LITTLE ROCK — People do stuff on icy roads they’d never consider doing on dry, safe ones.

A goodly number of people throw the rules of safe driving right out the window whenever the weather makes roads really dangerous. It makes me glad I’m not a mind-reader.

If I were, I’d have had to listen to something like this midday Wednesday:

“Wow. The ice on this road is really bad. I’d better get where I’m going and get out of this. I’ll just run this red light.”

“Wow. This is really dangerous. I’d better straddle this median.”

“Wow. It’s really hard to brake on this road. I wish that guy I’m tailgating would get out of my way.”

“Wow. These roads are really slick. I’d better pull out my cellphone and call my kids/parent/spouse/coworker while I’m driving and call him/her/them while they’re driving and see if they’re OK.”

Perfect weather: Guy checks his mirrors every morning to make sure the alignment’s fl awless, affording him optimum allround vision. Bad weather: Same guy takes off with his back glass, all windows andeverything but a peephole on his windshield caked with ice.

“Wow. These roads are really bad. I sure am glad I have four-wheel drive that keeps me going.” (Forgets that his truck’s braking doesn’t work any better than anybody else’s under the circumstances. His truck weighs more, too, so it’s harder to stop.)

I don’t have any statistics to prove it, but most of the really dangerous driving I’ve seen on ice comes from drivers who are alone in their vehicles. I presume that’s because a frantic, screaming passenger or two would make a diff erence.

Now to be fair, most people are properly cautious. All I want is for a relatively few people to ask themselves a very simple question before suddenly changing lanes on icy roads: Would I do this on a normal day?

Speaking of people doing things they wouldn’t normally do; The Republican Party stands for personal freedom, less regulation, and getting government off our backs, right? Our Republican state lawmakers are passing a bill that will require every voter to show papers when he votes - papers entirely within the government’s power to grant, withhold or take away. It’s doing this as a government fi x to a voterfraud problem that cannot be shown to exist.

The GOP carried the white vote by 20 points in the last presidential election. It’s no longer within the bounds of the conceivably possible to suppress enough blacks, Latinos, Asians and whomever else to keep winning as the “whites only” party. All this bill will do is remind every person casting a ballot that the Republican Party is the party of suspicion.

Speaking of getting things wrong, Barbara Fitzpatrick of Fayetteville rightly called me out in her email over last week’s column. I wrote about deficit spending and mentioned Social Security.

Social Security, for now, is in the black. Fitzpatrick pointed this out and I slapped my forehead as soon as I read her message. Social Security is simply not a factor in the current defi cit.

Conservatives would argue Social Security in the futureis projected to be seriously under-funded someday. Well, that may be true but that’s not a distinction I made, and that was my mistake. I’ll also point out that projections and facts are two diff erent things, and the facts are with Fitzpatrick.

!!!

Speaking of mistakes I’ve made, I wasn’t nearly funny enough in 2012. I’ll do better.

I was appalled to fi nd out that just one of my 50 or so columns from last year fi t firmly within the “humorous column” category. I found this out when the sorting was done for newspaper contests.

Humor is the most powerful weapon a wise guy can wield. Being serious doesn’t work. Nobody cares what a liberal arts major who’s never had a real job thinks. But if I can put the joke on somebody who deserves it, I win. There’s no good argument anyone can make when you can show they’re being silly. It doesn’t matter how powerful he or she may be.

Therefore, there’s no greater error in commenting on human aff airs than being dour.

DOUG THOMPSON IS A POLITICAL REPORTER AND COLUMNIST FOR NWA MEDIA.

Opinion, Pages 12 on 02/24/2013