Pedestrian Attacks Self-driving Car in the Mission (curbed.com) 268
An anonymous reader shares a report: Cruise AV, a self-driving car company owned by General Motors, reports that earlier this month an unidentified man in the Mission flung himself onto one of the company's autonomous vehicles while it was conducting a road test. According to a report filed with the California DMV (all companies testing self-driving cars on California public streets are required to make public reports any time an accident happens), the close encounter of the vehicular kind happened at 9:27 p.m. as the car was waiting to make a turn and "stopped at a green light in between crosswalks of Valencia Street and 16th Street, waiting for pedestrians to cross." The car's human driver says that a pedestrian then unexpectedly ran into the street against the traffic signal and "shouting....struck the left side of the Cruise AV's rear bumper and hatch with his entire body." The driver adds, "There were no injuries, but the Cruise AV sustained some damage to its rear light." No witnesses called the police.
What? (Score:5, Interesting)
What's the Mission?
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
most likely they lied to the cops about being hit by the car to sue for a big insurance payout
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In other news, a black teenager ran backwards into a bullet leaving a police officer's gun. No sandwich was found at the scene.
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
Presumably, it's either a community, district, or suburb of San Francisco.... although I was only able to piece together that much by reading the article.
Well played, Slashdot.... well played.
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The Bronks? -- New England Patriots tight end. Roughly 8 feet tall? 300 kg or so? scores lots of touchdowns?
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Fool, it is a District in the Great City of San Francisco. This is like not knowing what The Bronks is.
The name of some random district in San Francisco is NOT notable. And what is the Bronks?
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I applaud you for how many people you snared with that bait. Well done, sir, well done.
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While happy to use internet search engines, 'the mission' is hardly a unique fucking term.
Be very fucking glad people aren't asking where the shithole called San Francisco is.
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Low effort trolling is not to be praised but msmash did a good job here.
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Oh...I thought at first read it was some sort of protest group that was "on a mission", or something to that effect.
That is basically correct. The group was The Spanish Empire [wikipedia.org]. The missions were constructed along El Camino Real [wikipedia.org] ("The King's Road"), each about one day's ride from the next. They had a mission of converting the natives to Christian Catholicism. The "Mission District" of San Francisco is the area of the original Spanish settlement.
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Gothic rock band from the 80s.
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
You have to accept the mission before you can be told what it is.
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The first rule of The Mission is that you do not talk about The Mission.
The second rule of The Mission is that you do not talk about The Mission.
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Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
It's a suburb in San Francisco - The Mission District
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_District,_San_Francisco
San Francisco Shithole (Score:5, Insightful)
I dare any person who has ever been to, or lived in SF to disagree with me.
And I mean it literally as that is where multiple times I have seen someone taking a dump *against a wall*.
Re:San Francisco Shithole (Score:5, Informative)
best tacos in the world
Them's fightin' words...
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San Francisco has some good points.
The Mission, however, much of it is pure squalor, and there are ambulances double-parked on the cross streets all the time because they end up getting called there so often.
I used to work in SOMA, and crossed the Mission to get there from BART. It's not a pretty area.
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donut scene ..
Seriously? What good donuts are there in SF?
Re:San Francisco Shithole (Score:4, Insightful)
Good economy, good jobs, art, restaurants, beach, good transit system, best tacos in the world, fog, not one but two of the best bridges in the country, bison, Hunky Jesus, BYOBW, a little public nudity now and again, music scene, comedy scene, donut scene ... I could go on.
All better things that what you hay-bailn', pickup drivin' yahoos in the flyover states consider culture.
You're trolling but this is fun, and I'm waiting for a build to finish, so I'll bite.
My flyover state has fresh air, incredible scenery, lots of great skiing, hiking, rock climbing, fishing, hunting... and open space, not crammed cheek by jowl full of people. Plus low cost of living and a sense of community that is all but impossible to find in SF. So, different strokes, I guess. I can't figure out why anyone would want to live in a big city. It's fun to visit now and again, especially for the art (great restaurants I can get closer to home).
Oh, and a rusty old pickup has a much better route schedule than the best public transit system ever created. It goes exactly where you want to go, exactly when you want to go, and can carry a lot of stuff. Not only does it not require rails, in a pinch it doesn't even need a road.
Re:What? (Score:4, Informative)
It's a historically hispanic neighborhood about 2 miles from the skyscrapery financial district/downtown.
It's also one of the sunniest, least windy and warmest (5-10F warmer when most of the city is 55-62F year-round) neighborhoods with an abundance of good ethnic (mexican, indian, etc) restaurants. As a result everyone wants to live there, and have successfully pushed out something like 50% of this hispanic population in favor of predominantly white "tech bros". Property owners are allegedly torching their own properties so that they can rebuild old commercial buildings with way more profitable modern, high density residential housing.
The current (neighborhoods in SF change hands every 25-30 years) old guard is pretty anti-modernism of their neighborhood and have vandalized or stopped bike share, car share, removing existing parking (parking here is a nightmare but so is traffic, SF has the lowest car ownership per capita in competition with manhattan, something like 35% and dropping) and opposing new bus lanes. Hispanic owned businesses are not doing amazing. There's a lot of pushback against anything percieved as a threat to the "traditional" Mission neighborhood. Prices went from under $2000 a month for a two bedroom 10 years ago to, I haven't checked recently but probably $3800 to $5000 depending on location; i.e. if you grew up in this neighborhood to parents without a college education (not unlikely) you very likely may not be able to afford to live here when you turn 18 (or whatever age you decide to no longer live with your parents).
So If it wasn't a crazy homeless guy (very likely) I can see this being some tangential offshoot of local opposition in some form.
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much of SF believes the rest of the world revolves around their epicenter.
NYC has the same attitude, except maybe 10X more extreme. But at least for NYC it is somewhat justifiable.
The problem with SF's Tenderloin is that it is named after NY's Tenderloin. Both are historically red light districts. Although SF's Tenderloin is becoming more gentrified over the last 30 years that it will probably need to be renamed.
Re:What? (Score:5, Interesting)
much of SF believes the rest of the world revolves around their epicenter. The idea that people would not know what "The mission" was probably would not even dawn on people like story author.
Maybe, but the story was written for a San Francisco publication that has a San Francisco audience. IE, the article writer's expectation that the website readers would know what "The Mission" is is not unfounded. The submitter of the Slashdot article, however, simply cut and paste the first paragraph of the article and used that as the submission. Not necessarily a bad way to share a story, but when taking a niche article and spreading it to a wider geographic audience than it was originally intended for, it helps to add a little context on top. I wouldn't blame the original publication for that.
We see this all the time on Slashdot when someone submits an article without context, assuming others have a baseline amount of knowledge about what they're talking about.
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The Mission [wikipedia.org] is a district in San Francisco, somewhat akin to the way New York City is broken up into boroughs like the Bronxand Manhattan. From what I've gathered (having never visited the Bay Area), the Mission is well-known for its art scene, LGBTQ community, and food, though hopefully a local can chime in with better information.
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The Mission is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work... when you go to church... when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
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What truth? There is no spoon?
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Mission in the Rain [youtube.com]
Kids these days!
Re: What? (Score:2)
Re: What? (Score:2)
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In the wooden chair
Beside my window
I wear a face born in the falling rain
I talk to shadows from a lonely candle
Recite the phrases from the wall
I can't explain this Holy pain
Six days ago my life had taken a tumble
The orders came from high above they say
A need to use me once again they've got my number
Further the cause boy, yes you know the game
I'll wait here for days longer
Till the sister comes to wash my sins away
She is the lady that can ease my sorrow
She brings the only friend
That helps me find my way
I sea
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A better headline would be ...in a place called 'the Mission' but that's not a slashdot editor's job.
Re: What? (Score:2)
What does this mean? (Score:2)
San Francisco
Next question, what does this mean? "stopped at a green light in between crosswalks of Valencia Street and 16th Street"...
The car should not be stopped between crosswalks. It should stop before the crosswalk.
But, actually, I can't even figure out what they mean by "between crosswalks." Here it is on google maps: https://www.google.com/maps/pl... [google.com]
How can you be "between" the crosswalks, unless the car is actually in the intersection itself?
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The car should not be stopped between crosswalks. It should stop before the crosswalk.
Stopping before the crosswalk is stopping between crosswalks, if there's one behind you as well. In San Francisco, there probably is. Perhaps it was a hamhanded way of explicitly saying that it wasn't in a crosswalk.
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It's not unusual for traffic to be backed up and blocking an intersection. Ideally you don't pull forward unless it's clear, but then a bunch of people turning right on red are going to take your spot.
In some intersections in San Francisco there are so many pedestrians crossing all the time that the only way to turn right is to creep forward as far as you can, and then go for it when the lights change. Sometimes there are cycles of the light where pedestrians have their own "walk" where all crosswalks are active and no cars can move, and that does make turning during traffic cycles much easier, but too many pedestrians will still cross when there's a green car signal but red pedestrian signal.
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None of those have their own style. SF Chinatown is basically Americanized Cantonese, and I would admit that it qualifies, but I can get better Chinese food in Milpitas or Fremont (two small Bay Area cities).
SF Japan town is pretty non-descript compared to other Japantowns.
The wharf has no cuisine, it's a tourist trap that shovels garbage copies of New England food that you find in any ocean side city. Some will argue that Cioppino is the wharf's cuisine, but strictly it is a North Beach dish and best versi
Bay Area Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
You can tell when someone's from the Bay Area because they're so self-important that they describe local locations to the world with no context to explain for people not from the area.
Re:Bay Area Idiots (Score:5, Funny)
Call them Bay Aryans (for their attitude). They love that.
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Quod erat demonstrandum.
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Or are you suggesting that everyone living in New York, Seattle, or any of the other cities curbed.com has a page for originally hailed f
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That doesn't excuse the slashdot editor from being a lazy sack of shit.
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Oh yah, it's not like New Yorkers aren't just as "self-important" when they refer to the SoHo, the Bronx, Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side, etc. Or Altantians (?) refer to Little Five Points, Candler Park or Cabbage Town. Or literally anyone from any other location uses common names for neigbourhoods in their area.
But good job not letting reality get in the way of your prejudice...
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Or Altantians (?) refer to Little Five Points, Candler Park or Cabbage Town.
Lived near Little Five Points (kind of between Inman Park and the MLK center) while I was in grad school. I was underwhelmed. Never been to Candler Park. Have no fucking clue what Cabbage Town is though. OTP is so much better than ITP anyway.
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I've never lived in or even visited the Bay Area, yet I've been aware of the Mission District for as long as I can recall, as well as some of what sets it apart within the city. It's a well-known neighborhood even outside of that local sphere...perhaps not as well-known as I had thought, given the confusion in the comments, but I had no problem reading the headline (despite mostly having lived in South Florida and Texas), and I wouldn't have expected most others to either.
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You can tell someone's from some unimportant patch of the US because they're so self-important that they think a local paper writing an article for local consumption is intended for them. And that they are "the world".
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People from large well-known urban areas are always like this. They say "The City", and mean whatever their city is, like that's the only city in the world. New Yorkers do that. San Franciscans do that. I don't like Los Angelinos do that, at least.
Re:Bay Area Idiots (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe they presume that you live in the 21st century, and in the unlikely case that you actually care about exactly where that is, you have tools available at your fingertips.
Nah, SF is the world's largest open-air insane asylum. Most of them aren't aware other things exist.
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I'm also hundreds of miles away from the "Bay Area", but I know that Valencia and 16th is where Panchitos is, where you can get the best Salvadoran papusas in the US.
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Maybe they presume that you live in the 21st century, and in the unlikely case that you actually care about exactly where that is, you have tools available at your fingertips.
Since I live in the 21st century, I looked it up on google. First hit for "Mission" is: "Also called rescue mission. a shelter operated by a church or other organization offering food, lodging, and other assistance to needy persons. 17. missions, organized missionary work or activities in any country or region."
Context is everything.
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Re:Bay Area Idiots : Hey, that was an easy one... (Score:2)
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Well, if you're actually IN London that's defnitely a common reference. I spent 3-4 weeks a year (usually staying in Pimlico or Westminster) in London, and I've never heard CoL called anything but "the City".
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That's hardly an Americanism. When was the last time you read a British article that unnecessarily referred to the location as "Cambridge, England" or referred to the university using its full and proper name, rather than informally referring to it as "Cambridge"?
There will always be ambiguities, if not with local city names, then with words that are defined differently elsewhere, idioms that aren't well understood outside a region, or references to local culture that will fly over the heads of outsiders. T
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To be fair, Brooklyn is a formal mailing location, like a city, and has a population 3x that of the entire city of San Fancisco (~880,000 vs ~2,600,000). The mission, on a warm summer saturday night full of tourists is maybe 100,000 on it's busiest day ever.
French Quarter is a bona fide tourist attraction like the statue of liberty. By contrast, the Mission is a good place to go get tacos and arguably the birthplace of whatever you call the Chipolte style burrito.
On the Whole (Score:2)
There literally isn't a single thing on the California coast that's not beautiful.
That is sort of true (though some parts I think are over-rated).
However there are a lot more parts of California than the cost, and many of those parts are not that inspiring. I spent several hours driving from LA to SF on a long road with no inspiration anywhere, though a lot of the most passive-aggressive drivers I have ever seen.
Also you will be paying a lot to drive that far thanks to CA's insane gas prices, also not very
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Oh man, were you on hwy 101? There are unbelievably beautiful vistas throughout the Central Coast region.
If you ever have to make that trip, I highly recommend taking Amtrak's Coast Starlight train. It goes right along the coast and you can put your legs up and use the wi-fi and there's a dining car. It's terrific. If you do that, let me know and I'll meet you at one of the stops and buy you l
Re:Bay Area Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
But people are so jealous of California that they pretend not to know what the Mission District is.
The really funny part is that you think they are pretending.
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I'm totally in favor of Hawaii. It has weed, surfing and pretty girls. And fruity drinks with umbrellas. And grass skirts.
OK, fuck it. I'm moving to Hawaii.
California (Score:2)
Need I say more?
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Anticipation (Score:2)
Can't wait to see what happens when self driving cars become widespread in Florida!
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Florida? I'm waiting for Texas!
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Was it Secret? (Score:2, Funny)
This "mission" that they were on. Or was it Top Secret?
geeze, thanks anonymous pedestrian (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you want SKYNET? Because that's how you get SKYNET right there.
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The reason for all those "robot runs amok" stories is that "human runs amok" isn't a story premise; it's more like a chronic condition.
Ambulance chasers (Score:5, Informative)
Kids are doing this all over, apparently: they run up to a car while it's at a light or in heavy traffic, jump on the hood or elsewhere and act like they got hit by the car, hoping to get a settlement. I've seen dashcam video that was pretty funny because some of the attempts are just so obviously staged.
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Kids are doing this all over, apparently: they run up to a car while it's at a light or in heavy traffic, jump on the hood or elsewhere and act like they got hit by the car, hoping to get a settlement. I've seen dashcam video that was pretty funny because some of the attempts are just so obviously staged.
Adults have been doing this scam in China for years.
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Most cars outside Russia don't have a dashcam. Even there they don't have a side cam. A typical perpetrator of this kind of fraud doesn't have enough intelligence to know a test self-driving car will be packed with cameras from every angle.
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Yup, the old auto accident insurance scam.
This one is probably my favorite. [youtube.com]
This one is great too. [youtube.com]
Good thing the car doesn't have AI... (Score:5, Interesting)
...or it'd run him over in self-defense.
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If this were a castle doctrine state, I would consider it a manufacturing defect if it did not!
ok..what did the car DO? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ok..what did the car DO? (Score:5, Funny)
"how did the car react?"
The car is in treatment. Due to patient confidentiality, no official statement was available. Informed sources claim that it is in a severely depressed state but expected to recover.
Re:ok..what did the car DO? (Score:5, Funny)
Caution:
Never anthropomorphize smart cars. They hate it when you do that!
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Never anthropomorphize smart cars. They hate it when you do that!
Too late.
"step AWAY from the car" (Score:2)
also, TIL wikipieda has a list of flamethrowers [wikipedia.org]. Handy.
America Learns From China (Score:2)
Where "old" people throw themselves in front of car for insurance payout!
Eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Who learned it from Russians...it's a very old scam. Bet people did it with horse drawn carriages.
Nothing new here.... (Score:2)
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Self-driving car with a human driver (Score:2, Interesting)
But wait, there's more!
OK, so there was a driver in this self-driving car.
It sounds to me like they ran over a guy, and somebody's trying to dodge a lawsuit by saying someone "threw themselves at the car". And if there was, as the self-driving car's driver says, "damage to a tail light",
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But wait, there's more!
OK, so there was a driver in this self-driving car.
It sounds to me like they ran over a guy, and somebody's trying to dodge a lawsuit by saying someone "threw themselves at the car". And if there was, as the self-driving car's driver says, "damage to a tail light", let me ask you this: If you went outside and threw your body at a car, do you think you could break a tail light?
Yeah pedestrians running out in front of your car is something that happens. Especially children.. It is one of the harder things to compensate for, especially for a computer.
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If someone ran out in front of your car, it wouldn't damage the tail light.
I'm thinking that the test driver backed into something and made up the entire story to protect his job.
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Presumably there are camera images. Even if the car wasn't in autonomous mode they'd probably be running. (If they weren't, then I would echo your suspicions.)
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let me ask you this: If you went outside and threw your body at a car, do you think you could break a tail light?
Heck no; there's an Interstate highway just outside.
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Why would you think someone couldn't easily break a taillight? They aren't made of tempered glass or anything, just cheap plastic. Depending on how the light assembly is mounted it might not even take an impact from an elbow or knee.
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Go try it right now. See if you can break a tail light with just your elbow.
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It sounds to me like they ran over a guy
Because running over someone while driving forward causes them to hit the left rear bumper....somehow. And the multiple corroborating witnesses in TFSummary were all paid off.
If you went outside and threw your body at a car, do you think you could break a tail light?
Easily. They're plastic, not unobtanium.
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The story is made up.
It reminds me of once when I was a teenager, I had my dad's car. It was winter and I was in the parking lot at Rhys Park doing donuts in the snow. I banged into some trash can and scratched up the passenger door. I wish I'd made up the story that some random guy threw his body at the car while I was stopped at a traffic light. It would have saved me losing car privileges until I paid for the repairs by shoveling sidewalks for neighbors. Took me a month of shoveling.
Wow... Major deja vu moment (Score:2)
The Mission must be somewhere in Russia. ZING!
out of work people will do this just get med bills (Score:2)
out of work people will do this just get med bills paid (for other stuff as well but they just I got hit by a car and after I got out I have this bill I can't pay and I did not ask for any of this to be done)
joe adler (Score:2)
We are going the sue
GM
The STATE
The DMV
Cruise AV
The City of Mission
if you need cash call 555-whiplash
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We are going the sue
GM
The STATE
The DMV
Cruise AV
The City of Mission
if you need cash call 888-555-WHIPLASH. That's right, 888-555-WHIPLASH. Our service representatives are standing by and waiting for your call. 888-555-WHIPLASH; CALL NOW!
Tidied that up for you just a tad. :)
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