These Car Accessories Seem Like A Terrible Idea, And Consumer Reports Usually Agrees

The Jeep ducking trend is a phenomenon in which one Jeep owner leaves a toy duck for another Jeep owner. It's a gift to a stranger who drives what you drive, and shows more grace than a mere tip of the chapeau. Apparently, there are tens of thousands of people involved in the U.S., Canada, and even overseas. If you drive a Jeep, or don't drive a Jeep, this may or may not matter to you. In our story on the subject from a while back, on becoming a "ducking" Jeep Wrangler owner, the comments were, uh, polarizing.

But we raise the topic because Consumer Reports recently flagged some automotive accoutrements as hazardous, and that includes items that aren't securely anchored. CR dinged cushions that can interfere with active safety features, like airbags and seat belts, as well as seat belt pads, which can also limit that protection's effectiveness. It also said nyet to extenders for water bottle holders, which could make it easier for that bottle to tip free from the holder and get lodged under your brake or gas pedal. Yikes!

While we applaud all that curmudgeonly chiding for the sake of safety, here are a few of our own feelings on the matter. Oh, yes of course, ours are all about safety, too! Well, no, they're not. They're about safety and matters of taste. Because we're snobs and very sensitive to sins of automotive aesthetics. 

There are 163,000 members of the Moo Moo Subaru Facebook group, a wee friend gathering where you can share stories of exchanging dashboard figurines given and received to and from fellow Subaru drivers. This is a more recent phenomenon than Jeep ducking, and Moo Moo Subaru may be even weirder, though it's hard to say. There's a vague attempt at rhyming (say "moo," then "ba-ru"), and it could be harmless. Then again, any loose object in your car poses a risk.

Why? Let's say you get hit from the side in an intersection. The detritus in your vehicle — including you, sans seat belt — gains tremendous energy. That can be a force of up to 25g. (FYI, this is Newtonian physics in action.) So a one-liter bottle suddenly becomes 44 pounds. To reduce the risk of injury, ideally use those lower on-door cupholders. Otherwise, in an accident your teen's 40-ounce Stanley metal mug, even empty, will catapult from the center-armrest cupholder with the force of up to 29.5 pounds.

Please also anchor your ducks and cows with epoxy. A classic rubber duck only weighs a few ounces, but during an accident it will strike with the force of 3.75 pounds. Which is the weight of a 60-ounce water bottle — or 12 baseballs. If your herd of cows lives on your Subaru's rear parcel shelf and you slam on your brakes, you're about to get pelted with fastballs.

As for aesthetics, we think cows and ducks are a bit twee. Matching cow or duck towel seat covers? Those are just plain hideous. If you got your car with leather seating that glues to your skin in the heat, why, oh why, didn't you get cloth seats instead? Because, speaking of cows, you're sitting on them.

The aforementioned automotive sins don't rank near the top of car culture our readers want to end. That said, we're on the side of team ending donks — massive 22-inch wheels with ultra-low-profile rubber. We also think window louvers are dumb. There are two kinds of these. There's the old-man style where they shield the corner of the opening, making it impossible to view your entire side-view mirror. And there's the even dumber kind that muscle-car peeps favor. These fin the breadth of a slanted rear windshield, so you can't see behind your Mustang II. Why not just get a Polestar 4 if you want a useless rearview mirror? Oh, right, those are banned in the USA.

Speaking of items that should be banned, light bars. Just — why? But then, they do serve a function. They tell everyone else on the road that you're a giant, smoking, self-centered turd. And they're illegal or highly regulated as an on-road accessory in lots of states. But cops have other stuff to attend to, so you're probably free to continue in your turdish ways. 

Besides, light bars look dumb. Though, to be honest, nowhere near as dumb as stick-on false external ducts. Or spinning rims, close cousins to donks, and among the dumbest automotive accessories you've seen.

Back to safety, we'll add that bull bars are major hazards to anything and anyone the owner might hit, according to research in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention. This truck nose candy concentrates the force of impact onto vulnerable pedestrians in the event of an accident. Still, all of these accessories, plus cows and ducks and cowls and ducts, shrink before the all-time symbol of idiotic prosthetic emasculation: truck nuts.