In other news

[protege]

For the most part America is not the wild west where you end up in a shoot out as an average citizen on a weekly basis, some of the cops do but that really depends on your area.

Exactly. I live out in the 'burbs. We simply do not have violent crime in my area. In fact, my borough's cops have nothing better do. Other than eating donuts and pulling people over for going 1 mph over the limit, that is Seriously though, my area is pretty safe, compared to other areas. That still doesn't mean that I will leave my vehicles and home open for unauthorized entry. I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid

Not all areas are like that though. For example, my grandmother's house was out in the country. Very quiet (not to mention dark) there at night. Even though she was 3 miles outside the nearest town, the police could take anywhere from 10 minutes to a half-hour to show up. Why? The Norfolk Southern's railroad crossing south of town--you can easily be held up there 15-20 minutes if the train has to stop...or back up!

With that in mind, many homeowners out that way *are* armed, and they *will* shoot burglars. Hell, some will even shoot at trespassers Throw in the idiots making meth...and you'd have to be insane to break into someone's home in the country. Yet, people still do it, and occasionally, someone gets killed.

[Canarr]

Personally, I've never learned how to change a tyre. I'm not the least bit interested in cars (beyond having one that transports me where I want to go), nor in being able to perform this process myself out of some misguided sense of male pride.

Therefore, I'm a member of the German Automobile Club, enabling me to call friendly, uniformed professionals whenever I have any kind of trouble involving my vehicle. And that usually works just fine.

[Andara Bledin]

I don't have time to be sitting around twiddling my thumbs waiting for AAA to show up to change my tire for me. I could be done and back on the road in the 15-20 minutes that is the shortest wait time I've ever been quoted. It's a dead simple process that is easier than changing the batteries in some devices.

^-.-^

[Canarr]

Granted; but I'm lazy that way...

[insertNameHere]

I guess I'm not a fan of waiting for uniformed professionals to come handle a situation that really is a non-issue if your prepared and know how to handle yourself. It is nice to know if you need those professionals they exist but the waiting times are downright out outrageous especially if you need to resolve something right then instead of X hours after incident. I mean really 5 minutes to change my tire, i guess im not counting time to pull out the tire and tools from trunk, but of course that is negated by how long it takes to tell the operator where you are. It is also why I have a 4way wrench. It makes simple work of removing the lug nuts quickly, they cost all of $10, and I actually got mine free from someone who said, "piss on changing tires i have AAA, i don't intend on using this anymore"

[Andara Bledin]

I can see, if you live in a smaller country with blanket cell coverage not bothering with the whole tire changing thing. But when your country has counties that are bigger than some other countries, with miles of deserts and plains and no guaranteed cell coverage, it's actually a very good survival skill to know how to change your own tire.

^-.-^

[Canarr]

Granted, the second.

It's pretty rare to be in Germany and both outside of cell range, and more than a few miles away from the next town - we're small that way.

@waiting for uniformed professionals: I see no problems there because mostly, there's no rush. And I've yet to be in a life and death situation where I absolutely couldn't afford to wait half an hour for someone to show up. Yeah, waiting is annoying, but I find it a small price to pay for the certainty that my tyre was changed by someone who's been trained for this and knows what he's doing.

[protege]

@waiting for uniformed professionals: I see no problems there because mostly, there's no rush.

Depends on where you break down. I for one, really don't want to break down in certain neighborhoods. For example, when one of my cars started overheating in Hazelwood one hot afternoon. Keep in mind that the gang wars of the early 1990s were at their peak...and there had been *several* shootings in that neighborhood already that week. Would you want to wait around in that area? I sure as hell didn't!

Also, I've noticed that AAA doesn't always have the best directions. Their maps do not have newer subdivisions on them, and sometimes don't have updated street names. Found that out after I broke down near the zoo in 2006. It took the dispatcher about 15-20 minutes to figure out where I was. The cross street where I was sitting, had been renamed to "Wild Things Way," and never updated on the AAA maps. Even after I gave the *next* street, the fact that the Highland Park Bridge was behind me, several landmarks...she had no idea where the hell I was.

I couldn't fix the car myself...since I didn't have a spare timing belt, or even my tools with me. I can handle changing tires--I once swapped out all 4 of the MG's in about 10 minutes--but if I don't have the tools or parts, I'm SOL.

Speaking of that car, AAA did an awesome job hauling it back to the garage when it broke down on its maiden voyage...because of a split carb diaphragm. I could have fixed it, but I wasn't about to risk damaging the rebuilt engine. Anyway, about an hour later, the AAA truck showed up, loaded the car, and dropped it off.