Our friend Craig Fitzgerald over at BestRide.com tipped us off to the story of a woman who lit a candle inside of her car, parked in front of a gas station pump and went inside, only to come outside to see her Ford Fusion going up in flames. (You can read the story here.) Reading these kinds of stories just makes my head hurt, as it should: the stupidity should hurt, unfortunately usually others are affected before the individual responsible gets to feel the repercussions of their decision. In this case other people alerted the fuel station to the roasting Ford outside and the fire was extinguished before the situation turned into a ten-minute clip on Destroyed In Seconds and nobody was injured.

This incident begs a question to be asked: Regarding an automobile, at what point in time does an individual’s “good idea” turn into one great big SNAFU, one that could potentially harm more than just the one idiot? You know exactly what I’m talking about: the guy who used a gas can inside of his car as a fuel tank, with the hose running out of the window and under the hood would be a great start. Or maybe the guy who tried to take a car home late at night using two flashlights duct-taped to the fenders, hoping that would be enough. I’ll admit that when I was a teenager I did something as stupid: I tried to drive a car on a rural highway knowing that the hood hinge was questionable at best. I was rewarded when the hood went full-vertical on me at about 80mph with a friend in the car. I flat-spotted the tires badly when I went to stop the car, and once we knew for certain we weren’t having a heart attack, we stripped the hood off of the car and left it, coming back later with a pickup truck to haul it off for scrap. Stupid? Absolutely. Could my inactions have hurt someone? Yes.

We all know the joke about why warning labels exist: because someone was stupid enough to try it once. But wouldn’t some things just naturally stick out as just plain wrong? I may not be a smart man, but even I know that a fire in the cupholder of my car, contained or not, is a horrifyingly bad idea. But nowadays more than ever, a significant section of the population is distracted and instead of paying attention to what they are doing, instead believe that they can multi-task flawlessly. Take notice of all of the cell phone while driving laws being enacted to see how well that works. Did the candle require a notice on it? “CAUTION: This product operates with the production of a flame. Keep out of the reach of children and your pyromaniac teenager, and keep away from flammable materials, plants, the Starbucks cup in your console and your shifter hand. See our website for additional information.” Yikes. Suddenly I understand completely the advent of the autonomous automobile. In a near-reversal of my usual thought process, I think I’d trust the robotics more than the one behind the wheel.