On a brief trip to San Francisco last week I had a very interesting experience with Californian Police and the American way of attending to auto repairs, especially auto glass replacement. Driving back to my hotel in my friend’s loan vehicle, a Police vehicle followed me into the hotel car park no doubt to check why such a handsome guy like me was driving the car. What turned out to be a standard license check then became a vehicle inspection which found no other defect than a chip in the glass windshield. I don’t know what happened to the “land of the free”, the USA is most certainly now a Police State where people’s movement is heavy restricted by officious authority. Oh the Police were deliberately polite, but in an official manner were the use of the word “sir” was nothing more than condescending. I was a police officer for 8 years in Australia, and it is hard for me to imagine where such oppressive policing could ever be thought to be useful.

Yet here I was in a foreign country having to fix the windshield as I was directed to repair the vehicle without driving it again until it was repaired. That is, the Police forbade me to drive to a repair shop to have the tiny problem resolved. It truly felt like the Police were on some sort of commission structure from the auto glass repair industry – but I guess it could have been worse; I could have been Hispanic or black.

So back at the hotel room, letting my fingers do the walking in the Yellow Pages, I found a brilliant auto glass replacement service which not only made me laugh with their friendly service, they came to the hotel within 3 hours and repaired the chipped windscreen on the spot. After being so disappointed by the Police attitude and treatment, I was again very happy to be in America simply because of the high quality service I received by the auto glass replacement guys.