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Hello Mercedes: Looking at that report through the eyes of someone who is not a US citizen and does not live in the US, I think it is really nothing more than just a summary of the travel advisories respecting travel to the US that one would find published by the Governments of Canada, or the UK, or France, etc.
Whenever you read a government travel advisory issued by any government, you will find all sorts of cautions in them. Heck, go look at a US or Canadian government travel advisory about (for example) Switzerland. Despite Switzerland being one of the safest & calmest countries in the world, after reading the travel advisories, you would think it’s not safe to step outside your front door.
My money is on Hyundai/Kia/Genesis after all their employees got swept up in the immigration raids. All the references to employees, y’know?
And radicalized elements? So they’ve heard of Autopians, then.
“If I don’t finish this guillotine made out of busted Jeep spares by Saturday, I’m gonna lose the shop!!”
I work with foreign nationals on a fairly regular basis. Based on the sorts of things mentioned, I would guess an Asian brand, probably Korean. It jives with some of the things they’ve asked questions about. I’m going to guess Hyundai for an N product?
Enjoy Vermont! There are some great driving roads up there.
Given that desert is one of the risks, and German tourists have a habit of untimely ends in Death Valley, I’m going with BMW.
The Hunt for the Death Valley Germans[1] is an incredible saga and worth reading IMO. (And is probably the incident you’re alluding to.)
[1] https://otherhand.org/home-page/search-and-rescue/the-hunt-for-the-death-valley-germans/
Germans are known to take serious risks in deserts around the world.
The significance of the Death Valley Germans is that they weren’t being careless.
After you are done going down the Death Valley Germans rabbit hole, check out another post on the same site about him sinking a Toyota Pickup in the winter of 94/95 and the series of small disasters during the rescue.
https://otherhand.org/home-page/area-51-and-other-strange-places/bluefire-main/bluefire/the-hunt-for-928/honey-i-sunk-the-truck/
Tom’s writing was a contributor to my decision to join my local Search and Rescue team.
(Which I highly recommend to everyone who might be so inclined.)
Feels like you’re going to drive either the Genesis GV90 or the Jaguar I-Type. If I was a betting man, it would be the GV-90.
It was Fiat.
When they talked about “Risk Of ‘Internal Subversive Actions Perpetrated By Politicized And Radicalized Groups” they were talking about Chicago Style Pizza and how it is an afront to real pizza.
Are we talking Chicago deep dish or tavern style? I love both of them for their own reasons.
Deep dish. It’s the original sin to them.
Shots fired! …Ugh, you’re probably right. It’s a pizza-flavored casserole, right?
Yep. But I can’t complain. Buddy’s Pizza in Detroit is very similar.
I’m a sucker for Lou Malnati’s. I used to practically inhale that stuff when my body cared a little less about what I ate. lol
Sounds like the perfect place for a date night.
Ever have Edwardo’s, while it was still around as a thing? They tried to sucker you with “all natural” and “whole grain” but yeah, that’s not going to make the difference with this stuff.
Lou Malnati’s thin crust tavern style.
If anyone hasn’t seen it, Jon Stewart’s rant about Chicago Pizza is art:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzXIpp59eoU
Agree!
Now I desperately need to get back to the Chicago burbs for some Barnaby’s thin crust.
Spring bucket list!
New Haven pizza is the best pizza.
And I say that as a New Yorker.
Pepe or Sally’s? I loved the white clam. Ex-New Yorker.
Sally’s is where I always went with my New Haven friends, it’s been about 30 years, but all the friends that opened pizza places in NYC starting in the 1980s were trained at and copied Pepe.
Crispy crust!
I thought Mystic Pizza was pretty good.
I really liked visting Chicago when I was there. Lots of good food! I’m even down to clown with their somewhat unconventional hot dog toppings.
Deep dish freaking sucks.
“Deep dish freaking sucks.”
If it’s truly Chicago deep dish and could talk , it’d say: “Bite me.”
And it would be thick enough to have a mouth and googly-eyes on the side of it, like a food muppet being beaten up by the Swedish Chef.
Detroit still makes the best Coney’s though.
Shh. Any city that gave us Malört is not to be messed with.
Gotta try that one.
Public restrooms in Vermont, once you’re away from the box stores and such, tend to be single occupancy. One-holers. These, by law, must be gender neutral even if there’s 2 of them side by side.
I once drove straight to the Walmart in Saratoga because I couldn’t find a public restroom in Vermont when I needed one. I also maybe wasn’t thinking clearly because it was an emergency
This… doesnt seem close? Why not troy or stillwater?
That seems reallllllll far.
Even then, Glens Falls has multiple big box stores 20 miles closer to the typical Vermont border crossing if using Route 4.
Why would any bathroom with a door and single toilet not be gender neutral?
Oddly, OSHA recently decided to make a big issue of that at one of my customers’ plants, so they did have to designate one of their single-use bathrooms as women only. I don’t know if that’s a real requirement or something their inspector made up, but, either way, they weren’t fighting it.
The factory owner also told me the inspector made derogatory comments about them having a female quality control supervisor, which seemed unprofessional and unnecessary, so it might have been more of a problem with him, specifically
As Defenestrator said below – this is likely building code related. 100 years ago building codes added requirements for separate male and female restrooms because at the time many buildings simply did not have facilities for women because they were expected to be at home.
Sometimes local laws and codes can be picky about it. Usually not bad intentions so much as older laws that attempt to make sure nobody discriminates by only having a men’s room and not a women’s room.
Yes, I forgot about 100 year old building codes that haven’t kept up with the times.
This is really only a thing in the USA because for some reason we put up with bathroom stalls with giant gaps instead of individual rooms with real doors. That said where I live multi-stall unisex bathrooms are becoming more and more common – with real walls.
Pretty common in other parts of the world I’ve visited as well although some of the ones in Europe have a room at the end with urinals. I’ve also had a female janitor literally mop around my feet while I was at a urinal.
While we’re on the subject – urinal partitions, why aren’t those universal?
And why can’t we have partitions in general that are actually private? The stalls I get in more civilized countries that don’t have the weird gaps that could let strangers watch me poop are awesome. Give us that.
The short answer is that real dividers cost more combined with the fact that we accept them.
The answer’s I’ve heard that seem like a stretch is our stalls with giant gaps allow people to see if someone has overdosed in a stall.
For real. One-holers rock. I don’t want to wait for someone farting around when there’s a perfectly usable, private bathroom that’s open. More of them, please.
I’d say Volvo is the sender of this info. But more importantly, driving in Virginia is not a risk as far as speeding goes, if you are in the top of the state, or driving anywhere down the western half of the state, which I do regularly. Since covid hit, there just doesn’t seem to be much police presence in most places. Of course, you still have to observe what the other traffic is doing and just pace yourself with them.
i once was blasting down 95 in va on my way to myrtle beach in my government vehicle, and right in Jarrat/Emporia, the local boys were posted up on an overpass and probably clocked me doing 90. They zoomed up behind us, and i could see him looking at the federal plate, then he shrugged, zoomed around me, and pulled someone else over. Patricks article came out a couple weeks later, and I never sped in VA again.
Driving in a pack of other cars with my Wisconsin license plate at 75. Guess who got the ticket in Virginia…and dang if they didn’t have WI reciprocity. Grr $180.00 like 6 years ago so in 2026 dollars about $3,500?
The Virginia speeding bit is because at some point Patrick got sent to county jail for what in any other state would be a nasty ticket.
Agree to disagree on Virginia, particularly on the western part. For one they are the only state left that bans radar detectors, why even bother when everyone has Waze now? But personall my last speeding ticket ever was when we accidentally got off 81 north an exit too early due to early bad GPS. While figuring out whether to turn around and get back on the highway or stay on a fairly strandard divided road following traffic, we got targeted for our out of state plates and hit with going 15 over in a 35, which there’s no way as we were behind several other cars, but Bubba had to meet his quota.
Also the Fancy Gap speed limit signs on I-77 can be electronically changed due to foggy conditions, but curious that driving up on a labor day weekend with clear sunny skies they were set to 50mph with waves of cruisers waiting on the sides of the road right after the border there.
I will avoid driving through Virginia like the plague, and I’m in North Carolina with family up there and beyond.
Vermont terror threats are real. We’re coming into maple syrup season. The Quebec maple cartel needs to keep them pesky Vermonters in check.
Plus they’re bitter at the way Montpelier is pronounced down there.
And don’t forget about the Ben and Jerry’s gang…
Saps been runnin a week already. The Green Mountain Boys are in heat.
Canadians are serious about their maple syrup! Remember the syrup heist?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Canadian_Maple_Syrup_Heist
I would like to broker a peace deal between these two fine lands by personally offering to chug maple syrup from both sides of the border.
As someone who has travelled fairly extensively across South East Asia, Europe and the United States, I’m sorry to say the most unsafe I’ve ever felt was during a brief visit to Chicago. During the day everything was fine, but at night our group was harassed by several people including a drug-effected man who threatened to call “his cousins” after a girl in my group tried to move away from him. The second-most unsafe I’ve felt was in downtown LA when I was walking to the cinema and unhoused people were hurling abuse at me.
The overall vibe I got from the unhoused people in the US was unfettered and explosive anger, understandable given their seemingly hopeless situation in a country with no proper safety net. I saw far more unhoused people in the US than in most other “first-world” countries I’ve visited, and I think that contributes to the general feeling of unease I felt in many of the cities. Funnily enough, I didn’t feel particularly unsafe in New Orleans, a city that I loved for its jazzy nightlife and laid-back character.
I think this might be a case of Americans not realising just how bad things have become in some parts of their country. And frankly I think it’s why the political situation is so messed up at the moment, because a huge swathe of these people are being ignored and it just seems to be making everyone angry.
I hope things improve for you soon, as it’s a remarkable country to visit, and the majority of people I met were great.
Also, a note on deserts: 100% can be as dangerous as any natural disaster. If you’re driving through a desert at 45 degrees C, you break down and you have no water, you’re in a lot of trouble.
I’m sorry that happened to you! Sadly, I feel like most Americans have a story like that, too. I think mine would be that beach in Florida, outside of Tampa. At one point, he had me cornered, and my only choice was to fight him or go swimming deep in the ocean off the beach. He just waited there on the beach, doing things I’m unwilling to speak of in this comments section.
My savior was a couple who dropped their beach chairs down next to the creeper. The guy of the couple was a pretty built dude, so I exited the water and told him about the creeper. He chased the creeper off long enough for me to get away.
There was another time when a mob of drunken people from a bar in Wisconsin Dells tried to chase me down. Luckily, a cop saw it happen, and he stopped the mob. Though he didn’t do anything about the mob action, just told them to go back in the bar and leave me alone.
Fuck I’m sorry that happened to you. I never realized “Nobody 2” was a documentary…
Geez, those were some scary experiences!! D:
🙁
I wouldn’t say there’s no safety net, we have welfare systems, shelters, and other programs, but the system gets really overwhelmed in places like California and Detroit.
I will say as you get farther from the big cities America is fairly cordial, so long as you’re not too foreign, and generally white, and drive a Ford or other US make, and don’t have like a pride or coexist bumper sticker…yeah America’s totally fine.
I’m reminded of that Top Gear episode where they drove through Alabama, that was seriously for real, there are certain parts of the country you do not want to try the patience of. As another fer instance, Footloose was based on actual events, there was a time not too long ago, where a town wouldn’t let kids have a school dance due to the overly religious population, that’s crazy in the land of the free here.
> I wouldn’t say there’s no safety net, we have welfare systems, shelters, and other programs
That’s a great case of being technically correct 😀
It doesn’t help that the majority of unhoused people are persons who are self-medicating with street drugs; products of unclear origins or strengths. Such persons tend to be angry(er) at the world in general. Unfortunately, care (as most people perceive it) is hard to administer due to the unhoused not wanting to clean up their act. Some think they are helping with “clean needle” programs, free food and other assistance. Sadly they are easing these people into death with their sympathies.
> this might be a case of Americans not realising just how bad things have become in some parts of their country
Propaganda “news” and politicians have indoctrinated millions that homelessness is a liberal city disease and generated a sort of Schrödinger approach to homeless: care a lot if it lets you lash out at your political adversaries, and completely ignore it and its sufferers in your own political pocket.
BYD? They would certainly have no love for America.
Yeesh. I’m sorry you had to receive/read that in the first place.
So, the one thing we know for sure is that it isn’t Skoda as otherwise Matt would be writing this piece, and can probably assume they’re not a North American company. My guess is also Ki-Yund-Esis, but it would be funny if it was Stellantis.
SPAM Motors.
My guess? General Motors.
Interesting I lived in Vermont it has to be the most liberal state I ever lived in including California, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, this is not a verified event. But yeah let’s everyone pretend it is real.
Vermont also has probably the highest number of Golden Retrievers and Labradors wearing bandanas per capita of any place in the country. Maybe the world
Happy doggo plus bandana is an automatic squee over here. Even when they bound up and interrupt to get all the pets.
I had been following a pair of sisters who defected from North Korea to South Korea and visited the US, one of them for the first time. They seemed to feel they needed to run back to their hotel before the sunset even while being surprised at how nice Americans were in opposition to their NK education. So, my guess is Hyukia.
On VT, NE has been getting a lot of snow this year and VT has an official policy of shitty road cleanup and they’re very low on salt. There are also a lot of elevation changes. Taller sidewall Blizzaks and an LSD in my GR86 usually do pretty well, but have been defeated by a 15-20% grade on a winding tertiary road that’s poorly plowed so that the previous snow becomes compacted into ice under a layer of new snow (where is all this low end torque when I actually want it?!). I ended up abandoning the hill and got a ride from a guy I work with who has a Crosstrek* and that spun all four Altimax snow tires a bit making it up the hill to the job site, no worry about making it, but some of the roads are not good. I’m sure the automaker has a route planned, but FYI in case you stray off the paths.
*VT is like the old NES Rad Racer where each stage had only a single model of car to race against and that car is the Crosstrek. At one point, I was surrounded by 5 of them on the freeway and no other cars.
With the Outback going full SUV (and getting too expensive) the Crosstrek is the new official car of Vermont. Sure there’s plenty of Foresters too, but the Crosstreks are multiplying like rabbits around here.
Genesis, because this letter reads like it was written by an AI bot that got swept up in the Hyundai immigration raids in Georgia last year.
That report reads exactly the same way as suburban/rural Americans think about big cities.
Not without reason.
Major gun battles happen without even making the news.
While looking at property in rural Arkansas, I got stopped for looking suspicious.
Since I was in another state, my tags didn’t come up quickly, or my multiple carry permits, so they left me alone for some time.
They seemed alarmed when they came back and asked if I had any firearms. I told them two. It didn’t seem like an appropriate time to ask, “Why? What do you need?”
I told them I was coming from Memphis, which they accepted as a reasonable response, considering the level of crime.
They left me alone so long, I can’t imagine why they thought I might cause trouble when I hadn’t before.
The miles of boarded up or leveled buildings in Memphis is even more dramatic from two years ago.
I did run into some people in full drag before noon yesterday, for what it’s worth.
So true. A rural coworker shared a story of their family traveling to New York City recently. One of the adults thought it would be a war zone and they’d be accosted by homeless people. Nope! They all had a wonderful time like most visitors to NYC have.
TLDR version: This is ‘Murica. DEI is dead, and we’ve pissed off a lot of people, so be careful out there.
I’m not sure which is more terrifying – the info they sent you, or that they felt the need to send it to you.
Either way, be safe Mercedes.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a fake message and the sender stole the account. I would suggest Mercedes confirms the message. Why would they email instead of call her and report it to the proper authority. Stay safe but don’t allow scammers to thwart the truth. Where’s the Autopian in all this just ignores her safety?
I can tell you that it was a very real message, sent by the automaker. The report itself was generated for the automaker by an organization that produces reports like this for corporations and governments.
The Autopian definitely cares about my safety! In this case, there’s absolutely nothing to worry about in Vermont, except snow, I guess. That’s part of what made the message so bizarre.
America’s worker protection laws are extremely weak in this regard – but most of the OECD countries place strong liabilities on organizations for the safety of employees when travelling. Which means this kind of reporting becomes very important for compliance perspectives.
Even when travelling domestically (Australia – pretty much the safest place in the world) I’ve had our corporate journey management provider text me about specific hazards that have popped up.
In Australia, it’s the local flora and fauna that could kill you, rather than other people.
In a worst-case scenario, my wife has been known to absolutely destroy my foes in the courtroom. 🙂
Why would it be fake? It’s not particularly inaccurate.
DEI isn’t dead at my employer – just renamed. Which is great. Doesn’t hurt to pause every now and then and remind people to be a little kinder to each other.
It has to be Subaru,right? Isn’t Subaru the official motor vehicle manufacturer of Vermont?
Now that the last of the AMC Eagles have rotted back into the earth, I’m pretty sure every vehicle registered for the road in Vermont is indeed a Subaru. Possibly some Priuses here and there?
I may not be in VT, but there are dozens of us! Dozens!
Did you accidentally pluralize the word ‘dozen’?
It’s a reference to Arrested Development. That said, there is a surprisingly active number of people on the AMC Eagle related Facebook pages. Yes-pages, plural!
Oh I know, I was just making the joke that there were probably less AMC Eagles left than there are Never Nudes.
And I am very glad to hear that there are in fact, dozens instead of the singular dozen.
I’m going to guess it’s Hyundai and the car is an Ioniq 6N. If anyone was going to be very attuned to American mass deportations and insurrections, it’s a Korean OEM.
A bunch of South Korean engineers were caught up in a massive American deportation raid last year, and South Korea just locked up a former president for nearly life (after narrowly avoiding the death penalty) after he imposed martial law for mere hours to meddle in an election.
I’m guessing VW. Mainly because of the Euro-dollar exchange rate mention.
Same, although I didn’t notice the Euro-Dollar thing… good catch. Hyundai/Kia seemed like a solid guess but the warning felt compulsively institutional in a very German way, like having a part number for currywurst. Thus VW.
The warning had a very cover-your-butts vibe to it, TBH, which smelled very Volkswagen Groupy to me. Porsche has a tendency to pass along/lightly translate a lot of its info from the You’re-A-Peein’ side, sooooooooo…
PARSH?????? D’YEAH GOTS GUD PARSH>??!>@>!! I DEMAND PICS OF PARSH!!!
I’m guessing an Asian automaker, as much of it reads like US State Department travel advisory guides for going to some European countries.
I’m going to assume that it wasn’t Tesla, and not just because they never introduce new models
They also have no people to send messages from.
Do Elon’s unhinged tweets not count?
Maybe if he has time for Tesla between planning for Mars, robots, Ai, repopulating the Earth and Diablo 2.
So no.
those messages are for the ketamine voices, not us