Comments on: Watch out for bumper clutter

By: anOnymous

anOnymous — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:35:48 +0000

How are we going to remove all of those “Dissent Is The Highest Form Of Patriotism” bumper stickers?

By: Kelly

Kelly — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 13:37:25 +0000

I think that perhaps people are more likely to get in arguments over the bumper stickers they have on their cars, and therefore those statistics were born. I’m not the kind of person to get mad at anybody on the road, but I know I have had had many people angry and full of venomous road-rage after viewing my very liberal bumper stickers, particularly cops in right-wing areas. Ohhh, the amount of times I have been pulled over for being 5 miles over the speed limit when people around me are zooming past me, I couldn’t tell you.

By: Kris

Kris — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:15:21 +0000

I just thought of something. I also have “Autistic Child On Board” stickers on either side of my van. Should we be involved in an accident, the rescue/emergency workers would need to know that my son is non-verbal and wouldn’t respond to their commands.

Maybe seeing those Autism stickers has a calming effect on those who might be ‘raging’ at my other bumper stickers? Maybe they think ‘oh, she has a child in there and he’s Autistic so we’ll leave her alone”. I doubt it, but it crossed my mind.

Just a thought.

By: Kris

Kris — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 22:12:58 +0000

I have two rows of four bumper stickers on my minivan. One row is actually adhered to the bumper and the other row are affixed to large magnets and stay on that way. They are neat, in a row and symmetrical. I also have various stickers on the windows. I have had one person in four years have a negative reaction to them and have had possibly over 100 have a good reaction. I get notes all the time on my windshield saying “I love your bumper stickers”. Some of these stickers include:

* Don’t Pray In My School and I Won’t Think In Your Church
* Humans Aren’t The Only Species .. We Just Act Like It
* That Flag Decal Still Won’t Get You Into Heaven
* D.A.R.E. … To Think For Yourself
* If Going To Church Makes You A Christian, Does Going To The Garage Make Me A Car?
* When Facism Comes To America, It Will Be Draped In A Flag and Holding A Bible

I also have the Darwin fish, a tree of life and various other little things back there. Everyone knows my van and my friends love reading the new stickers I put on there. I do get them from northernsun.com and replace them as they get dirty or worn out.

I’ve never been involved in or witnessed an accident due to my stickers.

By: Shalin

Shalin — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:31:56 +0000

@Anne, @Kit – thanks for the suggestions! I knew that the product had to be out there somewhere!

Best,
Shalin

By: Susan

Susan — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:26:40 +0000

There’s a happy “Just turned 50– so what the hell am I taking so seriously?” woman in our neighborhood that has an old beat-up white sedan–that she’s recently christened with masses of adorable cartoon and anime decals- complete with “Happy Geek Grrrl!” sticker on the back and a Scrooge McDuck decal on the gas cover. I adore it and told her so.
That said, I am way too absent minded (and worked way too many hours as a promotions wench with different company’s ads plastered on my chest/butt/hat/shoes) to put a bumper sticker or custom plate frame on my car.
These days I feel that I don’t HAVE to wear an opinion or ad unless I’m being paid to do so, and I figure that if someone wants to know my opinion, they can get to know me…otherwise, there’s too many scary freaks out there who might take exception and act out towards me or my car in an under-medicated moment.
(Okay, I STILL want flame decals and a glowing skull gear shift knob…but that’s just ‘ucz I’m odd..)

By: Kristen@recoveringfoodwaster

Kristen@recoveringfoodwaster — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:40:22 +0000

I was going to say what Amy and Erika said about correlation and causation. Someone who is prone to being aggressive and angry isn’t going to suddenly become calm if they take the bumper stickers off the back of their car.

By: John of Indiana

John of Indiana — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:18:10 +0000

I used to have almost the whole Donnely-Colt catalogue on the back of my ‘72 Kombi.
These days I settle for “Cleverly Disguised as a Responsible Adult” back there…

By: Leslie

Leslie — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:29:17 +0000

Although I personally don’t have bumper stickers – just one “Support our Troops” magnet, I enjoy other people’s stickers – it gives me something to read when stuck in traffic.

By: S

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:17:05 +0000

I had stickers all over my MINI. “Lets Sip Not Guzzle,” “Actual Size,” “Once you have small you never go back,” a big magnet of Napolean Dynamite’s face, and the ever popular “The Short Bus” because it was a yellow and white Mini. I would sit in traffic and see every car around me snapping pics with their cell phones of the back of my car laughing. It wasn’t so bad, until I really offended someone in a Friendly’s (how ironic!) parking lot. They said that it was very insulting to “mentally challenged people” that I have “The Short Bus” written on my car. I told her in no way was I trying to insult anyone with a handicap by those words, I was merely stating it looks like a SHORT BUS, and I apologized if I offended her. She ate her words, and then she had to sit and eat her food in the booth next to me.

By: sue

sue — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:00:13 +0000

I wonder how many rear-end accidents occur because people are trying to read all the stickers?

By: Dana

Dana — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:52:08 +0000

Oh–although I have to laugh, because just this evening we were behind another car in traffic that had bumper stickers on its bumper–on the top horizontal surface of the bumper, where you had to be standing behind the car or reeeally crane your neck to see what the heck the stickers said. Had I not seen those particular stickers on other cars and in catalogs already I would have had no idea what the driver was trying to say!

By: Dana

Dana — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:50:55 +0000

About the one commenter who mentioned how nice it would be to be able to remove bumper stickers easily: My little girl’s dad puts bumper stickers on magnetic backing and affixes them to his car that way. If he gets tired of one or it fades he can just cover it over with a new one on the same magnet, assuming the new sticker is the same size. I’ve also seen magnetic holders with vinyl sleeves where you don’t even have to peel the sticker off its backing.

I don’t mind them, myself. Usually they aren’t ads for anything in particular, so the billboard analogy isn’t particularly accurate. I guess I also don’t see the point of criticizing people generally for using bumper stickers, as one of the things about clutter is that the definition of same is very personal.

By: tabatha

tabatha — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:34:13 +0000

my uncle told me he doesn’t put billboards on his house so he wouldn’t put a bumper sticker on his car!

By: sue

sue — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:17:18 +0000

A mild-mannered man was being tailgated by a stressed-out woman on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection. The tailgating woman hit the roof, and the horn, screaming in frustration and flipping him a bird and shaking her fist as she missed her chance to get through the intersection. As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, finger printed, photographed and placed in a holding cell. After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects. He said, “I’m very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping off the guy in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the ‘Choose Life’ license plate holder, the ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ bumper sticker, the ‘Follow Me to Sunday School’ bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car!”

By: Marc

Marc — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:01:44 +0000

Who cares? Come the Rapture, my vehicle will be unmanned anyway.

By: Kit

Kit — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 01:55:59 +0000

@Shalin

Like this??

http://www.northernsun.com/n/s/2161.html

it isn’t magnetic (so no unbalancing the Earth) and makes it easier to swap out bumper stickers as the mood fits (plus you keep it *inside* the car, so it can’t be marked up)

if I had to make up stats, I would say that those who display the ‘Jesus Fish’ seem to drive more aggressively.

I want a FSM medallion!!

By: Charles

Charles — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:26:51 +0000

Actually, I think it would be better if everyone left their bumper stickers on. It lets me more quickly identify which is a moron.

By: TheLoneIguana

TheLoneIguana — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:13:19 +0000

I had a Darwin fish on my car. Once, while stopped at a red light, a car blew past in the turn lane, while the woman in the passenger seat yelled “Heathen!” at me. She had crawled nearly halfway out the window.

That same car had a small sticker that said “SUVS SUCK”. An SUV cut me off in traffic and I ended up hitting them. The police officer at the scene got a pretty big laugh out of that.

By: Erika

Erika — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 22:40:20 +0000

“The number of territory markers predicted road rage better than vehicle value, condition or any of the things that we normally associate with aggressive driving,”

OK. So people who are inclined to have lots of bumper stickers also happen to be aggressive drivers. That doesn’t mean that if I, a nonaggressive driver, let the bumper stickers accumulate, I would then become an aggressive driver.

There’s no decluttering lesson here. The lesson is: if you see a car with lots of bumper stickers, steer clear.