Saw a yellow car today. Bright yellow. It wasn’t a taxi.

Does anything scream bad judgment louder than buying a yellow car?

Does any action say I suck at making adult decisions more than walking onto a car lot and purchasing the only vehicle that looks like a lemon?

In automotive parlance you’re supposed to avoid the lemon, right?

I just wanted to do something different.

How’s that working out? You had a mullet, pierced your nose. You went to trade school to become a chimney sweep, you went to the prom in your pajamas. Doing things just to be different simply draws attention to the fact that you’re incapable of  rational thought. When I was a kid a wanted to drive around in the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile but when I became twelve I figured out that such an idea was just a bunch of baloney.

Ya, but I need a car that will be easy to find in the Cerritos Mall parking lot.

Really? Then why just stop there? Why not just buy a blimp then you’ll always be able to see your car and your house?

♦

We all know that over the course of a typical day the riskiest, most dangerous thing you’ll do is drive a car. Some people will have a driver’s license, some won’t; lots of people will be uninsured and many drivers will be emotionally unbalanced. As a driver, your task will be to avoid accidents and injury and that often requires quick identification of those drivers and vehicles most likely to go skidding through an intersection or to be traveling southbound on a northbound freeway onramp.

In other words, you want to steer clear of the dude who does things just to be different, and this is something well within your ability because all you really need to do is pick out the dumb guys on the road – they are clearly labeled. They will be driving the silly car brands (the ones that make you say, “I didn’t know real people owned those”) AND, of course, they will own the cars in the silly colors.

If a guy will buy a yellow car, what else might he do? Well, in the name of being different he might drive and study to become a clown at the same time. Remember, he’s essentially telling you – in bright yellow letters – I MAKE BAD CHOICES. He’s likely to leave his vehicle at a traffic stop, he’ll drive with the trunk open, he’ll reach for a girl’s ass as she rides by on a 10-speed. Yellow-car guy will slide to a stop on the shoulder of the 710 Freeway because the odometer just flipped to 10,000 miles and he wanted to remember exactly where he was.

You know all this purely from the fact that he drives a yellow car. Knowledge is power, you’re safe now.

♦

Seventy percent of all car owners buy vehicles that are some shade of white, gray or black. That’s because most people know that the color of a car isn’t supposed to be entertaining, that’s what the radio’s for. These people are adults, their on-road behavior is somewhat predictable. They know that the guy who shows up for the job interview in the purple pin-striped suit never gets hired; they understand that the roads of America are best driven by citizens with a shade of common sense.

Most people who buy blue cards don’t realize it until they get home because the way the sun reflected off the paint when it was on the car dealer’s lot made them think it was black. Oh well.

Who buys an orange car? Pretty much the same guy that buys a yellow car, someone who thinks fruit and cars should be the same color. Avoid him. His driving will be unpredictable and since his favorite color is orange, he pays more attention to the voices in his head than to the rules of the road.

Obviously, people who buy red cars tend to run hot. They think they’re making a statement and so they drive as if they are entitled … to your lane, your parking spot. The most-used item in their vehicles is the vanity mirror and they will cut through traffic and attempt unsafe maneuvers to see themselves in any reflective surface.

Ever see a two-tone car? There’s a word for a guy who drives a car with more than one color – indecisive. You should know that he will be uncertain about merging. At a yellow light he’ll speed up, slam on the brakes and then speed up again all within about a half a block. He’ll put on his blinker to get over and then change his mind. He’s just a sad guy who easily gets pulled in opposite directions and he really shouldn’t be driving.

Dudes that buy green or brown cars really could care less about the color of their car, they just bought the first thing they saw. As a result, they’re pretty good drivers. They tend to be blue-collar workers and they just kinda want to blend in. Hey, dude, why’d you buy a green truck? Oh, is it green? Oh, uh, I don’t know man. These dudes won’t be deep thinkers, and out on the road, this is probably good.

Periwinkle, beige, burgundy, champagne, gold, metallic rust … anyone who drives the odd colored car is trendy, self-absorbed and high maintenance and that’s the way they will drive. These are the kind of people who special order a vehicle from the factory. They think their life is a “limited edition” and that we give a crap. They’re the people who have those wooden massage beads on their seats imported from Malaysia. There’s nothing you can do that will convince them that they are sharing the road with other people.

As you know, this color profiling is scientifically proven and exists for your own protection.

On the way home tonight, pay attention, people will always show their true colors.

Photo on Visual Hunt