There are bad ideas, and then there are catastrophically, almost impressively bad ideas. A driver in South Los Angeles recently managed to combine several of them into a single outing: drinking before getting behind the wheel, deciding to show off for a passenger by spinning donuts in a public parking area, and choosing to do all of this directly in front of a California Highway Patrol office. As far as self-inflicted disasters go, this one deserves some kind of recognition.
A CHP South LA sergeant was at his desk when something cut through the ambient noise of the building: the unmistakable sound of an engine being pushed hard and tires losing grip. He pulled up the office surveillance feed and found exactly what those sounds promised. A Mercedes sedan was laying down smoke right outside the station, the driver working through a series of donuts as if the CHP parking area was a closed course on a Saturday afternoon.
The sergeant made contact with the driver, who offered an explanation that managed to be both completely honest and entirely self-defeating. He was trying to impress his female passenger, he said, and genuinely had not realized he was performing his automotive showcase in front of a police station. Points for transparency, perhaps, but none for situational awareness…