3 Reasons to NOT Add Bumper Stickers on Cars (Explained)

Bumper stickers are often used for informational purpose. With about 10 inches in width and around 3 inches in height, it becomes easier for any observer to make meanings out of the messages left on the bumper of a car.

Because the use of bumper stickers may be political, commercial, or even personal, it doesn’t always come with the best results.

This is why we discuss 3 reasons you should avoid using bumper stickers on your cars.

Let’s get into it!

1. You Could Go Unknowingly Overboard and Reveal Sensitive Information

Bumper stickers are not just used for advertising purpose; they reveal more than the information contained in the sticky paper.

The truth is, even when you only use a sticker to promote an event, a movement, or a brand, you could also be revealing some personal information about you or your household.

How do we mean?

More often than not, people use one or more bumper stickers to promote their children’s school, advertise their favorite stores, make their occupation known, or express their political stance.

These little notes could be enough to compromise not only your safety but also that of your household.

Below is an illustration of how different bumper stickers could compromise your safety. Meanwhile, you should know how much bumper stickers cost.

a. Revealing a Child’s Presence Could Be Risky

One of the popular bumper stickers used in the US is the one that notifies other motorists of the presence or absence of a baby in the cabin.

Most notable amongst the messages seen on these stickers are BABY ON BOARD, and BABY IN CAR.

Some overly extroverted people could even go overboard and reveal the name of their baby: something like MIA ON BOARD.

Obviously, these stickers are plainly done to plead to other motorists to ride with caution while sharing the road together. However, this information is already in the public and anyone noticing would easily tell that you have a baby in the car.

This is not always a safe thing to do, especially in a society notable for crime and criminality. Besides, criminals may even assume you’d be vulnerable to being attacked due to the presence of your baby in the cabin.

Read also: 100 Funny Political Bumper Sticker Messages (Conservative-Oriented)

b. Showing Off Your Family Honor May Make You a Subject of an Attack

Another common bumper sticker people use is the one that reveals what family they belong to.

It’s a good thing to find oneself in an honorable family, but it’s not always safe to drive around bragging about this privilege.

This is because you can easily get profiled as a potential hotspot for criminal activities like assault or kidnapping. You’ll agree that criminals often love to target children of the noble, with the hope of getting huge ransom in return.

c. Revealing Your Children’s School May Compromise Their Safety

Probably you’d have noticed some stickers that read PROUD PARENT OF X SCHOOL, right?

Most parents do this to help promote the name of their children’s school, and it’s really not a big deal.

However, it could serve as a way of compromising the safety of your children, especially whenever they’re in school.

It’s not always necessary to make everyone know the school your children attend. This is to avoid them being trailed or monitored for criminal activities.

It doesn’t matter whether your children go to the safest school is town. What matters is you avoiding being the one compromising their safety all in the name of using some stickers.

d. Showing Off the Nature of Your Work Is Not Always Cool

Indeed, there’s a pride attached to having a reputable profession. You’d always want to brag about it or show off at every slightest chance.

You must have also seen sticky notes like I’M A LAWYER, KEEP OFF, DOCTORS SAVE LIFE, PROUD U.S. ARMY DAD, PILOT ON BOARD, and quite a few others.

While you could see this as an ordinary means of showing off or bragging about your coveted profession, it is one of the means by which one gets profiled by potential burglars, robbers, or, let’s just say, the bad guys.

No one would love to rob someone who doesn’t have. So, bad people often profile their prospects through the little details they could find around specifying that they’ll have something beneficial to offer.

e. Bragging About Your Political Stance Could Potentially Damage Your Car

Using bumper stickers to express political stance is also very common, and it could compromise not only your safety but also that of your car.

Imagine you find yourself driving in a politically tensed environment and your rear stickers are against the political support of the people around. This could endanger your vehicle, especially the spot where you paste the sticker.

You would definitely not love to park your car on a field only to get back and find the spot where you had a sticker scratched terribly. This is the potential damage that an ordinary sticker could incur on your vehicle.

2. Bumper Stickers Can, Potentially, Damage Your Car’s Body Paint

Bumper stickers often come with strong adhesive to ensure they stay glued to the body of the vehicle.

While it remained glued on the bumper, these stickers may damage the body paint of your car unless you won’t need to remove them later.

Although more recent bumper stickers come with less strong adhesive, they still pose some difficulties in being removed from the body of a vehicle.

As for many older stickers, which use stronger tack adhesive, they could make the body paint of your peel off as you attempt to remove them. Besides, the longer the sticker stays on the car, the more difficult it is for you to remove.

Moreover, the paint quality of some vehicles is quite weak. In fact, many notable brands like Lexus have been criticized for using low-quality coatings on their vehicle.

This is because some of their vehicles have their body paints flaking off after being used for a short while.

Imagine applying different stickers on the body of such vehicles. You’d likely damage the body paint as you attempt to remove the stickers later on.

3. Those Little Stickers May Affect the Resale Value of Your Vehicle

Before pasting those little stickers at the back of your vehicle, you should think of a time where you might need to sell it off.

The truth is, not all stickers are easy to remove, and you would want to get rid of them before taking your car to a dealer.

Hardly will you find a dealer that will sell off a used car with its stickers on it. They’ll definitely want to rip off every unnecessary embellishment you’ve added to the car.

As a result, you might have to let go of some amount on the resale value of your car.

Even though most modern days’ stickers use lower tack adhesive that will pose no difficulty in being removed from your car, they could still create an uneven color around the bumper.

So, the dealer would want to fix all these before putting the car up for sale.

Besides, stickers are like tattoos on a car. As such, they attract different reactions from people. If you decide to sell your vehicle with the stickers on, it could give off the impression of you being a rough driver.

That means some potential buyers may be deterred from patronizing you, regardless of how well you have maintained the car.

You should also know the ways not to remove bumper stickers.

Final Thoughts

It is just usual for some people to customize the bumpers of their vehicle with different stickers or decals. But the fact remains that bumper stickers could make you a target for criminals.

Law enforcement agencies have particularly warned about using some specific stickers because of their potentials of revealing more about you than you can imagine.

Meanwhile, using too many stickers would not only disfigure your vehicle, it could also affect its impression and resale value.

So, before you slap different stickers on your vehicle next time, remember all the reasons why you should be mindful or wary of this action.

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