Question for you: What’s 3 inches tall, and pisses me off? That’s right, the answer is speed bumps.
Now, don’t get things twisted, I’m not one of those Volkswagen kids with crazy camber, zero suspension travel, and frequently cracked oil pans. I am a responsible adult that enjoys driving sporty cars. My daily driver is a Porsche Boxster with 100% stock suspension, and a 1995 Audi Ur S6 with a 1″ sport spring kit from H&R, and perhaps more importantly, a 3″ cat-back 2Bennett exhaust system. When I pulled into my apartment complex this evening, there was a temporary sign stating to take caution, as they had just installed a new speed hump. In fact, they had installed two new speed humps, increasing the number of speed bumps I need to traverse to get to my garage to a grand total of three. The one that’s been there all along is maybe 1.5 inches tall, and I’ve never had any issues driving over it. The second one is taller than the first, but still causes no issues. The third one, though, is absolutely too tall.
I hate it. It’s absolute bull, and I’m about to go on an old-man-get-offa-my-lawn-rant about it. Hit the jump to join me on this journey of salacious prose against the fools that run my neighborhood!


This speed bump has been installed for perhaps only a handful of hours by the time I arrived home from work. It wasn’t there when I went to work, so all of these scrapes are brand-spankin’-new. In fact, after I got home and took the dogs for a walk, I decided to walk out and take these pictures. In the few short minutes that I was out there, I watched 8 cars traverse this ridiculous obstacle, and 6 of them scraped their exhaust/unibody weld seams. Everything that scraped was completely stock, from a Hyundai Sonata and a Honda Accord to a Prius and a new Subaru Impreza. The two that didn’t scrape? A Toyota Rav-4 and a lifted Nissan Titan. Yep, that’s the honest truth.

While I realize this is Nevada, and BroDozers have increased the average ride-height of registered vehicles in this state to probably somewhere near my kneecaps, there are some of us in this state remaining that enjoy sporty and perhaps aftermarket-lowered sports sedans, roadsters, and the occasional coupe with sporting intention. In this neighborhood alone, there is my pair of road hugging automobiles, an Evo X, a MINI Cooper S, a couple of Miata, a BMW Z3, and a BRZ that might not be able to make it over this bump without incurring at least some sort of damage. There’s also a practically subterranean Scion Xb that I see around occasionally. We may not share the same joy of driving, but we probably are equals in our hatred of this new difficulty in getting home.

I’m not exactly sure why this speed bump was necessary. I have never once thought that people were driving too quickly through our neighborhood. In fact, most people keep their speed to a respectful 10-15 miles per hour. There are very few children in this neighborhood, maybe a dozen or so kids among at least a gross of residences. I’d venture that they’re more attentive to passing cars than I am at 11PM when I’m walking to the mailbox with my nose buried in my smartphone screen.

In conclusion, I’m not exactly happy that I can’t drive my cars to my door anymore. What do you think? Am I being a whiny little baby? Should I just sell my sports cars and buy the FJ60 Land Cruiser I’ve always wanted? Should I be upset that my rent money is being spent on ridiculous things that further inconvenience the residents of this fine establishment? Give me your input in the comments below.
Side note: I don’t know what it is about companies in Reno that build these speed bumps, but there are a number of them in this town that are [The Rent Is Too GD High Guy Meme] TOO GD HIGH! [/The Rent Is Too GD High Guy Meme]. There’s one at the grocery store and another in the office park in which I work that I consistently scrape on when I’m alone, and are absolutely impassable with a passenger. Whoever you are, if you’re reading this, I’m begging you… PLEASE! STOP! IT!
All terrible cell-phone images ©2015 Bradley C. Brownell/Hooniverse, All Rights Reserved