Idling laws in the US

[Greta Thongturd]

How dare you! You're causing unnecessary climate change. I can't breathe.

[Cindy Hamilton]

The funny part was that the nice young officer wrote me up for double-parking on I-94, so I wouldn't get any points on my record.

[micky]

I should have said that I saw no stores of any sort, no stret lights, no homes I guess, for iirc more than 2 hours, but we did stop, get out, and look at the stars.

[invalid unparseable]

micky wrote on 2/27/2024 2:03 PM:

Canada was still very rural in 1967. Except in downtown areas, there was no reason to waste electricity on street lights because there were practical no houses built too close to the highway. Canada's population didn't grow until 1967 when government opened up immigration. I think the first wave of migrants was the American draft dodgers flooding into Canada. Many rural roads without streetlights or traffic-lights in those days have become well lit and traffic-light controlled major thoroughfare now.

[cshenk]

That's pretty silly. Stop lights are longer than that. My state (Virgina) is silly too at 3 minutes when average stop light is 4 minutes. I don't think it's enforced though.

[rbowman]

Toronto is in Ontario, not Quebec. Montreal, which is in Quebec, is NYC North and runs heavily to arrogant jerks. The rest of the province is like comparing upstate NY to NYC.

I don't know about now but Toronto wasn't bad years ago. I asked about a good restaurant and the guy mentioned a Chinese place he liked. He warned that it was in a bad part of town and I should lock the doors when I parked the car. In the US at the time, bad part of town meant you locked the doors while driving, didn't stop at red lights, and kept your .45 locaked and loaded.

[rbowman]

The number of US draft dodgers is dwarfed by the Asians.

"The 2021 census reported that immigrants (individuals born outside Canada) comprise 274,365 persons or 42.2% of the total population of Vancouver. Of the total immigrant population, the top countries of origin were China (63,275 persons or 23.1%), Philippines (29,930 persons or

10.9%), Hong Kong (25,480 persons or 9.3%), India (14,640 persons or 5.3%), United Kingdom (12,895 persons or 4.7%), Vietnam (12,120 persons or 4.4%), Taiwan (9,870 persons or 3.6%), United States of America (9,790 persons or 3.6%), Iran (8,775 persons or 3.2%), and South Korea (6,495 persons or 2.4%).[117]"

"The 2021 Census indicates that 55.7 percent of Toronto's population is composed of visible minorities, compared with 51.5 percent in 2016.[32] [33] According to the 2021 Canadian census, 1,537,285, or approximately

10.7 percent of Canada's visible minority population, live in the city of Toronto; of this, roughly 67 percent are of Asian ancestry. Approximately 34.81 percent of the city's population, or 961,325 individuals in The City of Toronto are Asian Canadians as of 2021."

[invalid unparseable]

I am sure it wasn't enforced. Those laws are there for ulterior reasons. They will enforce the idling bylaw when truckers form a protest line like anti COVID-lockdown.

Just like loitering bylaws: it is illegal to stand around in one spot on a public street. They won't enforce the bylaw, except if some people stand there in protest of something, or hookers waiting for johns. That's why when you see labour strikes, the strikers always form a conga line walking slowly in a circular pattern, and hookers always stroll up and down the street to avoid getting ticketed for loitering.

[invalid unparseable]

rbowman wrote on 2/27/2024 4:24 PM:

In 1967 it was a different story. 1967 was only 22 years after WWII. There were hardly any official immigrants before 1967, except for a small number from Great Britain. The British "brain drain" wasn't at full tilt yet.

As you can see from this Canadian government publication, the turning point was 1967: (

) There was an immigration amnesty soon after the 1967 immigration policy change, when all the non-citizens already present in Canada could apply for Canadian citizenship. All those rich kids from Hong Kong studying in Canadian universities on student visa automatically became Canadian citizens, so were the US draft dodgers (the Vietnam war draft started in

1964). There were no real Chinese from mainland China in those days because China was still behind the "bamboo curtain". Most of "Chinese" immigrants soon after 1967 were actually rich people from Hong Kong. Then there were the Vietnamese "boat people" in the 1970s after the "Fall of Saigon". Then the British "brain drain" was at full tilt. The Philippine immigrants was a more recent phenomenon. Canada was short of babysitters and domestic helpers. Many young Filipinas came under that category. After a while they qualified for Canadian citizenship. My colleague married a White babysitter (domestic helper) from Sweden in the 1990s. She later became a store manger in a famous clothing store chain.

[Clare Snyder]

All my life except 2 years in Africa within 35 miles of Kitchener. Going from Chi-Town to Montreal you woiuld have passed between Canbrige (back then Galt, Preston, and Hespeler) and Kitchener on the new highway 401. Only fuel stops evey 30 to 80 miles - and back then even some of those were a couple miles off the highway.

[Clare Snyder]

The "county Mounties" just pull over cars with out of state plaes

-(they love Ontario plates, apparently) and pick them out od the middle of the herd of North Carolina cars - even worse in Georgia. Can't poss off the people who elect the sherrif and the judge, doncha know - - -

[Clare Snyder]

There were little towns scattered all over a few miles off the McFonald Cartier Freeway (Highway 401). - at least for the first half of the way. From Toronto to Montreal, along the St Lawrence there is a LOT of "no-man's land" - just Belleville and Kingston and Oshawa and Picton - with even most of THEM hardly vidible from the highway - for

4 hours of driving

[Greta Thongturd]

To score preferential treatment like that, you must be friends with Cruella DeWhitmer and Jewell Jones?

[rbowman]

The turning point for the US was 1965 when Emanuel Celler and his shabbas goy, Phil Hart, came up with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. Prior to that immigration was almost completely Europeans and western or northern Europeans at that.

[micky]

This story is so old it might not matter to most, but in 1971, I was driving back to Chicago from San Antonio, by way of New Orleans. With Pennsylvania plates, because my mother lived there and she didn't move around like I did.

In the middle of Mississippi, I saw enormous black smoke. Didn't look like it was coming from a fire, but I wanted to know where it came from. I was on a two lane road going north, and I soon came ot an intersection, with the road going off to the right, but only for 500 feet. Only one or two small buildings on the road.

I stopped just past the intersection, and almost backed up through the intersection in order to get off the road, but I thought maybe I shouldn't. There was one car parked on that side street and I went ot talk to the two black men sitting in the car. They told me the smoke was from the paper factory. Good, now I knew.

I went back to my car and before I could drive away, a cop walked up to the window. He wasnted to see my license and registration, so I showed them to him. I said, Did I do anything wrong? And he drawled, "No, we just like to know who's coming through."

He gave me back my id and I drove away. What he didn't notice is that both my drivers license and my car's registration were expired. There had been a flood at the Pennsylvania prison where plates were made and the plates had been extended by one month, two times. And the license was no good because when I was in Central America she send me my new license and said to sign it and return it. That was too much for me to understand, so I just signed it and kept it. It seems the standard procedure was to send it back with the money and then they'd send it back to you again! It had written on it, at an angle, in light green, "Void unless validated" but that didn't make me understand either. Not until I saw my mother months later did I understand. I wasn't trying to avoid paying.

I was glad I had not backed through the intersection. I dont' think the white cop would have bothered me at all if I hadn't talked to those black guys, but he clearly didn't look closely at my ID.

[micky]

But we got the best view of stars that I've ever had. There were thousands, really close together.

After that, I always kept two quarts of oil in the trunk of my car, and I still do, 57 years later. I was only 20 then, still green.

A friend from Silver Spring Maryland saw my car in Montreal. He'd never seen it before but it had a U. of Chicago decal and a Delta Upsilon decal, and that narrows it down to me. he left a note on the windshield.

Then on the way back in western Michigan on an xway just after dawn, while the passengers were asleep, I wanted to see how fast I could go. It took 3 or 4 minutes to creep up from 100 to 110, and that's as high as the speedometer went. Then when I told my friench Rich, he asked, Did you hide it? I didn't know about such things, but 110 was more than fast enough. I really should not have done it without asking the passengers for permission, and I still shouldn't have done it.

I got back to Chicago and I opened the hood to admire the engine on the

17-year old V-8, and there were bubbles coming out from the side of one cylinder head. Even then I avoided bad news so I just slammed the hood down and didn't open it again for weeks. When I did, the bubbles were gone, so it worked!

But later when I got to use a compression tester, two adjacent cylinders had low compression. Yet the car ran fine, could cruise on the Indiana turnpike at 85mph with no trouble. So I concluded that at cranking speed there was time enough for the gas to excape from the cylinder on the compression stroke to the other one, but at 30 or 85 miles an hour, there was no time for that, and it's like the gasket was still good.

Does that sound reasonable?

[micky]

I think there is a wide range of stop light length. My impression is that in areas of low traffic, the intervals are short, but where there is high traffic they makde the intervals long, like 4 minutes, to avoid the lost time when everyone on one street has to stop and the other street start. When traffic is light, that lost time doesn't matter and they don't want people to have to wait through a long light.

In guatamala city at a few of the intersections the time remaining was displayed. It counted down, and not just until the light turned red, but also until the light turned green. I've never seen that before, though I have seen it in some country where one of the lights flashes just before the light turns green.

[Clare Snyder]

Nope. Not at all

[Cindy Hamilton]

Nope. I'm just a nice, gray-haired old lady.

As I said, it was a fundraiser. All they really wanted was my $160. They didn't want to cause me undue anxiety or raise my insurance rates.

I had to look up Jewell Jones. What a putz.

[Scott Lurndal]

The average nationwide is 60 to 90 seconds. A four minute wait time is highly unusual and very rare.