‘Fat chicks are harder to kidnap.’

Well it could potentially be offensive to both larger women and/or people touched by kidnapping.
The problem with social justice is that suddenly there's these make-believe laws of how people should conduct themselves when in reality there's no law that says 'a person is immune from being offended'.

Take these jokes:
A woman noticed her husband standing on the bathroom scale, sucking in his stomach.
“Ha­­! That’s not going to help,” she said.
“Sure, it does,” he said. “It’s the only way I can see the numbers.”

Q. Did you hear about the kidnapping at school?
A. It’s ok, he woke up.

These are considered clean jokes, but overweight people or kidnap victims might still be quietly offended.
It could just as easily be said the jokes was sexist, because a woman was making fun of the man; and the kid napping was a 'he'.
So where do you draw the line?
If we don't truly have 'free' speech, (for those who don't understand the difference) then by default we instead have 'permitted' speech.

If you start dictating what is and isn't allowed eventually we all become hive minded slaves living in '1984'.
The liberal left seem to want this, to live like cogs in a highly regulated machine, and that is essentially the antihesis of everything liberal.

And therein lies our battle; those demanding not to be offended and who support the right of the state to dictate, regulate and decide everything for us, over those who want freedom, liberty and the right to decide for themselves.
In this way the so-called liberal progressive left and everything they stand for is one gigantic fraud.
A bunch of weakling crybabies living in their own emotional bubble-like safe spaces.

There's ALWAYS Pro's and Con's to EVERYTHING.
How can you be sure the humour doesn't serve humanity with a higher purpose?
Making fun of a fat person might help shame them into losing weight, and others into not becoming fat.
Making jokes about kidnapping might raise awareness about being more alert when alone and at night.

Nothing that you claim as obvious is necessarily so Don! Nor have in any post on this thread, expressed any desire for parliament to legislate. I guess I've rattled your cage, or got under that hide bond leather that passes for skin, given your less than educated response is the juvenile verbal!

Followed by the completely gratuitous advice to grow up. Suggest you save for those folk who see you as some sort of impressive mental giant?

As opposed to a spokesperson for the planet killing fossil fuel industry? Which might just explain your apparent complete lack of empathy toward our children or any apparent concern for the world they inherit from us.

Being often first into print?

Well if an accurate assessment may be explained by several factors.

I've been disabled for some twenty plus years by a career ending serious spinal injury, that has been stabilized with bone grafts and metal reinforcing.

Meaning, I now have time on my hands and need to exercise the grey matter or watch as it atrophies. And I'm often an early riser with time on my hands! You have any problem with any of that?

And if I find your diabolically disingenuous defence of the fossil fuel industry completely obnoxious? It's because it is, in someone of your "alleged intellect" and acumen!

So the next time you tell someone to grow up, you superior arrogant fribbling sycophant, ( fossil fuel industry stooge?) Make sure it is directed at the ancient academic staring back from the mirror!

Somebody needs to speak for the next generation, given all you seem to do, is sell or trash their future?
Y'all have a nice day now y'hear.
Alan B.

SR,

As you have clearly indicated double standards, I have no idea which standards you have applied to your businesses, as obscenities and offensive speech are judged on their political target.

As for the left whinge neo twat activists, I fart in their general direction.

If society allows someone to be offensive then society should allow a response, particularly a bunch of roses or even fives.

Somewhat late, I had to think about this one.

I personally prefer to live in a society where one can go about in peace without having to encounter negative influences. I should be able to get from point A to point B, which is what roads are meant for, without anybody interfering and trying to imprint impressions in my mind. Closing one's eyes is not an option - not for the driver anyway, though I do at times close or cover one eye when encountering particularly disturbing messages on the road, then if it's on a car I might slow down or pull to the side while waiting for it to go (and if stationary, then I'm likely to try and look for alternate routes).

Ideally there should be no messages on cars. It's an inconsiderate bad thing to do. The only valid reason to mark a car is to help its owner to find it from a distance when parked among other cars, but this could be done effectively with say, plain strips of colour that carry no particular message.

My problem is, I cannot forbid others from harmful expressions without a morally-valid justification. What possibly could such a justification be?

1. Distracting drivers, being a safety issue.

But this could boomerang and rather than stop the offences, force the offended sensitive drivers off the road.

2. Roads are public property, so the public has a right to impose conditions there (else it would be trespassing).

That could work if the land on which roads go, truly/legitimately belonged to the state as a result of some kind of agreement between all the inhabitants of the land. However, no such agreement exists (and I doubt it could ever exist on such a large scale).

3. It's done by companies rather than by individuals.

Thank you SteeleRedux for your kind suggestion: indeed, companies are not sentient beings and thus have no inherent freedoms that must be preserved. Companies are artificial state-created entities, so that same state which created them may rightly also restrict them: Don't like it? then don't incorporate!

Confrontational ...

The vehicle artwork in question is confrontational. Graffiti is often confrontational, for an up to date example, suburban trains are a recent target of this. The gay Mardi Gras is deliberately confrontational by intent; transvestites are confrontational. Demonstrators are confrontational, deliberately confronting the sensitivities of authorities..(run over the bastards), was a call once.
Students confront teachers on a daily basis. On it goes through life.

The message on the van is not intended to convert you to any particular morality. If the message raises your blood pressure, it has achieved its aim.

Why?

That is the question. Why confront the general public with this type of outrageous graffiti?
The answer is simple. The vans are tailor-made to appeal to confrontational youth.
The same youthful examples of all our pasts. IT SELLS...

Should we fall for it? Should we tolerate the intrusion into our conservative sensitivities?

Not generally, no
How was confrontational public behaviour dealt with in the past?

Allow more flexibility for the police to not only monitor these intrusions, but support them when they make moral judgments on our own behalf.
That is the method that controlled confrontational behaviour in public, of all types in the past.
It seems to be missing in action!

It's a truism to brand some behaviours and the people that accompany those behaviours as "cop-bait".
Nothing seems to bait police in our modern world. They have been subdued by ....

"Political Correctness"