If you’re the sort of person that suspects that your rental car has bedbugs, you’d want to take care of it. And you, being the rational person you are, would take care of it the only way you knew how. By drenching the entire car in rubbing alcohol.
And then, job done, you’d get inside, relax a little, maybe even light up a cigarette. Thereby setting you, the car you’re in, and the two cars next to you completely aflame.
(Dramatic re-enactment pictured above.)
That’s exactly what Scott Kemery, a Long Island man, did yesterday according to ABC:
Scott Kemery suffered first- and second-degree burns in the incident Tuesday afternoon outside an Eastport King Kullen.
Police say the Bridgehampton resident poured alcohol over the insects, then sat in the car and lit a cigarette, setting off the blaze.
He fled the vehicle on his own. A line of cars went up in flames in the Long Island parking lot.Detective Sgt. Edward Fitzgerald told Newsday that someone told Kemery that if he saturated the bedbugs with alcohol it would kill them.
Now, I’m not an expert on getting rid of bedbugs, but I don’t think dousing your entire car in rubbing alcohol is the thing to do. Nor should you, especially if it’s a rental. And definitely, definitely don’t then get inside, and light that motherfucker up.
Maybe.
Anyways, the guys over at Lifehacker probably know. I’ve invited Lifehacker writer Andy Orin into the comments just to make sure. Andy is a Lifehacker. He knows these things.
Contact the author at ballaban@jalopnik.com.
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