Smokers: Keep your butts in the car, please

Can someone out there please provide a valid reason why it's not totally and wholly unacceptable to toss lit cigarettes out of a car, moving or otherwise?

It's dangerous to you, me and whomever else might be coming along, and it's disgusting. And it's bad for Mother Nature. Shall I go on?

Well, I see it at least twice a day. Last night, for example, I was driving along, minding my own business, when suddenly a bright orange light skimmed through the air and bounced across the road in front of me, spraying sparks across the concrete.

I wanted to catch up to the driver in front of me and force-feed it to him.

I don't understand in what universe this kind of contemptuous behavior is condoned.

First, who knows where that discarded butt is going to land. The offending flicker certainly can't control it. It could blow into my car, or the back of a pickup truck and start a fire. (Don't roll your eyes, it happens.) It could even blow right back into the flicker's car and do the same thing. Perhaps the ignorant cigarette caster, or someone else in the vehicle, will be burned, causing the driver to lose control of the vehicle. You can use your imagination to figure out how that one ends.

Even if an offender's little butt doesn't cause a five-car pileup -- or four-alarm fire -- what do they think happens once it leaves the car?

Of course, it flies onto the pavement -- or into the dry grass on the side of the road -- another fire hazard. And why is this done? Because someone is too lazy to clean out the ashtray in their car, so they opt for an ashtray the rest of us like to call the "Great Outdoors."

Now, I understand that everyone has different perceptions and expectations of the world around them. But this is not something that's negotiable. It shouldn't even be an issue.

True, I hold similar views about litter in general; I'll indefinitely carry around wrappers and cups until I find a garbage can. But where most (stress "most," not "all") people wouldn't just toss their trash into the street, some smokers seem to think their trash doesn't count. I can only presume these are the same people who cluster around outside doorways at shopping malls, doughnut emporiums and even government offices and meticulously throw their butts anywhere but the ashtrays in front of them.

I'm sure someone out there will come up with some excuse about cigarettes being biodegradable. Let me nip that one in the bud: First, tobacco might be biodegradable, but filters and other parts of the cigarette are not. Second, just because something is biodegradable doesn't mean I want to be walking -- or driving -- through a slew of it because some people think their car window, moreover what's on the other side of it, is a personal garbage can. And third, many things are biodegradable -- hamburgers, dead fish, rotting vegetables -- in fact, if these people really want their car window to become a portal between civility and chaos, maybe they'd appreciate the rest of us pulling up beside them and throwing a few of those things back in.

Believe me, I've been tempted. I looked at the guy last night and I wondered, "So, you think you're a big man now, asserting your dominance over the world by throwing trash all over it?"

So, will someone please give me a solid reason why this is acceptable? And I'm not talking about some kind of bizarre alternate-universe scenario with aliens and flashing lights and talking cigarettes; or some once-in-a-lifetime freak emergency where your hand is suddenly on fire. You know as well as I that these people aren't in some extraordinary circumstance. They're just lazy, slovenly folks with no respect for the rest of us, or for the world around them.

So someone -- anyone -- enlighten me. Please.

Or, better yet, enjoy the Great Outdoors ... and park your butts where they belong ... in an ashtray.

Rhonda Wheeler is a journalist with Wheelbase Media, a worldwide supplier of automotive news, features and reviews. You can e-mail her by logging on to www.wheelbase.ws/media and clicking the contact link.