Hacker News

It's pleasantly surprising how much positive vibes you can get driving an unusual car. On a business trip last year, I arrived late at night to the hotel and there was a rank of the smallest cars I'd ever seen:

https://www.drive.com.au/news/microlino-battery-electric-bub...

The next morning I was able to hire one out to travel to the venue. At a pitstop on the way, another driver followed me into the carpark and excitedly asked me where I found the car so that he could go get one too.

To be honest, it wasn't a comfortable or easy drive. The speed topped out at 90kph and the steering felt gravelly. But it was fun getting in and out of the front of the car.

That's just not enough motive to waste someone's time.

And, no offense intended, that car is not that interesting. I guess policing must be boring.

Let me be the first to say that this is a lovely website in a lovely, slightly modernized turn-of-the-millennium style.

Agreed, the lede should be unburied! I've made that the top link and will put the submitted link in the toptext. Thanks!

It’s like looking at an adult Richard Scary tale.

"current project is a “Diesel punk” vehicle called the Starfield Dragonwing Intergalactic Speedster"

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DXfDQb7EmU4/

In the early 2000s the media ecosystem decided to re-tell every story, but darker & “grittier”. Then 9/11 happened and the darkness became permanent. It would be nice if we were coming out of that phase!

I'm presuming the original headline was some variant of "Giant Banana Pulled Over in Montana: Driver Says Cops Have Stopped Him 100s Of Times" (originally submitted URL, since changed).

Mainly because the colon from the original was omitted, imo.

The movement is still alive. I hosted a couchsurfer last week.

https://www.bewelcome.org/

https://www.warmshowers.org/

Yup. That's a clear Fourth Amendment violation.

Same with the "pulled over to give you an ice cream" feel-good ops they do. https://abc7ny.com/post/video-police-hand-out-ice-cream-inst...

An illegal detention is still an illegal detention if it's being done nicely.

The thing is, you can be reasonably sure when you pull over a big banana car, that the driver won't be a curmudgeonly prick who invokes the fourth amendment.

Do some reading on all the 1000X-worse abuses of police power which are sadly routine in America.

Banana cars getting pulled over for selfies is a massive improvement.

Meh, you might technically be right but the world is better if everyone can have a bit of fun, even police. I’m not super sympathetic to the “I was minding my own business driving a giant banana when the police pulled me over to ask me about it” argument - this guy seems fine with it too, but it’s not like there’s any reason to drive it other than for the attention.

And the “I pulled you over because you peeled out” - I mean it’s fun. Anyway, if it’s harmless I don’t really see the problem.

The issue is false pretext

I hate that we have to ask this question but I'm wondering like cj...what made the post sound breathless? I type like OP pretty often. His post has plenty of valid punctuation. Commas, periods and dashes that(IMO) make me think it isn't LLM-written.

I would honestly be surprised if it turns out it was written by an LLM.

As someone who rides bikes most of the time, the right question is how you handle it.

Traffic stops can and do go bad. Each is a risk, even if small. If they discover something like a bag of drugs in the back, it raises clear Fourth Amendment issues.

Cops shouldn't be putting law-abiding citizens at risk for a selfie.

While absolutely and sadly true, something tells me that rogue banana drivers are not the ones most likely to be killed in a traffic stop.

Besides, his family would surely win the resulting case… on a peel.

There's almost a zero percent chance of a police officer harming him during one of these stops. Annoying him a perhaps violating his civil rights, possibly, but not harmed.

He’s totally fine. He’s driving a car that basically no minority would ever drive, plus it has an open cockpit to facilitate the officer’s “trust but verify” instincts.

If im a drug smuggler I'm definitely driving the most boring, common car directly BEHIND the banana car.

Yes but every good police officer had watched Arrested Development and so knows that there’s always money in the banana stand.

What possible technical problem would a cop be qualified to not only recognize and diagnose, but also have any useful input on?

Cops shouldn't be pulling over anybody without either direct evidence of a potential crime or a warrant.