The problem, though, is with the use of the first person. The "I" turns what is otherwise an acceptable and perfectly reasonable appeal on behalf of a cause or special interest group (or however it is these bloody people talk) into a thinly disguised boast about the moral rectitude or social superiority of the stickee.  The same is true, come to think of it, of those fatuous stickers that say things like "Glider pilots do it silently" or "I'd rather be surfing". Well off you go then. I'd rather be in the old 911, and your badly driven smog-belching clapped-out VW Transporter is spoiling it for me.  I don't moor a smelly old trawler in the Cornish swell and then display a flag reading "I'd rather be giving it the berries on that windy bit of the old A40 between High Wycombe and Oxford".  Now the other day, I found myself driving along behind a Toyota Previa with a sticker in the back window that read, very largely, "I make room for cyclists". Well done, I thought. We know from the Play of Everyman that only good deeds will accompany us to the grave, but it wasn't much of a legacy.  Most people do, I reckon. I ride a bicycle sometimes, and so far people have left me a bit of a gap. But I suppose there must be one or two who either haven't realised that a bicycle must occupy some space in the cosmos or are too rude to accommodate them. In which case this appeal on behalf of cyclists is reasonable. It should read "Please make room for cyclists".  But "I"? I had to follow this car for quite a way, and after a while it really began to annoy me. What is the implication here? That I, because I haven't put a similar sticker in my car, must be one of these people who smears bicyclists along railings? I ended up wondering if drivers these days must automatically be guilty of any wrongdoing they don't actively deny.  So when I got home, I set to work on the computer to make my own sticker. It occurred to me that there are people out there dodging their income tax. But not me. I've always paid up on time, and I thought I'd better make that completely clear to other road users. Eventually I settled on "I have nothing to fear from the Inland Revenue". It looked quite good.  But just as I was about to stick it in the Fezza, I hesitated. I might effectively be saying that the police, on the other hand, fill me with dread. There's nothing in my sticker to make it absolutely and unequivocally a matter of record that I haven't murdered anyone.  So I went back to my desk and had a bit of a rethink. I was about to print out "I have nothing to fear from any forces of law and order" when, again, something stayed my hand. What about old girlfriends? What's to say I didn't beat them? Not this sticker, so I probably did.  I soon realised that exonerating myself of all possible blame was going to make my car look like a fly-posted telephone exchange box. It simply isn't possible, not when you haven't really done anything very bad.  I would have to cover every damaging assumption made about me by the driver of the Previa, should he end up behind me – except the one about not nicking any sweets from the village shop in 1975, because I did.  The only solution would be a single sticker that covered everything that he or anyone else might claim in their rear window, even if it becomes fashionable to proclaim "I pull over for ambulances" or "I wave at train drivers".  It took a while, but I think I've got it. If enough of you are interested, I'll put my new car sticker into mass production.
Much as we've all come to revile it, I suppose the "I slow down for horses"    bumper sticker was of some value when it first appeared.