Doesn’t take much to total a car these days, either.
Ha! Come to the U.K. and look around most cities, towns and even villages - they were often built before the existence of the motor vehicle, and are built as semi-detached or terraced, with only rarer houses from the 60’s-80’s built with a garage. Modern estates may have a parking space out front, but developers want to maximise the number of little boxes they build on available plots of land so they can make the maximum profit.
I’m lucky enough to have my front garden converted to parking, but many of the houses in my road don’t have any off-road parking, and it’s the same around much of the town, which has a population up around 35,000 people, and expanding.
4 Likes
Kind of a shame, given the chance i would prefer to keep the garden but 100% get you that the convenience of having your own spot is something you can’t put a price on. More so if street parking sucks.
LAPD is a bad joke.
2 Likes
I’m driving my wife’s 1998 honda civic. It makes some unpleasant noises, but I think it will pretty much run forever, even if I set it on fire.
3 Likes
Reminds me of a discussion on here a few years ago where for those who are used to the wide open spaces in the US it’s easy to overlook how densely packed the UK is.
3 Likes
Despite some famous experiments, the external combustion engine really has yet to become popular.
5 Likes
I guess that would explain the $1000 reward they’re offering:
The Police are asking anyone with relevant information to “contact Detective Juan Campos, Central Traffic Detectives, at (213) 833-3713 or e-mail him at 31480[@]lapd.online.” For those that want to remain anonymous, there’s also an online form on LAPD’s website named “Anonymous Web Tips.” The form can be accessed here.
3 Likes
This area is an early “street car suburb” of LA, back when they still tried to use the older SF-style “drape a rectilinear grid over the terrain, run a scraper up and down the hills, and call it a day.” development pattern. It was platted at the turn of the century, and mostly built up by the 1920s
But SF’s hills are gentle, rolling affairs, mostly fossil sand dunes. LA’s Elysian Hills are the result of seismic uplift, and are often too steep to allow ignoring the terrain. Draping a grid willy-nilly over the terrain results in craziness like Baxter Street.
Echo Park is a rarity - most of LA’s hilly areas waited for steam shovels and dynamite to become common in roadbuilding, carving roadways into windy, twisty loops that gradually climbed the steep hills instead of just plowing over them.
At the end of the downhill stretch where the car landed is Allesandro Street, once the route of a major PE Red Car line from downtown to Glendale. So cars weren’t common or needed.
4 Likes
If you say his name three times in a mirror, he appears, makes misleading tweets to inflate Tesla’s stock price and then calls you a pedophile for no reason.
6 Likes
I get the joke, but external combustion are steam engines. That’s where the term “internal combustion” derived from- as in contrast to the standard at the time of external combustion for making power with boilers.
8 Likes
There is that, yes. Guess we could call it the uncontrolled external combustion engine, or the UECE - the “eueecee.” It might never become particularly popular, but it would certainly be exciting to drive.
3 Likes
California requires auto insurance but it’s of course possible he’s underinsured or is driving illegally without it. Either way he’s certainly not at fault for this and has every right to go after the other person/persons in any way possible. (Hopefully they are insured!)
2 Likes
Apparently Alex Choi is copyright stricking the video on his gofundme page. That is pretty douchy. I would not have known the name of Alex Choi in connectino to this if he hadn’t copyright striked the video.
1 Like
The AC no longer works, so it can be a bit toasty in the summer.
1 Like
Here’s a fun fact for the BB crowd: Not only am I a licensed Veterinarian, but to have my current consulting job for a major national pet insurance carrier, I had to get a claims adjuster license.
In doing so, I had to learn a ton of crap about auto claims, weather damage, etc… as pet insurance is technically not medical insurance, but is legally “P&C” (property and casualty) insurance, and super weirdly falls under the class of “inland marine insurance” (yeah, go figure that one out!)
Above disclaimer aside, most state Depts. of insurance have pretty consumer friendly rules, and will generally back a consumer if an insurance company is trying to cheap out. In CA for example, if you cannot find a “like” car for the amount offered to total out your car, the insurance company is required to offer you a higher sum that reflects availability in your local market, or has the option of finding a like car to offer as a replacement. There are also fairly tight timelines involved. That’s going to differ by state of course, but it’s really worth looking at if you ever run into conflict with an insurance company. Don’t hesitate to get the DOI or your state’s insurance commissioner involved. Because of potential penalties and potential regulatory nightmares (including fines, loss of license in that state etc…) insurers rightfully fear state DOI’s.
7 Likes
Well, duh. Millions of drivers here don’t have it, though. I’ve been hit by them, and it’s real fun.
1 Like
I think we live in the same neighborhood.
To be fair, most of the post WWII homes in my neighborhood have these really tiny one car garages. I’m not sure how a person ever fit a 1950s sedan inside these garages. Even the driveway is just long enough for one moderately-sized car. The 4-door pickups that are so popular these days are too long for the driveways and will block the sidewalk (illegal).
4 Likes
On my side of the road (in the UK), none of the houses have garages (mostly pre-1870’s). On the opposite side, the houses are even older, so they were built with large gardens. Over time, most of these gardens had a garage built on them backing on to the next street over.
These days, most of those garages have been converted into small houses, so it’s pretty much just street parking around here. I’m really good at parallel parking now.
1 Like
I mean, if they want to identify the driver, they could just question Alex Choi, but he’s a billionaire’s kid so that’s not gonna happen.
1 Like
