So I ended up cooking for like five hours today. It was really satisfying, and now I'll be eatin' pretty for at least a week. Currently residing in my fridge is
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You're correct about the public backlash against police for spending too much time on car-vandalism cases, and correct about the fact that they would follow the public's advice to spend more time on violent crime cases. But you're in incorrect in thinking that they would waste valuable resources on a task force. Given the meager jail time and fines dispensed on convicted tippers, the energy and risk involved in pursuing organized teams would make such task forces a waste of effort. The police would begin to treat teams like the mob - with a reserved dislike. Law enforcement would tolerate teams that maintained a 0-casualty rate, and some states (California, Washington, Oregon, among others) would go one step further in providing teams with a police chaperon. This individual would travel with the team in much the way a war reporter would travel with troops, but with the express purpose of ensuring public safety.
Expecting individuals to follow "codes of conduct" in the heat of a defensive maneuver is like expecting soldiers to follow the Geneva Convention while in the heat of battle. Great in theory, but it breaks down in actual practice. As such, it is up to the teams to obey the rules of the league regarding interaction with other teams. No physical contact is allowed at all, and you may not participate in tips outside your own turf.
Dangerous Defensive Devices (DDDs) would be outlawed almost as soon as they had been legalized, after a large set of tipping and non-tipping casualties. In some of the ensuing arrests and litigations, damage done by DDDs was in considered a premeditated assault by the SUV owner, and hefty jail terms were doled out.
Tipping leagues would be re-legalized after several sessions in front of the Supreme Court, during which time it became clear that leagues were the only way to enforce conduct rules. Defenders of tipping leagues successfully demonstrated that leagues didn't promote SUV tipping so much as make sure it was done in a safe and organized manner.
The sport would be, as it always had been, about overturning SUVs. The assist tools are a part of the method, and teams could be quite creative and inventive. Very few teams are going to go out and buy a Caterpillar or a front-end loader, because it is too slow and too visible; when they get caught by police and their equipment is confiscated they're going to lose a considerable amount of money. Regulation of tools would exist in a spectrum of strictness from amateur leagues upward, culminating in the Olympic standards (as described previously). But, while many of these rules would prevent certain types of vehicle damage, they would exist to prevent human casualties that are associated with such damage.
The Olympics would never see vehicle planting. The Olympics take place in countries that can support them, and such countries are generally industrialized nations. Planting SUVs would lead, as you note, to corruption and bribery. Scant targets would be an obstacle that teams would have to overcome. During the third Summer Games, when prospective SUV counts were extremely low, a mechanic-intensive South Korean team slipped through several loopholes by stripping some cars of their bumpers and roll cages and installing them onto large vehicles in order to change the classification of the vehicles into SUVs. This worked because the Olympics had not created a Brand List of True SUVs (BLTS), as most professional leagues had done by that point, but instead defined an SUV as a certain set of vehicle characteristics. Even though other teams tried to emulate the South Korean tactics, they had fielded too few mechanics and did not have the same level of preparation and experience with vehicle alteration. South Korea took the gold medal with uncanny ease.
Let's try to remember that there is a lot more to the Olympic games than the SUV Tipping Competition, and the honor of being a host nation (nation, not city) would overshadow the damage to some local personal property (if anything, it would merely cause certain car insurance premiums to rise temporarily).
You say "decent competition" as if the Olympics exist only to entertain the viewers...
Lord help me if I ever have to get in a debate with you over something political or philosophical.
However--Police forces have, at various points throughout history, shown themselves to be remarkably adept at spending ridiculous amounts of money and manpower on essentially "trendy" issues. The primary reason for this is, insofar as they are funded by taxpayers and are a profession unofficially monitored by the press and citizens who want to make sure they're getting their money's worth, they are vulnerable to the wants and needs of the taxpayers, even if such a move is more to save face than to really keep towns safer. Thus, if the Highlands Ranch general populace demands more stringent protection of their vehicles, the police force would feel great pressure to provide it. And I fail to see how police officers are more likely to follow their codes of conduct than the league members are.
I'm not going to disagree with you about wasted taxpayer dollars, nor am I going to touch the topic of police brutality.
But I will say that there is a reason why the police will refrain from creating anti-tipping task-forces. The reason, aside from wasting spending time or effort, is that cops love the sport. Their kids watch it on TV, their spouses place bets on playoff results, and, with decreased SUV purchases, the annual death tolls due to 'rollovers' (of the moving, accidental kind) began down for the first time in history.
Sports teams bring a certain reputation, status, and honor to their host cities. As such, the police would be pressured just as much by the SUV owners to get tough on tipping as they would be by the rest of the 'general populace' to give tippers more leeway.
Expecting individuals to follow "codes of conduct" in the heat of a defensive maneuver is like expecting soldiers to follow the Geneva Convention while in the heat of battle. Great in theory, but it breaks down in actual practice. As such, it is up to the teams to obey the rules of the league regarding interaction with other teams. No physical contact is allowed at all, and you may not participate in tips outside your own turf.
Dangerous Defensive Devices (DDDs) would be outlawed almost as soon as they had been legalized, after a large set of tipping and non-tipping casualties. In some of the ensuing arrests and litigations, damage done by DDDs was in considered a premeditated assault by the SUV owner, and hefty jail terms were doled out.
Tipping leagues would be re-legalized after several sessions in front of the Supreme Court, during which time it became clear that leagues were the only way to enforce conduct rules. Defenders of tipping leagues successfully demonstrated that leagues didn't promote SUV tipping so much as make sure it was done in a safe and organized manner.
The sport would be, as it always had been, about overturning SUVs. The assist tools are a part of the method, and teams could be quite creative and inventive. Very few teams are going to go out and buy a Caterpillar or a front-end loader, because it is too slow and too visible; when they get caught by police and their equipment is confiscated they're going to lose a considerable amount of money. Regulation of tools would exist in a spectrum of strictness from amateur leagues upward, culminating in the Olympic standards (as described previously). But, while many of these rules would prevent certain types of vehicle damage, they would exist to prevent human casualties that are associated with such damage.
The Olympics would never see vehicle planting. The Olympics take place in countries that can support them, and such countries are generally industrialized nations. Planting SUVs would lead, as you note, to corruption and bribery. Scant targets would be an obstacle that teams would have to overcome. During the third Summer Games, when prospective SUV counts were extremely low, a mechanic-intensive South Korean team slipped through several loopholes by stripping some cars of their bumpers and roll cages and installing them onto large vehicles in order to change the classification of the vehicles into SUVs. This worked because the Olympics had not created a Brand List of True SUVs (BLTS), as most professional leagues had done by that point, but instead defined an SUV as a certain set of vehicle characteristics. Even though other teams tried to emulate the South Korean tactics, they had fielded too few mechanics and did not have the same level of preparation and experience with vehicle alteration. South Korea took the gold medal with uncanny ease.
Let's try to remember that there is a lot more to the Olympic games than the SUV Tipping Competition, and the honor of being a host nation (nation, not city) would overshadow the damage to some local personal property (if anything, it would merely cause certain car insurance premiums to rise temporarily).
You say "decent competition" as if the Olympics exist only to entertain the viewers...
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Lord help me if I ever have to get in a debate with you over something political or philosophical.
However--Police forces have, at various points throughout history, shown themselves to be remarkably adept at spending ridiculous amounts of money and manpower on essentially "trendy" issues. The primary reason for this is, insofar as they are funded by taxpayers and are a profession unofficially monitored by the press and citizens who want to make sure they're getting their money's worth, they are vulnerable to the wants and needs of the taxpayers, even if such a move is more to save face than to really keep towns safer. Thus, if the Highlands Ranch general populace demands more stringent protection of their vehicles, the police force would feel great pressure to provide it. And I fail to see how police officers are more likely to follow their codes of conduct than the league members are.
But I'm a dirty anarchist.
Reply
But I will say that there is a reason why the police will refrain from creating anti-tipping task-forces. The reason, aside from wasting spending time or effort, is that cops love the sport. Their kids watch it on TV, their spouses place bets on playoff results, and, with decreased SUV purchases, the annual death tolls due to 'rollovers' (of the moving, accidental kind) began down for the first time in history.
Sports teams bring a certain reputation, status, and honor to their host cities. As such, the police would be pressured just as much by the SUV owners to get tough on tipping as they would be by the rest of the 'general populace' to give tippers more leeway.
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