Your blog is outstanding I will have to read it all, thank you for the diversion from my workload!

Clearly you don’t understand.
He owns the road. He bought it with the car.

We had (had, since I don’t live there anymore) a nasty problem in Germany. Drivers thought it was okay to pass a horseback rider with inches to spare.
After all, what could possibly happen? Hm?
Well.
One of them, a Mercedes driver, passed me and almost took my saddle bags off.
I reached out and slammed my fist on his roof.
He screeched to a halt about 20 meters down the road, got out and started to yell at me for denting his roof. (And a nice dent it was, too.)
Cop car comes heading down the road, so he flagged the cop down.
Cop gets out, listens to irate Mercedes driver, looks at me and asks if what he says is true.
“Yes, officer. I absolutely admit that I hit his roof with my fist. You can see the dent right there.” *points to roof*
The cop checks the roof and turns back to me, clearly preparing to read me the riot act.
“Oh btw,” I said, “let me get back on my horse and show you something.”
On I get and make the horse stand next to the car. I reach out and put my fist in the dent, the saddlebags are barely an inch from the car.
“Now you tell me, if I can reach his roof while riding down the road, with my arms (I’m 5’2″ — and please note I have to lean over to reach… wouldn’t you say he was a bit close?”

The driver got booked for dangerous driving.
I’m not kidding. There was an inch between the car and my saddle bags. If my horse hadn’t been bomb proof, he’d have had a hood ornament.

It’s not just horses, either.
There are scores of car doors I’ve kicked (with steel toed boots) when some dimwit decided to overtake my motorbike almost pushing me into a ditch.
I don’t get mad.
I get even.
I’ve landed in too many ditches over the years, because some driver couldn’t be bothered to pass with proper distance.

So yeah, I totally support you on the stopsign issue.

And what you need isn’t a badge.
It’s one of those bollards that pop out of the road.
And the remote control to operate it…

Thanks for the support ladies! My kids are convinced I’m a little nuts – but I was right and he was wrong ’nuff said.

I used to have phony tickets I could give out to people–they were long and yellow, just like real tickets and had all the pertinent info on the top: Make, model of car, license plate #, etc. But under the infractions park it had stuff like, “Did you have to park this way or are you just a selfish pr**k?” and “Since I don’t see a handicapped tag on your car, I’m guessing your disability is illiteracy.” I’m pretty sure they had something for blowing stop signs, for speeding, and a host of other optional laws. They looked something like these: http://thepayback.com/tickets.htm

Something to think about, huh?

I’d have gone on him too. Good job sticking up for yourself, the law, and most important your daughter and the other kids in the neighborhood.

silly you. lawbreaker was “special!” laws don’t apply to HIM. Just the rest of us!

How telling of our times that we assume that laws/rules are optional and don’t apply to us.

It really bugs me when people do things like that. The donut shop I frequent has a firelane outfront instead of curbside parking (the parking lot is only about 20 feet further). People park in the firelane all the time so they can just walk in and save 20 seconds of walking. How lazy do you have to be???