The Josh Innes Show - An Interesting Way To Die

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

A dad was teaching his 15 year old daughter how to drive and things went terribly wrong. Do you remember learning to drive? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Exclusively on FanDuel Casino. Where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Podcasts are great because they help us make the most out of our routine. We learn about the fall of the Ottoman Empire while we drive, keep up with news while we take the dog for a walk, or turn folding laundry into a comedy show. Make the most out of your time

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but everyone knows your brother is the grill guy, and it's highly likely he'll be backseat barbecuing all night, so be it. Impress even the toughest of critics with freshly prepared Canadian barbecue favorites from Sobeys. ["Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy"] I am not one to make light of somebody dying

because death is no good. It's always sad when someone dies unless it's like a really terrible person you know like someone's like breaking into your house trying to rape someone and then gets plugged you're like okay I'm on board with this and then there's times where you don't celebrate it but you're like oh I kind of get it like where some dumb girls trying to take you know like a selfie on the side of a mountain and then falls off of the mountain. You're not saying like, oh, I'm happy that happened, but you're saying it's not shocking that that happened, right? Like that's kind of how this works.

So you tread kind of lightly when you talk about deaths and making light of them or making fun of them or whatever right that's all that's part of it but there are certain headlines that while they don't make you laugh necessarily you ask yourself how the hell did this situation arise one of those headlines is California dad dies after car plunges off cliff during driving lesson with teen daughter. How did this situation come about? We'll discuss after these words. Alright, so headline, California dad dies after car plunges off cliff during driving lesson with teen daughter. This is in Laguna Beach, California. A man killed during a driving lesson with his teen daughter in Laguna Beach has been identified.

The fatal crash happened on Monday, May 26th around 4 15 p.m. on Coast Highway between Wesley and Montage Resort Drives. A preliminary investigation revealed the car, driven by a 15-year-old girl with a driver's permit, crashed through a fence in the upper parking lot of the now shuttered Gelson's Market at 24 Monarch Bay Plaza, according to police. The vehicle then broke through a fence barrier and rolled 40 feet down an embankment before flipping upside down onto the highway. The girl sustained significant injuries and was taken to the hospital. She is going to

survive. Her father, James Politoski, 64 of Laguna Beach was identified as the only passenger and he died at the scene. Now initially, when I saw the headline, I'm like, why the hell are you teaching your 15 year old daughter how to drive on like an area where there'd be a cliff? So now I guess the sound of it is that homegirl couldn't figure out how to stop the fucking car and she drove through a barrier and drove her dad off of a cliff. I don't remember even

learning how to drive. Like I never remember a moment like where my dad like sat me down or like got me in the car and said, son, let's learn. Like I never had those kind of moments with my dad. So certainly I also never drove off a cliff. But I never had those moments, you know, like, like, seminal moments in your life that people remember. Like, what's that, that, that song, the, oh, what's his name, the Alan Jackson song, When Daddy Let Me Drive, you know, you know, I was as high as a mountain when daddy let me drive. And

people talk about, like, you sitting on dad's lap and driving the car like I never had one of those kind of moments like when you're on a back road and like you know you're in a back road somewhere in an empty parking lot and dad's like alright put her into drive son and let's see what happens like that type of deal. The only time I remember anything like that happening is being a really young kid and for some reason my dad needed me to take the wheel for something and if you want to talk about uncomfortable pressure that no like eight-year-old should ever

have heaped upon them, hey you're sitting in the passenger seat you have no real idea of where you are in these lanes please hold the wheel for me for just a second just know though that if you get nervous or something happens we're all gonna die It's a very bad pressure to heap upon a child. That said, I never got to have that really great moment of like, wow, I did it. Like, I don't remember any of these moments and maybe my dad would and maybe I just have issues, but like I don't remember how I learned how to ride a bike. Like a lot of people remember like, hey, my dad was pushing me from behind and then I pedaled off on my own and I learned how to ride a bike. Like a lot of people remember like hey my dad was pushing me from behind and then I pedaled off on my own and I learned how to ride a bike and it was this amazing moment that changed my life. I know I know how to ride a bike or at least I assume I know how to ride a bike. I

haven't ridden a bike in so long that I don't know if I'd even know how to. Like I almost feel like I'd be freaked out on a bike now but and I also hate people that ride bikes around town because they feel like they own the road. Dude, yesterday, speaking of this neighborhood, I was talking about how these people are awful drivers in this neighborhood. So there's a I'm in a red light. And like this bike is about to blow through the stoplight or I'm going to stop sign and there's another one at another stop sign,

there's a bike and like the bike waves me through as if like his life isn't in control, like I'm not in control of his life. Like again, I'm not advocating running over bikers or cyclists rather or anything like that. I would never advocate that. It's just funny how these guys feel like they kind of own the road. And I'm like sidewalk is for walking, road is for driving, and like go right off on some trail somewhere on your bicycle, but I don't really need to be like held up behind you. But anyway, I have nothing to like ride your bike.

I'm not saying to run them over or anything like that, but it's just like whatever. But anywho, it's just funny getting like waved through by a guy on a bicycle. Like you're even lucky he stopped. I give him credit. Usually these guys that I see don't even stop at stop signs. They just blow right through them like they own the place. The other people while we're talking about this that annoy me though, even more than the people on bicycles, are the people that feel like they don't have to stop like at a crosswalk when they're jogging because God forbid you lose your heart rate and then you don't lose any weight and you keep that energy up. Like these people that like almost look at you like you're a dick if you do not stop for them to continue their workout. Like fuck you, but anywho. So I continue. I don't remember any of these like major moments in my life or anything like that where I learned. I remember Driver's Ed and I remember taking Driver's Ed and I remember being free like our Driver's Ed was the best situation ever. It was at school. The Driver's Ed teacher was a guy who had just been fired as the longtime baseball coach and was fucking

devastated over it. Like he had been there, he's this older guy, kind of a lonely older dude, had been the baseball coach forever and they had just like whacked him but they kept him on as like a PE teacher or driver's ed or whatever. Okay. Now, it is important to note that the person who had to fire this man as the baseball coach was my former basketball coach who was in his first year of being the principal. Okay. Following me here. Why is this the best part? Well, it just so happened that the driver's ed class I was taking was with the principal son

who was one of my best friends. So you've got the son of the guy that fired the now depressed former baseball coach who is now in charge of making sure that these 15 and 16 year old kids learn how to drive. And it was a fucking adventure. Like we'd be in the car. And you know, you'd be driving and like, so I'd be driving. And by the way, there was never a situation that I recall, where it was like, hey,

let's kind of hang out in the parking lot. This does this, this does this, this, it was literally like day one, get in the fucking car. We're on the highway. Like it was one of those type of situations. And he and like I'd be driving and my buddy would be in the back seat, Walt, my buddy, and the driver's ed teacher, former baseball coach who had just gotten fired as baseball coach was super depressed, was in the passenger seat. And he just start carrying on a conversation.

And then he would it would randomly turn to well you know I was the baseball coach until Walt's dad fired me and then like he'd be looking at you dead in the eye so you'd have to look at him even though you're driving and should be looking at the road and he was very like pedal happy so he'd always be on that fucking pedal because they had the two pedals or they had the brake on the other side so he'd be like you, hitting the brake and it was dude like we're crossing the Mississippi River bridge going into Baton Rouge seemingly day one. Like I have no idea how I passed any of this or how I learned how to drive. I don't remember any of that shit. Well, I guess if there's one thing for this

gal, she'll at least remember how she learned how to drive. She'll have a story for life. Like, so how'd you learn how to drive? Well, I drove through a fence that was an old barrier in a closed down supermarket and I drove off a cliff and and my dad's dead. So there's that. Like, I was going to judge the guy for driving and having his daughter's 15 year old daughter, which trust me, like, look, I understand that I do bad things when driving and I shouldn't text and sometimes I do and sometimes I'm reading shit in a red light and I shouldn't be.

The people that scare me the most, you know, teenagers scare the living shit out of me type of stuff. 15 year old girl drivers scare the shit out of me. Obviously they didn't scare the dad enough. They did as he was tumbling 40 feet down to his death. He was obviously like, what the fuck? But you would think you're in a pretty safe spot if you're like, hey, we're in an empty parking lot of a closed down supermarket or whatever this was, you would think you had plenty of space to

kind of learn some shit. What a shitty way to go. Like, when I initially read the headline, my first thought was this dipshit had her out like on one of these like winding like Jan and Dean type devils, you know, dead man's curve roads. Like, what the fuck are you doing, Dad? In reality, the dad was like playing it safe and like, listen, we're gonna learn how to drive in an empty parking lot of like a mall or a supermarket or whatever and still ended up dead. What a shitty way to go. Anyway more to come.