Pit bulls have gained a reputation for being mean, vicious dogs, but in my experience they're no different from any other breed. If they're raised to be mean and vicious they will be, and if they're raised with kindness and affection they won't. Of course, even the gentlest dog can go into "attack mode" if it believes it needs to for whatever reason, but that depends on the temperament of that specific dog.
I shall probably get shot down for this, but if there's one sort of folk that kills you with kindness it's US retailers. My wife and I go off the beaten tourist track, the places we visit rarely hear an English accent, as a result they cannot do enough for us.
I've had my current driver license for, best guess, about 20 years now. I have a clean driving record--no tickets or accidents--so they've just sent me a new one every time the previous one expired. Apparently, someone finally noticed how long it's been because I received a letter from the Department of Motor Vehicles last week stating I need to make an appointment to take a driving test before they'll renew my license this time.When you got your driver-license since 14 1/2 years.
I wish I could say that, but I had some "issues" in my younger days that were apparently a red flag to the California DMV--an accident in 1978 for which I was deemed to be at fault, and enough speeding tickets between then and 1981 for a judge to threaten to suspend my license. What can I say, I was young and foolish. But I was a delivery driver for a local construction company at the time and would probably have lost that job if my license was taken away, so that was my wake-up call to start behaving myself. Then in 1988 I passed out at a local theater after seeing a movie. Long story short, my license was suspended until my doctor(s) and I could prove to the DMV that the cause had been diagnosed and resolved so that it wouldn't happen while I was driving. Since then, getting my license renewed has been a breeze, especially since they just started mailing them to me.
As for the photos, yeah, they're maybe a step up from a mug shot. As I mentioned above the current photo on my license was taken about 20 years ago, and I look like a cross between Charles Manson and a member of the Robertson family seen on Duck Dynasty.
Unless you're driving like a complete jackass, around here most police officers will look the other way if you're driving up to 5 miles per hour over the posted speed limit simply because speedometer calibration on most cars is somewhat vague at best; one car's 25 mph is another car's 28 mph.
My last drivers license was 15 years old, every one who saw it said it was the best photo they had ever seen on a license. The secret, I was apparently in a really good mood that day and had a great big smile. Last year, I had to go in and renew it, so I got a great big smile on, when the prototypical DMV worker told me I could not smile because of facial recognition software. I of course was unhappy, and she snapped the photo right then, no do overs thank you! A friend of mine is a retired maximum security prison guard, he said I looked scarier then any of his inmates.
I had that many on my record when that judge threatened to revoke my license.
I think the only reason he didn't was because I was the only civilian in the courtroom that day who had the good sense to show him the proper level of respect without being snide or surly.
Scariest motoring incident that I ever saw was in Egypt. We were in a coach heading out to see the pyramids, the road was three lanes wide. On the inside lane was a service bus packed to the gunwales with people, we were in the outside lane and in the middle was a small car. The three lanes merged into two lanes, the two buses came alongside one another. I never did know what happened to that car.
I can't recall ever spinning any of my Beetles a full 360 degrees, but with the engine weight in the back they did tend to get a little "tail happy" now and then. This was part of the reason Ralph Nader dedicated an entire chapter to the 1960-64 Chevrolet Corvair in his book "Unsafe at Any Speed". Most American drivers were unfamiliar with driving rear-engine vehicles and the fact that having the engine weight in the back changed the cars' handling characteristics (i.e., a tendency to "oversteer"), so that combined with the also-unusual-in-the-U.S. swing axle that would "tuck under" in certain circumstances led to a lot of drivers losing control and causing collisions.
