On my way into work this morning, I passed 4 cars who hadn’t put their wing mirrors back down. I mean, when these people get home from work each night*, they get out of their expensive cars and either electronically or manually fold the wing mirrors in, so that, presumably, they don’t get taken off by passing traffic and/or local hooligans with baseball bats. But in their leather-lined luxury, which was 3 BMW’s and a big 4×4 Mitsubishi with a mummy in, half asleep at 8am, they hadn’t put their wing mirrors back down and were therefore completely oblivious to anything that might be to either side of them, such as a bicycle, snaking through Wednesday morning traffic. Yes, in the whole time they’d been in their car this morning, not a single one of the 4 drivers had checked in their wing mirrors.
One driver was oblivious… nay, ignorant, that even a polite reminder (i.e., a heavy slap on the offending wing mirror as I passed him) didn’t even prompt him to extract his mirrors. He just carried on, blissfully unaware of anything going on around him, safe in his £40k luxury, confident that when the day comes that he ends up killing a cyclist, motorcyclist, pedestrian or unlucky family pet, his overpriced lawyer will be able to arrange things for him.
* Of course it begs the question if they ever notice that their wing mirrors are still up. Frankly, if they’re not going to use their wing mirrors, I’d be more than happy to remove them, free of charge.
Call me crazy… but I’m from the U.S. and we don’t have a problem with putting “wing mirrors” down… I’m assuming they’re the same thing as “side mirrors” but I have yet to figure out why anyone in their right mind would want to steal them… ????
Yeh, side mirrors – and it’s not people stealing them – the roads here are very narrow so when cars are parked on the street they can get easily broken off by passing buses/lorries/drunk people.