. That experiment, however, would face two problems: 1. My wife wouldn’t allow it; and 2. The volume of fossil fuel I’d need to consume to prove a negative.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
