Don't mess with it - Kobe's Beef - the dangers of non-standard customizing of automobiles - Column

Auto companies invest millions of dollars and thousands of vehicle test hours to make sure our cars and trucks are safe, reliable, practical, affordable and comfortable. And they're good at it. Good, that is, until some jackass ignores automakers' efforts as well as the laws of physics in an effort to personalize his or her vehicle.

My most reviled personalization is glass tinting. I'm not talking about a little shade band at the top of the windshield either, I mean TINT, as in black. Some of the cars you see on the road today could double as a viewing chamber for a solar eclipse. And I have no idea how you drive such a thing at night. I can only imagine that even the most high tech pair of HID headlamps looks like a couple of hot nails through that glass.

And what about these guys who drop the diameter of their wheels from 16 in. down to 12 in., quadruple the offset so they hang out of the fenders and then put on those little steam roller tires? What the heck are these guys thinking? I asked a chassis engineer about it once and he said they might as well go get a prybar and shove it into the wheel bearing and jump up and down on it. He also noted that the first raindrop that hits the ground will have those cars aquaplaning like barefoot water-skiers. I dare not mention what it does to handling or stopping distance or stability; the possibilities are almost too hideous to consider.

And let's not forget the addition of non-DOT approved lighting. There is no other feeling in the world like having your retinas scarred by oncoming, misaligned, aircraft landing lights that are wobbling around in the jigsaw-cut holes in a fascia. Or, for the vehicle owner who wants to be annoying with lights but is on a budget, there are always those little blue stickers that go on the tail lamp lenses to give them that annoying purplish glow.

Replacement bumpers are another interesting modification that is a favorite among truckers. Automakers work together to create a common bumper height and truck owners promptly replace them with something that will shear off the A-pillars of most passenger cars. But wait until one of those trucks climbs another vehicle in an accident and then flips and rolls. The safely zealots will demand yet another investigation into the stability of trucks and SUVs and the lawyers will start drooling like they heard Pavlov's dinner bell.

Of course, I'd be remiss if I forgot to mention the 5,000-watt aftermarket sound systems that can replicate everything from a dog whistle to a thermonuclear device. These sizeable additions frequently displace optional items like rear seats and package trays and block out annoying sounds such as cries from pedestrians, emergency sirens and vehicle horns.

I could go on and on with examples but the point here is not to document this idiocy, it's to stop it. And before somebody e-mails me with another "free country" speech, this isn't about freedom: it's about safety.

I could care less what color a vehicle is or what kind of material is on the seats or what the shape of the car is. If a person wants to change those things, they can knock themselves out. When I see a truck go by and the inner fenders are being illuminated by some sort of crackling blue plasma, it occurs to me that it's a big waste of energy but that's okay.

What isn't okay is a car that has been modified to blind other drivers, handle or stop erratically, cause injuries in a collision or make it so the driver can neither see nor hear what's going on around them. Some vehicle modifications transcend personalization and are just flat-out dangerous.

The rules for do-it-yourselfers are pretty simple really: If it's purely cosmetic it's fair game. But if it has anything to do with safety or performance, my advice is don't mess with it.

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