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.
I Don’t Think The Guy Driving His Full-Grown Bull In A Crown Vic Did Anything Wrong
This Photo Of A Car Crashed Perfectly Into A Driving School Under A ‘Learn To Drive’ Sign Gets Better When You Find Out Who The Driver Was
A Video Showing A Police Officer Yelling At An Autonomous Car Has Me Worried About Robocar Emergency Overrides
The guy had no idea you could buy door rub strips at an auto parts store. Sorry Tennessee
I understand caring for the vehicle but if these are magnetic it doesn’t matter the material used as a cushion, he keep that for a month and the paint would be all scratched no matter what
“Hoist with his own petard” is a phrase from a speech in William Shakespeare‘s play Hamlet that has become proverbial. The phrase’s meaning is that a bomb-maker is blown (“hoist”, the past tense of “hoise”) off the ground by his own bomb (“petard“), and indicates an ironic reversal or poetic justice.[1]
America has become a paranoid tribe of people who don’t handle tech well. A few years after 911 at an MSP airport car rental facility they noticed a “box with wires coming out of it’ in a returned rentals trunk. Bomb squad was called and duly dunked and detonated it. Turned out it was an electronic sensor for a biology research project that was forgotten!
I’m going to guess these are held on by magnets… and he removes them when the car is in motion. As for the installation height… given the height of trucks and suvs… this might not be far off.
Hardly elegant… but I’m not sure he needs to be mocked over this. Assuming, of course, that they come off when not in use. If not… he deserves to be mocked.
Yeah, I don’t get how these look better than the generic self-adhesive rubber straps you can buy from Amazon.
But, I also don’t understand how an ill-fitting rubber and Neoprene steering wheel condom somehow looks better than just the steering wheel
Surely the person who called the cops probably also posts to the Ring community of gunshots every time they hear a loud bang.
This person lives on my street. They are retired, they are bored, and they are VERY concerned about EVERYTHING.
The black tube inside must be magnetic. Wrapped in whatever he had laying around. I think the wires would prevent it from becoming a projectile or road debris if it ever came loose.
Looks too high up to accomplish much. I think this may be something specific. Like a careless coworker with a high vehicle that’s dinged his doors more than once.
Perhaps this guy works in an industrial field. Where the magnets and steel and cabling come easy, but hasn’t a clue about paint care or cosmetics.
Honestly to me it doesn’t look like a bomb whatsoever. I first saw it and thought why the hell are there umbrellas attached to the doors?
And all because he was too cheap to buy the crossover version with plastic cladding on the sides.
It’s not his fault other people destroy his shit.
You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!
Perfect.
Like the old car commercial “we’ll blow their doors off!”
Rubber Bomby Buggy Bumpers
“A bomb?”
“No officers… those are.. uh uh bumpers… yeah… rubber bumpers, to protect the doors from dings.”
“Oh, on your way then. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
I think the cables are on there to prevent these things from being stolen. I’m sure many thieves have walked up to this car many times and then been bitterly disappointed to find out they can’t easily steal these, obviously, valuable bumpers.
This reminds me of the clear vinyl furniture covers and carpet runners some people used to “keep things looking nice.” Making them ugly so they stay nice?
But maybe this guy’s car is a lease and he got hit with extra charges for door dings on his previous lease — got financially dinged for dings.
Can you lease a 10+ year old car?
That’s how I always thought of nose bras. The big black scab on the nose of your car looks worse than stone chips.
Yeah it’s basically like saving your girlfriend for the next guy.
That is a pretty weird looking device, but the response reminds me of that kid in Ohio who had his bike destroyed and was also arrested because they thought his bicycle was a bomb due to a band sticker (the band’s name is “this bike is a pipe bomb”). Police really like to get the chance to use their SWAT and bomb disposal toys.
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/uwire/uwire_GUWC0412200632327.html?pagewanted=print
I am surprised that Hamas was not brought up
Why not just buy some of those compressed foam hollow tubes (or even rubber tubes) and just slit them to slide into small straight brackets that are affixed to the inside door seams/hinges and a/b/c pillars? It’d cost like 10 bucks and wouldn’t ruin a whole heap of pillowcases.
He pretty much went with the worst design for what he’s trying to accomplish. While I can’t see how attaching a protector will cause less damage than a few annoying door dings, why not just buy small roll of rubber tape from 3M? A few layers of that will do the job and look significantly better.
Maybe it’s just me, but it doesn’t seem like a logical place to attach bombs to a car. I don’t look at that and think ‘bomb’.
I agree it would seem an odd place to attach a bomb, but I can certainly see how someone could look at that and think it might be an explosive, especially when there’s not another immediately obvious thing that it could be. Better to err on the side of caution here I think.
It looks exactly like some C4 in an A-Team episode
Not quite. Needs a red blinky light.
Hannibal, noticing the police took the bait, now proclaims:
“I love it when a plan comes together.”.
The team now swoops in and steals a bunch of equipment from the police department garage.
I pity the fool who falls for a poorly place fake bomb.
It’s a shaped charge set to do damage to whoever would ding his car.
Poor man’s explosive reactive armor.
Also, I think the goal is generally for bombs to not be obvious so they aren’t stopped before they explode, just seems like inside the trunk would be a more likely place for a real one
I’ve found it’s not necessary to worry about door dings when other drivers take care to maintain a proper distance out of, presumably, respect:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/51539214093_a7df39f6f3_c.jpg
Mostly, though, I’ve found it’s just not necessary to worry about door dings.
Just put 12-inch spikes on your lug nuts, like the chariots in Ben Hur.
Do you mean like the Ram 3500 that some nut job in my town drives?
Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that. The 96 uses lug bolts, not nuts.
Or like a quarter of the semis on the road. Seriously, how are those stupid things not wildly illegal?
I can be pretty fanatical about my cars, especially when it comes to the mechanicals, but dings, scuffs, nicks from road debris, and hell even curb rash are all just part of owning a car that gets driven.
All of the above is true, except curb rash. All others are somewhat unavoidable but curb rash is almost always a personal error, and a painful one especially when you go years trying to keep them perfect only for one small slip up to damage them.
I blame the people who designed this dumb intersection near me with a way too small radius and curb right against the road with no shoulder, forcing me against the curb because trucks can’t fit in the turn (despite there being several business that get 18-wheeler deliveries there)
Ok maybe it was still my fault, but fuck that turn.
I am trying to change my ways. I have three nice cars, two black, and one dark cherry, that I try to project from dense and dings. I just bought a $4000 car to add to the fleet. It’s silver, and has about a million dints and dings already. The passenger side has a ding or dent about every 2 inches, all the way from the front fender to over the rear wheel, all at exactly the same level. Clearly a previous owner’s other car parked on that side, and dinged it often.
It’s kinda freeing. Slightly too close parking spots I would bypass in my nicer cars, I can whip into with this one, and honestly not give a hoot.
This reminds me a bit of an artist in the Seattle area named Subculture Joe. He’s best known for putting a ball and chain around the ankle of the Hammering Man, but earlier, he had a sculpture of a heart in the bed of a cheap pickup. It was driven into a public square, then the driver jumped out and slashed all the tires. This being a shitty old pickup, it had stuff written on it, including the words “the bomb.” Of course it shut down the city for hours. And this was in the 90s, I could only imagine how badly that stunt would have gone these days.
Kind of like the dorks who put a bunch of weird LED box things around NYC as “marketing” and caused havoc.
That was most infamously in Boston
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic
thanks for the clarification, I am an unreliable narrator
But you did well enough to remind me of the Mooninites and this whole episode. So thank you.
aka Jason Sprinkle.
It’s a bit of a read, but there’s a photo of the truck at Westlake Center on page 7:
https://www.csun.edu/~vcspc00g/301/bombthatblewupseattle-tdr.pdf
IIRC, the artist built a soft inner liner into the ball and chain so that the statue’s “ankle” wouldn’t be damaged. Good times!
Assuming these things are secured with magnets since that what it looks like, the duct tape and non-microfiber cloth material and wire are going to scratch THE HECK out of the paint and be way worse than a few tiny door dings
Looks like something from a budget Mexican Drug Cartel movie.
And what a wuss solution here. He just needs to glue some carpet of his choosing to the doors. Maybe do a door “wrap” with Hefty Bags and duct tape. Or just put on a shit load of the fake bullet stickers and not worry about the dings.
So you’re saying he needs to buy the dumb and dumber van replica?
I, too, believe he should take this opportunity to bring back the Mohs Safarikar
How about wrapping just the doors and permanently attach a bumper to the wrap. Yes, we just invented this.
I’ve heard in Korea they love to keep the little foam blocks taped to the trim for shipping on the car for this reason. Again, you start to wonder whether a car with a dent here and there wouldn’t look better than one done up like it’s in a motion capture suit.
I saw many cars in NYC with hideous rubber flaps on their bumpers that looked so much worse than any paint damage
Dodge charger and challenger owners notoriously keep the shipping protector plastic on their bumpers. There’s a thriving secondary market for people who lost theirs. They’re literally trash but people pay good money for them.