Cigarette butt-throwing dumb-ass drivers

What is WRONG with you people? I drive about behind some cars, normally, and the driver in front of me throws a cigarette butt! The cigarette butt flys through some turbulence, swirls onto my hood, bounces off of it hurling ash into my car vents, and bounces over the left side of my car at 100km/h!

Here's an idea:

USE THE ASHTRAY.

They were built there for a reason. Hours of resources pulled into designing the perfect hinge for the perfect door for the ashtray.

Please, use it.
Thank you.

Here in Florida, butt-throwing drivers are not only a nuisance, but can be a danger as well. Over the past few years, our drought index has been extremely high, and I can't even count the number of grass, brush, and woods fires we have responded to that were caused by a careless smoker.

In the middle of 2001, the fire danger was so high we had two incidents that made the papers involving butt-throwing drivers. In the first, a woman driving down the road in Pasco County threw a butt out the window, even though many alerts had been issued that even a minor spark could cause a major fire. A Pasco County Sheriff's Deputy happened to observe this, pulled her over, and arrested her for the act. I forget what the exact charge was, but it was something along the lines of endangering the public.

Then, a week later, a gentleman was pulled over on the side of I-4 for a traffic violation. While he was waiting for the officer to write the ticket, he threw his lit cigarette butt out the car window. The officer observed this, and promptly cited him for the violation, on top of a charge of driving without a license. Both charges put him in jail for 30 days.

So please, please think twice before throwing your cigarette butt out the window. It doesn't take much for a small fire to erupt into an inferno, especially if the conditions are right. And especially don't do it anywhere in Florida, even more so if you are near Tampa.

Reasonably speaking, it's not treating cigarette smokers as second-class citizens by expecting them to not throw cigarette butts out the window. Why?

Cigarette butts are BURNING GARBAGE.

Are we expecting something special of smokers by asking them to not commit crimes such as littering or arson? Of course not. If I set some paper on fire and threw it out the window of my car, of course people would be upset. I don't care about your secondhand smoke, and far be it from me to regulate your personal habits. You still can't hurl fire at me and expect me to take it sitting down.

Not moral regulation. Just simple reasonable behavior; there's no need to insult or condemn smokers; it just happens that non-smokers are not likely to be throwing cigarette butts around. And, obviously, most smokers would not engage in such activity, blah, blah blah. People who throw gum on the ground are almost as bad.