oOoo! Reflective Rainbows!

I’ve got a little bit of wisdom to offer the Puerto Rican population of New York and Connecticut: CD’s need to go into a stereo system to be heard. This seems like it should be common sense, no? It’s not. I’ve seen more CD’s hanging from mirrors over the last few weeks to cause this little fortune cookie sized bit of advice to be formed.

OK, fine. Maybe just telling the Puerto Rican population is a racist thing to do, but guess what? Cliches are cliches for a reason and the majority of the cars that I see with CD’s hanging from rear view mirrors are from Puerto Rican drivers, so deal with it. It’s a mathematical probability and not a slur. So now I’m telling everyone. Put the fuckin CD in the stereo and be done with this craze already!

Of course, what threw me over the edge of this one is the fact that most of the CD’s hanging in windows these days have flags or words on them. They were sold as a car decoration. These CD’s were made for one sole use: to be hung from a rear view mirror. They don’t have music on them. They won’t play in a CD player. They are simple decoration.

Ordinarily rather than getting pissy about this I would rebel against it in my own way. When I started to see all of those “I was cool cuz I came from this airport” stickers on back windows or bumpers, I put a C++ one on my car. After all, C++ allowed me to pay for my car in the first place so I felt that it was fitting. For this, I would get an AOL CD and hang that from my rear view mirror, but I refuse to. My gripe about the CD in the window isn’t about it being stupid or idiotic or anything like that… it’s part of the gripe, sure but I would get over that. No, my gripe is that a CD has a silver colored surface that reflects light extremely well and guess what? It also reflects sunlight really well. And when I’m driving somewhere and I look to the other side of the road to see if there’s a car waiting to turn or something, I truly truly truly HATE being blinded by the silly asinine CD that is spinning in a car’s window.

I can only imagine what these CD hanging people would do with a DVD disc…


10 thoughts on “oOoo! Reflective Rainbows!”

  1. Hell Yes!!!! Too true, Whats next will they start to hang memory sticks from their MP3 players? Good rant and I say down with CD hanging. :)

  2. Probably. But how is this racist? I’d tell anyone with a stupid assed CD hanging from a window how idiotic it looked, regardless of race. The fact that a large group of one race, in one part of the country all act the same way has nothing to do with it. If I made an exception because of race, then it would be racist – this is just pointing out stupidity!

  3. it’s supposed to jammed speed camera radars??? so i hear! something to do with the beam sent out by the camera sensors?

    does anyone know if it works????

  4. I have the smaller diameter CD hanging from my rear view mirror.

    Actually two. You glue the text sides together so the shiney sides face out on each side.

    The highly reflective surface helps to defeat

    laser speed enforcement guns, not radar or

    photo radar. In order for the laser speed measurement to

    render a speed, it has to bounce the laser light back for a period of time

    (500ms or so)a couple of times to get a speed.

    The laser detector picks the strongest reflection

    and takes it’s measurment from it’s target car.

    I believe they need to get a couple of readings in a row before they can say “this was your speed”. Front license plates are the strongest return (unless you get the clear plastic laser absorbing covers….) ;)

    Next is headlights. However, with a rotating

    and wiggling CD, the laser gun has a bitch of a time getting a good number and can buy you some extra time to scrub your speed down and save your ass from a capricous ticket.

    And, yes, it does work.

    This is not to say that there are not some people out there that have them up as a cheap decorations. However, there are some of us that

    drive with enthusiam and want a little extra time

    to react to a laser gun indication from our radar/laser detectors.

    I tell ya, yesterday on the way to the airport to work on my plane, I hit a laser gun speed trap on the parkway. By the time I heard my laser detector going off while listing to MOBY in the convertible with the top down, it was too late for me to slow down, NORMALLY, and would have been too late for me or anyone else. But, the highly reflective, momentary rotatation and wiggling of the double sided CD (from the wind)

    must have bought me some time (this causes the laser gun to have a hard time getting a lock, kind of like using chaff on fighter planes to confuse missles etc.)because when I finally saw the cop I was doing 70 in a 55 but he let me go on by without hesitation. It worked. Dark colored cars are less reflective than light colored cars. My car is black. All these elements help to provide you some extra time to react. Yea, yea, I know “just drive 55”. Well, the way some places are, the speeds are not always posted or change suddenly for various reasons. Driving in unfamiliar areas puts you at higher risk of getting a ticket too.

    Hence, the reason people call them speed traps.

    T

  5. Wait a minute… waaaaaiiiiit just a minute: there’s an actual REASON as to why people hang CD’s from their mirrors??? It’s just a fashion statement or a “fast and the furious” wanna be thing?

    Holy crap.

    Also, I dunno what yer using for detection, but you might want to check out the Valentine1.com – heard good things about it.

  6. This is BS. The CD does not help you defeat a LASER gun. They beam of the LASER gun reflects directly back from the target. If the officer aims at your license plate or headlight then how id a CD hanging from your mirror going to help you?

  7. Why not just stick to the speed limit?

    Driving beyond the speed limit and your abilities puts yourself at risk, which I don’t give a frig about, however you are endangering all other road users which would concern me.


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