Especially for tall people, there really isn’t that much open windshield. Don’t think of it as ‘the windshield is three feet tall and seven feet wide’. Think of it in percentages. How much of your field of view is the crap hanging from the rearview blocking when you’re sitting in driving position?

Not to mention shiny crap that makes it even worse.. .I’ve seen people with CDs, (and apparently there are blank CDs with printed labels sold for the sole purpose of) hanging from their rearview, spinning and wobbling back and forth, flashing reflected light everywhere. Back when fuzzy dice were new, cars were HUGE, and a set of three inch or so fuzzy dice would hang out of one’s field of view, or at least not obscure most of it… but now, cars are too small to get away with it.

They swing and move as the car does and if long enough can even interfere with the driver. People really do put that much crap up there.

It’s a heck of a lot easier to ban everything than to find a “safe and reasonable limit” and then try to police that limit.

Who’s the most common victim of a driver’s limited visual field? The other person that gets run into.

It’s no more “along the same lines” as murder and suicide are to each other.

The dice … or in my case … the rosary beads are not the problem … but driving with something that knowingly adds to the distractions and los issues associated with driving is the problem. Being a driver is not about accessorising, its about taking responsibility for minimising the risk of your actions in a way that everyone can enjoy driving or riding.

If you arn’t going to look at the thing you’ve hung in your car then why hang it in the first place?

Fuzzy dice may be cute and it may suck to be told that we have to do something but to be honest, I’d quite cheerfully wrap that darn dangly thing around her neck until she appreciates just how dangerous she was that day.

Don’t even get me started on LOS issues … I swear I can loose a bus behind the rear pillar of my car!

And yeah, we live in such a litigious society that if there aren’t specific laws made because someone did something stupid, the products themselves have to carry disclaimers and warnings. F’rinstance, a few years ago, I bought my sister some glass plates for Christmas. There was a warning sticker on them which included, among other things, “Do not use for popping corn.” Which meant that at some point, some flippin’ idiot put some oil on one of those plates, placed it on their stove burner, and added popcorn. Naturally, that would have resulted in shards of glass flying, hot oil spattering, and quite likely a grease fire, after which said moron sued the manufacturer for injuries/damages.