upvote
He's calling the adventure "The World Needs More Whimsy Grand Tour." Sometimes it's ok to have fun. Nobody drives a big banana thinking they're not going to attract attention. It's part of the fun and whimsy.
reply
You have a point, but stopping a car as a police officer is a much less consensual interaction than having a quick chat at a red light. It's a very forceful way to have a friendly conversation.
reply
squints have you met any police?
reply
Yeah have you? They carry guns and are prone to violence in the US at rates disproportionate to the rest of the population, and that's just against their own loved ones.

> Two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence, (1, 2) in contrast to 10% of families in the general population.(3) A third study of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24% (4), indicating that domestic violence is 2­4 times more common among police families than American families in general.

https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2017R1/Downloads/Comm...

reply
Duh? Maybe re-read my comment?
reply
It doesn't say anything, it's literally a question.
reply
Amazing
reply
This is a good moment to pay attention to the Hacker News guidelines. This is not a place for this sort of comments.
reply
Don’t threaten me with a good time. I keep asking dang to ban me; no luck so far.

Looks like you’ve wasted about the same amount of time here as I have!

reply
Cops pulling someone over is never "fun and whimsy".
reply
I had a car that was pulled over dozens of times so the cops could take pics with it. Most of the time it was cool. Two times pissed me off: one time a cop had just pulled me over on the highway for a pic, okay cool, I pull back onto the highway and went maybe a mile before I was pulled over a second time by his buddy.

Other time I was just rolling into LA for a comic con, it was 3am and I'd been driving for about 14 hours. I was minutes from my hotel and of course here come the cops. I had to make a big detour to find somewhere safe to stop. The next day someone said "Oh, I think my buddy stopped you last night!" so I had him call his cop friend and was able to safely cuss him out from a distance :)

On the other hand I had one awesome experience with the cops in Oxnard when we put my car on the train tracks and accidentally set off the barriers and caused an enormous tailback in each direction at the railroad crossing. I thought the cops would be mad, but they were hilarious and promised to figure out the traffic snafu for us.

https://imgur.com/a/pBcLKqz (we didn't realize the barriers automatically detect stuff on the tracks)

Then an hour later when I was driving the car down the tracks again another cop walked up on me all mad and told me he was writing me a ticket for driving on the tracks, but when I read the ticket he'd written it out to Marty McFly and had a great laugh about it. Here's a pic of him booking Marty haha

https://imgur.com/a/vm0ud5y

reply
That's an awesome story! deserves to be more than a hacker news comment with imgur links
reply
Not saying I enjoy it. Not saying that I’d drive a giant banana either. But if I saw a police car, pull over a giant banana, I would think it was hilarious. That’s the definition of whimsy.
reply
Being pulled over is a command under threat of violence, by an agent of the state empowered to use deadly force, who is mostly insulated from the consequences of poor judgement or abuses of power. Being pulled over by cops cannot be whimsical.
reply
Thankfully, not everyone thinks like you do. I have zero problems with police and never have. I trust you’ve heard of different opinions?
reply
We can hold differing opinions about whether state sanctioned threats of deadly force are whimsical, but that is unarguably what being pulled over is.
reply
The use of deadly force on unarmed civilians is a fact in the US, not an opinion.
reply
Please tell me which "differing opinion" excuses rampant theft through Civil Asset Forfeiture which cops don't seem to have a problem with?
reply
Whimsy should be consensual and not involve the threat of violence.
reply