Riding Mass Transit Is Like Inviting 20 Random Hitchhikers Into Your Car

30 Replies to “Riding Mass Transit Is Like Inviting 20 Random Hitchhikers Into Your Car”

1. Electronically: what a lie!
   It’s like saying the wires in your auto engine CREATE the power.

2. Hi, I don’t know you and it’s cold and flu season and you don’t know if I washed my hands after I went to the bathroom, but you would hold hands with me?
   I suspect that there are many women thinking eeeewwwww! and checking their budget to see if they can afford a car right now.

3. To power the infrared element would require hundreds if not thousands of watts. I suspect that the two contact plates are tied to a resistance sensing circuit. Our bodies are much better conductors than the air so when two people complete the circuit resistance drops which triggers the control circuitry to energize a transistor or relay.

4. Design flaw. The energy source (which is definitely not 10,0000 Duracell AAA batteries) only gets turned on when multiple people are in the shelter. i.e. One person is incapable of turning it on by himself.
   Obviously designed by a UofT grad.

5. No. No. No. No.
   A thousand times no.

6. Tommyknockers

7. *note to self* Dump stock in P&G which owns Duracell

8. “I suspect that there are many women thinking eeeewwwww! and checking their budget to see if they can afford a car right now.”
   You’ve hit upon the principal flaw in the whole ideology of public transit:
   People don’t use public transit because they want to. They use it because they have to.

9. I don’t consider myself a germaphobe but Oct thro’ April I carry a wee bottle of handsanitizer….and I DON’T TOUCH PEOPLE!
   Snot rocket science…..(pun intended)…..

10. The other thing that really grates here is the potential for an entirely contrived incident or disturbance.
    What if one person simply decided they didn’t want to hold hands, thank you very much, and the rest of the shelter occupants became belligerent about it?

11. The article missed the best part: not only do the heaters turn on but the soothing song “We Are The World” begins to play.

12. Prelude to the MATRIX.

13. A warm coat would suffice.

14. One other thing. Who is going to take their gloves off to A.) touch a metal plate, B.) risk frostbite just for some crappy heat. One person is crazy enough, but I don’t think you will find a bus shelter full of crazy people.

15. … and I dunno about you, but REMOVING gloves isn’t on the shortlist todo when it’s freezing outside. This is a good Energizer commercial.

16. Hi, I’m just in from a third world Country,and I’m carrying smallpox complicated by tuberculosis, hold my hand.
    What absurd touchy-feely-ism!

17. Being Montreal, I’m surprised there’s not a brass pole and some genital grinding required to turn the thing on.

18. PaladinPhil writes: “I don’t think you will find a bus shelter full of crazy people.”
    Clearly, he’s never lived in Halifax.

19. I wonder if there is any copper in that system. If there is, it may not be there for long when homeless types find out.

20. Make sure you have your consent form handy before you start with the all the touching. Just sayin.

21. Who cares – the point is that Duracell has some good marketing folks that wanted to create an interactive campaign that is just a little bit controversial and results in lots of people blogging about it, doing their marketing for free. It doesn’t even matter if the thing works. Mission accomplished from a marketing perspective!

22. I am sure you are right. Enough current to make useful heat would electrocute any person whose body was in the current loop. So it’s a control signal only, probably needs only microamps to trigger.
    With a few feet of wire, a one-Meg resistor, and some electrical tape, you could probably keep that sucker turned on 24/7.

23. One word: Scabies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scabies

24. Advertisement for Duracell increases sales of Energizer brand batteries, experts baffled.

25. An easy solution to an easily solved problem.
    Furnish all shelters with hibachis. Have the patrons feed the fire with discarded coffee cups,old newspapers and other detritus found on the sidewalks.
    No talking, touching or any other interaction required.

26. Mass transit orgies is the future.
    This idea probably comes from the TDSB.

27. Just go in there and drop a SBD, and clear the place out!!!!
    And the end of such stupidity.

28. Doesn’t work with just one person, and doesn’t work with people who don’t speak French and can’t understand the friggin’ French-only instructions.
    You can always tell a hipster designed something if its sixteen kinds of stupid and includes holding hands. Its like they’re all stuck in pre-school, permanently. I’m surprised they didn’t make people sing too.
    I am developing a new respect for the Knockout Game, if only applied to Hipsters. Like Hippy punching, Hipster punching is never wrong.

29. A problem with a very simple solution. Run a wire between the plates and, voila, instant heat and none of this having to make contact with bus passengers of unknown cleanliness. Of course, this would require someone to be prepared enough so that they normally carry wire, wire cutters and needle nose pliers with them wherever they go (which I normally do).

30. If I had hands I’d drive a car.