#I was in my car (not driving) when I saw this and my dashcam 100% caught my live reaction

[heyybeach]

When I tell you I screamed I'm not being dramatic. I genuinely screamed bloody murder when I saw this

[annakie]

Uh, back in Feburary and March I’d written two posts about my history with cars (one, two), and then forgot to follow up with the reason I wrote those posts.

Guys, meet Sadie.  Yeah, I named her after Sadie Doyle.  She’s classy and only drinks the finest booze (Premium Unleaded).

Story below.

So like I’d mentioned, the Accord was starting to acquire some moans and thumps and other weird things.  It also hit 100k miles and needed the 100k maintenance done.  (It was actually at 107k miles.) All in all,  I was looking at like $3500 in immediately-needed money spent on it.  

I really didn’t wanna.

So in February, I started looking at and thinking about cars again.  I ended up spending several evenings at a few car dealerships, taking a really hard look at my budget, and crossing my fingers for a raise I thought I was getting, but not counting on. I figured out a few ways to tighten my budget (like I dropped down to basic cable, and am eating out less) and... shopped.

I knew my must-haves and my wants.  I knew my credit score.  I knew what interest rate I could get from my bank (pretty great, thankfully).  

What it came down to was, I found several cars I liked.  Several I could live with.  But the more I thought about it, the more I knew I wouldn’t be happy unless I was back in an Acura.

I know brand loyalty is kind of dumb.  But man, I wanted an Acura again.  Nothing else felt quite the same.  I knew I’d have to get a pre-owned, and for a long time I’d resigned myself that I’d have to get an ILX, the smallest and least expensive Acura.  They’d had a major redesign in 2015 that fixed a lot of their flaws, so I thought I’d either have to go a little higher than my budget or wait awhile to find a 2015 with enough miles on it that it’d be in my price range.

Every time the engine clunked on my Accord, though, I’d be like.... I have GOT to get out of this thing.

So I expanded my search and was shocked to realize that I really could get a TSX in my budget range, if just barely.  I’d just have to wait for the right one.  I did my research on them and saw that they weren’t #1 on anyone’s VERY BEST CARS of 201X list, but usually ranked in the top 10.  I could live with it.  They stopped making them in 2014 and moved to the TLX, so 2014 was the newest I’d get.  2015 TLXs’ were definitely out of the price range.

I also knew that I wanted the light silver, (medium grey or white would do) exterior, tan interior and the technology package for two important things -- backup camera and upgraded stereo.  I’d probably have to wait awhile to find  that, but the day I decided to try for that exact car, I test drove one at a dealership near me.  It was dark grey outside with black interior and no tech package and I knew then that I’d have to hold out and wait.  Also I hated that salesguy.  I’d met a few over the last few weeks and he was the only one that was actually.. skeevy.

When I got back to the office, instead of working I did a more focused search online and holy shit there’s a 2014 TSX with 28k miles in silver with tan interior and the technology package at a dealer like ten miles from me.  IN MY PRICE RANGE.

I said goodbye to my co-workers and headed to the dealer.  I did stop at DIscout Tire along the way to get one of my tires patched up.  They said I needed a new one and would be $45 to replace it.  I had them print me out a copy of my tire warranty, threw it in the glovebox and wished the next person with my car good luck, instead.

The dealership experience was exactly what I thought it’d be.  They were nice.  There were negotiations.  I actually got about $1k more for my Accord than I thought I would, which balanced out their “dealer fees”.   My co-workers kept in touch, doing research for me, advising me, as did my parents.  It was good to have people have my back, since I was there alone.  I’d done this before, and felt pretty good about how I did, but I did even better with backup.

 I walked out of there, after TT&L for about 500 under budget, with a private loan with a low APR.  I arrived at 4:30 that day.  I left at almost 10pm, driving my TSX.

I also actually didn’t sign the final paperwork to buy the car that night.  I took it to the Acura dealership right by work the next day and dropped it off (not the dealer I bought it from, they were affiliated with Toyota).  They did a “Pre-buy check” on it, which was like a 100 point inspection or something, and gave it a completely clean bill of heath.  It cost me about $170, but the peace of mind was money well spent.

The one weird thing about the car is that it didn’t come with the branding “ACURA” “TSX” and the Acura symbol on the back.  So, I found all of that on Ebay for half of what the Acura dealer near work wanted to charge me.  Then I took that to a nearby independent body shop, asked them how much they’d want to put the branding on.  They took the branding, asked for my keys, came back 10 minutes later and were like “It’s done.”  Nervous, I restated I’d just wanted an estimate and they were like “Just tell people we helped you out!”  So yeah, I did.  I told a lot of people.  :)

Guys I love this car.  I want to drive it for another 7 to 10 years.  And then I’ll just get a self-driving car and never worry about driving again. :p

Like I said above, I named her Sadie.  It was the first thing that popped into my head and it fits.  It’s taken a few weeks to get my dashcam re-installed, (I’ve been meaning to make a post about how everyone needs a dashcam.  YOU NEED A DASHCAM)  a new cell phone mount that’s cute and unobtrusive, blind spot mirrors, and my new license plates and pretty chrome frames, but she’s now all together and makes me extremely happy.

It has a navigation package, but I don’t use the navigation because, you know, cell phones... Waze... but I don’t know how I got along in life before having a backup camera.  She’s only a 4-cylinder and I do admit between about 10 and 30mph I do miss the advantage my 6-cylinder Accord had in oomph, but that’s it.  Sadie wins in every other way.

So yeah, money’s a bit tighter for now, but  I’m getting by just fine with just basic cable while still meeting my savings goal every month, and my commute is a lot more fun.

[10oclockdot]

True/False 2017 Festival Report, part 1:

in which I give capsule reviews of films that I viewed on March 2 and 3, the first two days of this year's True/False, in order of best to worst.

Casting JonBenet (Kitty Green, 2017) True/False alum Kitty Green, whose film Ukraine is Not a Brothel divided audiences at the fest three years ago, returned this year with a major work, fresh off its triumph at Sundance: a hybrid documentary experiment called Casting JonBenet. Green put out a casting call in the Boulder, Colorado area -- the site of the murder of child beauty pageant participant JonBenet Ramsey two decades ago -- looking for locals to audition for the roles of JonBenet, her parents, her brother, and a few more figures close to the case. One by one, these actors sit down in front of the audition camera, framed as precisely and hauntingly as an Errol Morris interview, and talk to Green about their knowledge of the case, their theories about the case, their everyday lives, and the tragedies in their pasts that would help them to get into their roles. The audition footage, shot in 4:3, comprises the bulk of the film, but is occasionally intercut with 2.35:1 footage of fragments of what looks like a larger JonBenet Ramsey project that was never made. Lest you assert that this was all underhanded and exploitative to hold an audition for a non-existent film, Green explained in the Q&A that she apprised the auditioners of the nature of this experimental project, and apparently all participants agreed to have their unscripted audition tapes turned into a documentary. Green added in the Q&A that it was quite difficult to explain the project to the auditioners since no one had made a film like this before (though it's actually pretty similar to Mohsen Makhmalbaf's 1995 film Salaam Cinema, but with some added formal ornament). Though the experiment has limited documentary value in the traditional sense, it nevertheless takes the temperature, albeit obliquely, of the community that's lived in the aftermath of this unsolved case. You also get to meet some regular people with stories nearly as bizarre as the role they're auditioning for. What's more, the film opens up inquiries into the nature of documentary truth and how it relates to the different orders of truth that an actor might seek when inhabiting a role. I found it mesmerizing throughout, and a few moments even had me bolt-upright in my seat. For instance, after playing footage of some auditioners discussing the theory that JonBenet's killer was actually her brother (who was a young boy at the time), Green cuts to a montage of child actors attempting to split open a watermelon by beating it with a flashlight. And as if moments like that weren't enough, it all ends with majestic staged sequence in which about two dozen of the actors perform as multiple copies of the same characters on a set of the Ramsey house. It nearly evoked a live-action remake of Rybczyński's 1980 short Tango, but far more operatic and far sadder.

The Force (Peter Nicks, 2017) A couple years back I happened to catch Peter Nicks's debut film, The Waiting Room, a Wiseman-esque documentary about the goings-on a major hospital's emergency room. His institutional focus continues in his sophomore project, The Force, which embeds the viewer in the troubled Oakland Police Department. The film opens just before a police academy graduation, where we see the graduating officers in a tight prayer huddle. The moment the prayer ends, they break into a raucous chant celebrating their identity as the 170th Academy class. And so the film establishes its dialectic: will this department base its esprit de corps on militaristic chest-thumping masculinity, or on a spiritual quest for their better angels? The film takes us on a two-year journey through that question, at times making me believe that the Oakland PD is absolutely reformable, and at other times making me believe that police departments in general, by some basic flaw in their institutional structure and ideological foundation, are beyond saving.        The Force is full of great insider footage that gives insight into the trials that beat cops and commissioners alike go through on a daily basis (during an excruciating tear gas training, the cadets are told, "You don't have the right to panic."). Eyewitness on an important moment in police history (2014-2016), the film tells the thorny facts of that history well. But throughout the film, Peter Nicks also deploys a series of subtle and utterly brilliant innovations on the art of observational documentary editing. Let me describe a few moments. Early in the film, a police officer is asking a man questions in a gas station parking lot when the suspect takes off running. Nicks's camera follows the action as well as it can, and a block away the officer tases the man as he's climbing over a fence. A moment later, as the officer describes the incident to justify his use of force, the footage from the incident replays, now intercut with the officer's body cam footage. These two pieces of tape corroborate his story. I know that the replay of footage doesn't sound like a major innovation (it's been around since at least Gimme Shelter), but the moment I saw it, it felt like a quiet breakthrough, or at least a powerful reminder of the evidentiary capacity of documentary, as well as the polytensuality of documentary images. Later in the film, another officer experiences a tense confrontation with an agitated man on the street. The officer manages to prevent violence from occurring, but by this point in the film we've already been made to realize multiple times that the Oakland PD is understaffed and its officers have to work 12-hour shifts that see them going from call to call, non-stop. As the officer drives away (we see him in close-up, with a thousand-yard stare), Nicks intercuts clips from the confrontation along with body cam footage of the same. Here, the replay functions as beleaguered memory. The empathy of the moment is remarkable.        There's plenty more to say about this expertly-made film, but it all boils down to one thing: I never thought I'd feel so much sympathy for the Oakland Police Department. From the very beginning, it's clear that Chief Whent sincerely desires to end corruption, that he cares about the community, and that he wants his officers to understand the validity -- even the patriotism -- of the anti-police protests. He tells them, "The core foundation of this country was a mistrust in government. And we are the most visible sign of that government." Elsewhere a Community Liaison pastor invited to address the unit adds, "The past stole your identity and ran up an incredibly high bill." It's a lesson we can all benefit from: we must know our history to know ourselves.

The Road Movie (Dmitrii Kalashnikov, 2016) True/False 2017 marked the North American premiere of this compilation documentary, an alternatingly rollicking and harrowing journey through the Youtube phenomenon of Russian dashcam footage. Director Dmitrii Kalashnikov said he went through over 3000 publicly-posted dashcam clips to make this film, which runs a bit over an hour and features a little over 100 clips ranging from driver's ed disasters to weather-related accidents to forest fire drive-throughs to surreal encounters with drug-addicts, swat teams, meteorites, and wedding parties. As a work of editing, it has some notable qualities -- particularly Kalashnikov's interest in oscillating between the funny and the horrifying -- but apart from its obvious voyeuristic enticements (in the Q&A, Kalashnikov said that all documentaries were voyeuristic), its main strengths are conceptual. For instance, what does it mean to take Youtube off Youtube, transforming it from a private diversion to a public, collective spectacle? What does it mean to make a supercut not of professionally-produced footage, but of amateur footage? If we accept the axiom that footage uploaded to Youtube marks a site of interest or desire (that is, people presumably do not upload footage that they do not find interesting, since they desire that others will take an interest in it), then what might such an aggregation of footage express about the collective fascinations and desires of the culture that produced it? Finally, I also noticed that throughout the screening, many audience members had trouble suppressing an impulse to issue hushed directives or invectives at the drivers of the cars on screen. The perpetual POV must have made it feel like we were watching a friend play Grand Theft Auto -- a friend who clearly, given the number of disasters we saw, definitely needed our advice.

Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (Steve James, 2016) Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Stevie) is a towering figure in documentary. His latest project was made for Frontline, so it's somewhat smaller in scope and ambition, but his skill has not faltered, and the story is an important one. The film chronicles the story of Abacus Federal Savings Bank, which to date is the only bank against which a fraud lawsuit was brought relating to the 2008 housing collapse. If you haven't heard of this story before or this bank before, don't feel bad. Abacus is, the film tells us, the 2651st largest bank in America: a little community savings and loan serving the first-generation immigrant community in Chinatown, New York City. The prosecution was, the viewer infers, a careerist move from the District Attorney's office. They must've figured that the Sung family, which founded and runs the bank, wouldn't fight it. But the family did fight it, spending millions over the course of six years. And that's the real story here: not our leaders' hopelessly unjust response to the 2008 financial crisis, not the DA's ignorant (possibly racially biased) targeting and concomitant underestimation of the family, not even the subtle but important cultural differences in the way first-generation Chinese think about loans and money in general (though that part's fascinating), but rather the story of the family itself: pulling together, fighting tooth and nail, and, sometimes hilariously, arguing with each other for minutes on end over little things, like what their father's eating for lunch. Even if this film didn't strike me as a major work by a long shot, the True/False audience was clearly behind the Sungs, even breaking into spontaneous applause when the not-guilty verdict was read. In the Q&A afterwards, Steve James said that from now on he'd like to have the True/False audience for all his films.

Stranger in Paradise (Guido Hendrikx, 2016) Stranger in Paradise is one of those agit-prop experiments with a great concept but not-so-great execution. It opens with a montage of footage from all over, from Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat to news footage of the refugee crisis. Voice-over intones the tale of a spherical lump (earth) on which there emerged a conflict between North and South, "the worship of a god who supplies and demands," and a moral crisis of human movement and hate. It was a bracing way to get us started. Act 1 stages an experiment in which a white male actor portraying the xenophobic political perspective of Europe addresses a room of real refugees (men and women of color) stuck on the island of Sicily, speaks cruelly and superciliously to them, and improvises responses to their real questions. Act 2 repeats the scene with a different group of real refugees, but this time the white male actor argues the opposite: that refugees help the economy, and that it's Europe's moral duty to give back to the people groups from whom so much was stolen during the colonial period. In Act 3, the same actor holds a kind of mock hearing for each asylum-seeker, explaining why they will or won't be granted entry into Europe, and in the Epilogue, a single long take, the actor holds a semi-staged conversation with some passers-by on the street, talking about the project we've just viewed. To be sure, the film's heart is in the right place, but the edge of its satirical knife is dulled by two factors: second, it's simply not shot very well, and first, for all its attempts to satirically subvert the reactionary narratives of the refugee crisis, it still puts a white European at the center and relegates the voices of asylum-seekers to secondary importance. It wishes it were a Peter Watkins film, but it isn't.

[smoothshift]

Get a Dashcam -- Here's a frustrating story from today that could have been a disaster. via /r/cars

Get a Dashcam -- Here's a frustrating story from today that could have been a disaster.

I was inspired to write this post after having a near-miss event today on the road. I've tried to make it easy to read, but bear with me.

The background

I was almost home, driving my 1999 Saturn in a rural residential neighborhood where people usually do 30-40 mph on a street without a painted center line.

I came up to a right-hand turn and picked up some speed downhill, when I noticed a recent model silver Mercedes-Benz sedan coming the other way. Something about the car's positioning startled me, and it took a second to register in my mind - They were totally driving in the middle of the street.

The encounter

As our cars got closer, they cut the corner and ended up entirely on my side of the road... Keep in mind this all happened over the course of a couple seconds. I knew I had to stop, right away. I braked as hard as I could and tried not to lock them up. I sounded the horn to try and convince the driver to notice me and veer off. I steered to the very edge of the road and barely missed them as they held the line and barreled right by.

My car doesn't have ABS, but I didn't lock the brakes up until I had it pointing in the right direction. I'm glad for my experience driving in snowy areas, because I was still able to steer my car out of harm's way. As I passed by, I saw the driver -- she was looking below the steering wheel, not at the road -- and she did not give me an inch of room as I left skid marks on the asphalt and put my car into the grass, and then back onto the pavement as I came to a full stop. Thank god there was no curb - I'd have had nowhere to go. I stopped completely, and watched her disappear in the rearview mirror, seemingly without a care. The smell of burning rubber wafted into the cabin about a second later.

The aftermath

The house was only another minute down the road. A bad accident can happen anywhere, even right next to your home. I'd never been so scared behind the wheel in my own neighborhood. If I'd have hit her, I don't know what would have happened. I would have probably been relatively uninjured because my car has dual airbags, but my car would have suffered structural damage and would never drive again. It's not worth much -- I bought it for $600, but I love this little car and we've been through a lot.

Worringly, I fear she would have lied about the accident due to the fact she was distracted. I have liability only insurance and I'm a 20 year old male. I am not going to let somebody's lie rake me over the coals. A high school friend was blamed for a similar crash that occurred due to another driver's abrupt mistake, and his insurance had to pay for his vehicle and the other driver's. I would have been up a creek with a totaled car and an insurance hike.

I have a dashcam I bought back in high school, but I stopped using it once I got better at defensive driving. I think 100% my defensive driving saved my ass today, but I was so close to hitting her I don't know if I'll always be so lucky. A dashcam is an honest, unbiased witness.

Every time I have a ridiculous close call, my memory is very sporadic on the details. I don't remember exactly how I avoided her given that she was entirely in my lane, taking up the full space I needed to drive in. I know my right side ended up in the grass, but I don't remember if all four wheels went off the road. I don't remember how long the brakes locked up for, but I know I could smell the tire smoke.

This post is coming out a bit like a stream of consciousness, but I needed to vent about this and encourage others to protect themselves and their car's investment by thinking about running a dashcam. I know I will.

Thank you for reading my story -- feel free to share if you've had a similar experience. At the end of the day, I'm grateful for avoiding the headache and sadness of wrecking my car.

[wavenetinfo]

Transcript for Dashcam footage released from Tiger Woods’ arrest

We begin with that new dash cam footage of Tiger Woods’ DUI arrest. The 14-time major golf champ blaming an unexpected reaction to prescription drugs for his condition. ABC’s gio Benitez is here with the latest on the case. Good morning, gio. Reporter: Michael, good morning. Police just released this video and it seems to show just about every second of the long field zobrist test as you’re about to see he struggles all the way through. You know the reason I’m out with you now? No. It’s because you’re stopped in the road. In the middle of the road. Reporter: Our first look at the dash cam video from tiger Woods’ arrest just after 2:00 A.M. On memorial day and woods’ car is stopped on a main road. He’s fallen asleep. The car still running. Do you remember what happened when my partner came up behind? No. Do you remember being asleep in the car? No. You don’t? Reporter: They ask him where he’s coming from. He says California. But he’s really in his hometown in Florida. Where are you coming from? L.A. From where? L.A. From L.A. Okay. Where you copping from right now? Headed back down to Orange county. Reporter: You’re headed down to Orange county. Yeah. Okay. Do you know where you’re at right now? I do not know. You have no idea? Reporter: He agrees to a feel zobrist test for about half an hour the golf great struggles to complete basic tasks like tying his shoes. It’s your other shoe that’s untied, man. He takes them off the once barefoot he tries walking on the white line but stumbles his way through. Stepped off to the right to balance. Not counting his steps. Reporter: The two officers move in to catch him when he stumbled again. Go ahead and bring the hand back down. Reporter: At times a confused woods barely able to understand what the officers ask of him like here when he’s asked to recite the alphabet. You’re gonna recite the entire English alphabet in a slow, nonrhyt manner meaning you’re not going to sing it, okay. Do you understand the instructions? I do. Okay, what were the instructions? Not to sing the national anthem backwards. Reporter: The officer is handcuffing him arresting him on the suspicion of driving under the influence. I’m placing you under arrest for suspicion of driving under the influence, okay? Do you understand? Reporter: Before putting him in the back of the police car. Can you loosen on the right ones just a little bit. Reporter: In his only statement since the arrest woods stresses alcohol was not involved and that what happened was an unexpected reaction to prescribed medications. Police say he did pass two breathalyzer tests, no evidence of alcohol use. Have you been drinking tonight? No. No? Are you sure about that. Yes. Reporter: Now new photos show two of the tires on his 2015 Mercedes were flat. Woods’ bumper damaged. Police say woods did not know where he was but was cooperative as much as possible. He told them he was taking several prescriptions including vicodin. All this a shocking contrast to the dominating athlete we saw win 79 PGA tours and 14 majors. This camera now capturing a very different image of Tiger Woods. And woods has only played once this year after struggles with back pain and already had four back surgeries, a big one just over a month ago by the way. He’s expected to face a judge next month. Thank you, gio. Our chief legal analyst Dan Abrams is joining us now and, Dan, that video is kind of scary to watch and realize somebody was in a car in that condition. But he passed the breathalyzer test and admitted to taking some prescription drugs. We saw the dash cam video. How does that affect his case. On the plus side he was cooperative and turns out he told the truth. On the not so plus side is just about everything else on that video. You watch him on that videotape and that can be used against him to show that he was driving under the influence. People sometimes think, oh, well, it has to be alcohol. Not true. As you know I host the show on A&E called “Live pd” and watch police departments every night we see people pulled over for DUI and every night the police officers have to decide, is this a case where it’s alcohol or is this a case where it’s drugs and, in fact, there’s a different kind of test they often do when it’s suspected drugs, so the bottom line is just the fact that he passed a breathalyzer doesn’t get him off the hook. Ha kind of punishment could he face. He could face anything from having his license suspended to up to six months behind bars. This is not a jail case. Meaning if he wasn’t tiger Woods, we wouldn’t even be talking about the possibility of jail. For a case like this, so I think what you’re talking about is figuring out what sort of fine, what sort of suspension he’s going to end up with as a result of this. As you said gio said he’ll see the judge in July so where does the case go from here. I think you’ll see a plea before then of I think what you’ll see, his lawyers go for and say, look, let’s figure this out. Let’s work this out. He’ll take full responsibility for his actions and, remember, just because he didn’t know he says that this interaction with the drugs could occur doesn’t get him off the hook. He is still going to have to take responsibility for what happened enso I think you’re going to end up seeing some sort of plea with a license suspension, a significant fine, maybe community service. All right, Dan, thank you very much. Appreciate that.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

1 June 2017 | 12:16 pm

Source : ABC News

>>>Click Here To View Original Press Release>>>

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