This is one of those questions that comes up periodically in philosophy classes, usually as an example of a sort of paradoxical thought experiment that has no known answer: Could a driver’s intense fear of getting their doors dinged actually cause multiple businesses and buildings to be evacuated? Well, I’m excited to say that thanks to a little thing we call “reality,” this question now has an answer, because this situation actually happened in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, when a person’s home-made door protectors on their 2012-ish Lexus IS caused enough alarm that an entire block of the city was closed off for almost two hours, schools in the nearby area were put on lockdown, and people were evacuated from restaurants and businesses. All because some dude didn’t want his Lexus dinged.
Even better, the owner of the car was actually one of the people standing around after a the restaurant he was eating in was evacuated, watching all of the police activity in the area around where he parked his car across the street. It wasn’t until the cops ran the license plate and called the owner on the phone that the owner realized it was him and his strangely bomb-looking DIY door protectors that were causing all of the ruckus.
Here’s the post about the lockdown – and its later resolution – from the Murfreesboro Police Department:
… and the follow up:
To be fair, those dent protectors do look weirdly bomb-like, especially with those wires between them. I don’t think you could open the passenger side doors with those things on there? They really resemble some sort of explosives packed into sheets and wired to blow the whole side off that car.
Of course, the very existence of these handcrafted door protectors raises so many more questions. Questions like, why? How many times has this guy had his doors dinged? And that seems kind of a high location for where doors usually ding? And why did he park the side with the door-ding guards in an end spot where they can’t possibly do any good, since there’s no car next to it there?
And then of course is the bigger question: does this look better than having a few little door dings? How are they stuck on there? Magnets? Glue? JB Weld? Are the wires there so he can carry them around, nunchuck-style, when not in use? Does this person really prefer the look of driving around with a pair of mummified salamis to just risking some dents?
[Editor’s Note: I’ve never seen someone who could benefit more from owning a Citroen C4 Cactus:
It’s a glorious machine. I’ve driven one. -DT].
Anyway, everything was resolved and no one was hurt, just inconvenienced because of someone’s strange, confusing, and let’s be honest here, pretty needless, attempt to avoid a few tiny little scratches or dents. This has to be the largest recorded inconveniencing of un-related people by an attempt to avoid door dings in history.
I hope if this guy decides to keep using these things, he at least Sharpies NOT A BOMB onto each of the thingies to keep everyone nice and calm.
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LOL. David, I may have driven the same C4 Cactus that you did. The sequential manual was intensely terrible, from what I recall, but the car was otherwise amusing.
Back in the Sea Scouts we had a joke about personal craft being in “Bayliner Mode”. This came about because of a propensity for owners of small Bayliners to run on Lakes Union and Washington with their fenders still deployed.
This person reminds me of that mentality. Only he did it in a horrible “5 Minute DIY crafts” way.
a month ago a guy in finland or iceland blew up his tesla for reasons not clear. it looked just like that wrapped in det cord and plastique. maybe someone saw the video on the web?
He should just drive a Saturn Ion, they had dent resistant panels. Or a cybertruck I guess.
Plot twist. Police: why do you have bombs stuck to the doors of your car? Terrorist: …..um ….dent protection? Police: ok sorry to disturb you sir.
Well if it keeps the people who don’t park too goodly away from you….
Why didn’t he just…
(cut up an old set of bedsheets or curtains, sew a loop at the hem around a stick of pipe insulation or a pool noodle, roll the trailing pieces of fabric up in the car window, leaving protective foam bumpers dangling from drapes of cloth that double as exterior sunshades, perhaps adding wire as a means to hook them to the “oh shit” handles to make the whole process of rolling the fabric up in the windows less cumbersome)
…?
Anyone know this guy’s address?
I want to send him a neatly wrapped prototype of my solution to his problem from my undisclosed location in a rustic cabin in Montana.
Back in the day, if you wanted to embarrass yourself with door protection, you did what any red-blooded American did: you went to your JC Whitney catalog and ordered some kind of hooptie chromed plastic junk and adhered it, slightly crooked, to your doors. And maybe added an “easily installed” rear-shelf cat with blinking red eyes for good measure.
Obviously, when JC Whitney catalogs stopped coming in the mail, it was open season on unintended consequences. I’m sure there’s a lesson here or at least a good conspiracy theory.
“What? You’ve never seen a decapitated head on a turtle before?”
Why didn’t he just park across three parking spots like everyone else?