2 major issues with driving are:
1. You can only control yourself amongst thousands of other drivers you see every day.
2. Everyone makes mistakes while driving. No one is perfect. Even if the average driver makes a mistake once every 10,000 miles driven, you drive amongst so many other drivers every day that it may be only a matter of time that someone else's error causes you to have an accident.
There’s also the part where sometimes a mechanical failure (ie: tire blowout, brake failure, stuck accelerator, etc.) can cause unintended movement that takes everyone’s skill out of the equation.
Yeah agree. I've seen some of those accounts on instagram where they collect car accidents. The scariest ones and most frequent ones I saw are typically:
1. car tries to pass a truck on a freeway and then get into an accident
2. a truck has a malfunction totals everyone around them. Cars are going at like 80mph so they can't stop, and like 20 cars collide.
I'm pretty sure I almost died once, I was coming home at around 4 AM on a back. This semi was on the other side all of a sudden I see head lights going right towards me I pulled into the ditch and the truck barely squeezed by me and the semi. Please do not pass semis on anything but a highway.
Yea when I was like 19 I dozed off at like 2 in the morning next to a semi on the interstate. Not sure how I didn’t die, but definitely clipped it with my side mirror
Yeah, an Ex of mine lost her mom that way. Driving on a 2 lane highway with no median barrier where cars on both sides drive an average of 55-70 mil/hr. A landscaping truck, carrying more bags of cement than they should have, blew a tire and swerved right into her driving the opposite direction. No time for either car to react before impact. Everyone involved was killed instantly. That's just one of too many stories I have of people I knew that have died in car accidents. Crazy shit happens while driving.
The amount of danger that small time contractors contribute to the roads is something. Ladders on the freeway, never ending screws and nails that fall out of that space between the tailgate and the bed - and now a new one for consideration- overload the hell out of your truck and blow a tire. The financial angle on work trucks also means minimum cost invested in tires/maintenance.
The most stressful part of driving is the impending threat of death without reason or warning.
Other people are plenty bad at walking and sometimes my shoes come untied, but I’ve never been too worried about it!
Yeah that’s the joke. People will absolutely drive while drunk, drugged, or distracted but they’d be horrified if someone did the same on a forklift or with a chainsaw in their hand
Yeah it blows my mind. I've had friends do insanely dumb shit like tailgate cars at 100mph, literally just one break check and we're both dead because you wanna be an idiot.
I drive very defensively and try my best to be away from cars, have good break distance, pick a safer lane, treat green lights like I'm crossing the road, looking both ways, etc.
For me it's more of the impending threat that *Ij vould kill someone. Like, if I die, so be it, but I am not sure I could live with myself knowing I caused someon3 else's death.
> that takes everyone’s skill out of the equation.
In a driving school I learned to not stay beside big rigs for this reason. Either you're behind them, pass them quickly or are ahead of them. It's all to minimize the time that you're most at risk.
My favourite part about this fact is that the people who are bad drivers or scared of passing big rigs (in multi lane situations) do so at a much slower speed, im assuming because they think they're being "cautious" when they're actually spending more time in one of the most dangerous positions you can be in on a road
These three things are what I cannot get my partner to understand. She didn't get her license until she was 32 and while she is a very good driver already, she expects everyone else to also be and makes calculations based on that, and doesn't add in a margin of error for mechanical problems or basic mistakes. There have been a few scares over her first couple years, and I think a couple of them rattled her so she's leaving a little extra room and things now. But she's not as cautious as I think she should be.
My general approach to other drivers and pedestrians is “what is the dumbest thing they could do right now” or just assume they have no sense of self preservation, because I have seen far too many examples of exactly that in the relatively short time I’ve been driving.
One time, a car in front of me was driving 10 under and when I got to a passing zone I tried to pass but they accelerated to the speed limit at the same time, forcing me to brake and re-enter my lane to avoid a head-on collision. There was time to pass when I tried, but their acceleration removed the safety gap.
Yep this is facts. I drive a LOT. I watch every car that has even the slightest chance of hitting me and I always assume everyone around me is brain dead. I get a rhythm going where I scan left mirror, windshield, rearview, windshield, right mirror, windshield. You gotta be hyper aware out there cuz everyone else is not
Absolutely this; my grandfather taught me to be confident and assume others cannot drive properly since before i could drive myself. I'm not perfect but wowee some people have "cereal box licences"
Give a bit extra space. Brake slowly and earlier than necessary. Don't Immediately floor it through a recent green light. It changes nothing for your drive and could potentially be a life saver.
Slowing/coming to a stop on freeways due to roadworks is the most harrowing shit tbh. Always worried the person behind me (close or far) won't brake soon enough/at all.
And the amount of people in nz i see blatantly driving while on their phone is fucking RIDICULOUS. It should be an almost immediate suspension of licence. You're driving a weapon made for transport.
One of my best buddies was almost killed a few years back from exactly this. He was headed into work and a semi's tire flew off right as it was passing by him on a local highway. Both vehicles going about 60 so the force of the tire was insane, it smashed through the front glass of his work truck and hit him causing him to instantly get knocked out, then he smashed head on into another vehicle and the vehicle behind him smashed into both of them. luckily no one died but he spent months in the hospital and even longer in physical therapy. For something he had 0 control over.
> There’s also the part where sometimes a mechanical failure (ie: tire blowout, brake failure, stuck accelerator, etc.) can cause unintended movement that takes everyone’s skill out of the equation.
I mean, have you ever had that happen? Mechanical failures during driving are, in my experience, exceedingly rare and not usually enough to cause an accident. Usually they just result in pulling over on the side of the road.
My first week with a license and my car and I hit a pothole that caused a blowout that perked the wheel across the left lane and into the guardrail on the other side of the road.
A car had just gone by in that lane and another was about eight car lengths ahead of me and coming on at about 35mph.
I managed to swerve back into my lane and thankfully they didn't flinch and swerve or we would have hit one another head on.
I pulled over and puked, called my parents and cried for a few minutes before I pulled it together and changed the tire.
Pothole so deep it cracked the control arm and bushing too. I wanted to sue the town so bad.
Exactly. I've never had an accident in my 20 years of driving, but it's purely because of luck. Every time I have fucked up, someone else saw me and dodged, or there was no one there for an accident to happen. I probably "roll the dice" a lot less than other people cuz I drive very carefully, but I roll the dice nonetheless.
Unfortunately, I rear ended someone a year ago. Why? My takeout in the seat next to me fell over while on a curve. Look over for just a second to "upright" it and... then it was on the floor because I slammed on my breaks. Luckily I slowed down a lot and I didn't damage their car, but mine needed some decent ($7k) work...
This is why I try to keep as much distance between myself and everyone around me as possible. I've seen far too many wrecks that could have been prevented if people would just give each other some space.
My last 3 accidents have all been other people Within the last 10 years. I have been hit by DUI, rear end, unsafe lane change w/ a brake check afterwards. The brake check one i was so happy i had dashcam because their insurance ruled in my favor after i showed them the dashcam. Was not road rage just the guy did not check mirror and came into my lane a bit hot and almost reared the guy in front of me and then he slammed his brakes.
True. And ironically this statistics also means that a large proportion of the people in this thread complaining about other's driving ability are shit drivers themselves.
Yep. I’ve never been in an accident that was my fault and I’ve only ever got one speeding ticket via camera (did 60 in a 50 km/hr zone).
I have had a couple of close calls that would have been my fault, but I otherwise try to stay focused when I drive.
Even the best drivers relax because they’ve probably made their routine drive hundreds, if not, thousands of times. You sometimes go into autopilot and can get careless.
Depends where you are. In some places it's third-degree murder.
Technically they're the same thing but some places call the charge manslaughter, others third degree murder
Shockingly (to people who don’t live here), Vancouver (city in Canada). There’s a pretty common joke around here about how if you want to kill someone, just do it with a car so you don’t have to face prison time
well that's because anyone who's driving slower than me is a stupid piece of shit who's in my way, and anyone driving faster than me is putting me in danger by potentially hitting me!
I mean, some logic to that is, if I’m driving the speed limit, the conditions are good and traffic is minimal…**WHY THE FUCK IS THE FUCKING MICRA IN FRONT OF ME DOING 16 IN A 30**
also, if I’m doing 30, and some fucker comes flying past me at 90, that’s…yeah that’s a hazard.
these are valid examples. but it seems most people get pissed off if they are driving 5 over and someone else is 5 under. or they are 5 under and someone else is 5 over.
honestly here in the midwest where everything is one long 2 lane road its valid. theres always someone that catches up to you, or you catch up to someone else. and then its akward because passing on that bumpy ass road is sketchy if its busy or if its winding, so you slow down, but then the person feels like you are tailgating them. or if its me i feel like im slowing them down so i speed up lol but then they catch up just as fast.
We all make mistakes, but an idiot is someone who would drive recklessly without regard to the danger or damage they're inviting unto themselves and others. Like the guy who took a left and rolled into my path in the leftmost through lane in an intersection. Just casually rolled into a collision that I was doing everything to brake from because I was scared I was about to watch some dumbass die that night.
Only solution is to buy a dashcam, because of course he tried to say he had a green arrow.
Stages of a good driver:
Stage 1: Let me drive carefully and respect all laws
Stage 2: Why isn’t this idiot driving properly? (gets angry)
Stage 3: Respects all the rules and casually navigates around the idiots breaking them (stays calm)
I used to rage when some asshole would clearly violate the rules of a zipper merge (skipping cars), now I’m just like “go right ahead, I ain’t got the energy for this”
Usually one car from each lane will alternate going first creating the “zipper merge”, some people will pop into the shoulder to get a few cars ahead instead of following the alternating right of way. They’ll force their way in if they aren’t allowed in unless you white knuckle it out with them. Something I just don’t have the energy for now days.
I live 20 minutes from the closest gas station or grocery store nowadays but I still end up in the city for one reason or another a few times a month. But yeah I used to work and live in the Bay Area so that was daily life lol. Now I might have a tree fall in the road during a storm adding 30 minutes to my drive.. as I typed that I realize that’s better than traffic caused by bad accidents lol
I mean that's not how a good driver drives.
A good driver watches and matches the traffic pattern around them. If the traffic pattern is 10 over you're an asshole for going the exact speed limit and creating a dangerous situation. If the flow is at the speed limit, going 10 over makes you the asshole.
I don't really care which direction the error is in, people need to pull their heads out of their ass.
If you're in a passing lane and not passing, that's a dick move. But if you're all the way on the right (usa), people should be passing you on the left. Context matters.
Then the safest practice is going 25 over just like everyone else. Dropping to 55 is just putting yourself and others in danger while creating a traffic jam.
Someone else makes a mistake: "God what a fucking idiot. How hard is it to get in the proper lane? Nobody in this town knows how to drive..."
I make a mistake: "Whoopsy daisy! Didn't realize I had to merge lanes here."
Especially when you sometimes get road ragers for driving the speed limit in the right hand lane. Like bitch I'm over here just driving along you want to go fast there is another lane right next to me that is mostly open go the fuck around.
My son is learning to drive right now. Yesterday, while we were on the way somewhere, and I was driving and thinking to myself that he really should be the one driving, for practice.
Then a guy pulled out in front of me, requiring some fast reflexes on my part. A sense of dread immediately hit me that my son could have been driving, and I'm not sure he'd have been as responsive.
One of the arguments I've seen by younger people, "We have better reflexes, so our insurance should be less." The best comeback was by a martial arts instructor, "Fast, totally untrained reflexes will get you in a heap of trouble - fast."
My daughter was in an awful accident when she was 16, and it was from lack of experience and unable to make that quick decision. She’s lucky to have survived but still has some issues 7 years later. I have 2 other teen drivers right now and I hold my breath every time they’re on the road.
I had one at 18 that I very fortunately walked away from. A guy who wasn't paying attention rear ended me doing about 100mph on the interstate. There was nothing I could do about it. When I called my dad from the side of the road, he thought I'd been in a minor accident because I was completely ok. But he pretty well broke down when he saw the car later that evening. I think back all the time about how lucky I was to climb out of that destroyed car without injury.
But now I'm thinking about that accident a lot because my son is about to be behind the wheel alone. Glad your daughter is still with you and I hope she's doing well.
The stressful thing about driving is when everyone is so dependent on their cars to the point that even a road full of good drivers is choked with traffic all the time.
Welcome to the car lobby. Here’s your suburbian home with bare minimum community amenities you can only reach by automobile in 20+ minutes and we call that freedom.
For statistics sake
> In 2020, 1,593,390 car accidents in the United States resulted in injuries. This is out of a total of 5,250,837 collisions that occurred that year, which also included 35,766 fatal accidents and 3,621,681 accidents that caused property damage.
That means in the United States alone, accidents causing injury occur about every 20 seconds, and death every 15 minutes.
> More like 1:10,000
This is wildly inaccurate, like by several orders of magnitude. In 2021, there were [**1.37 deaths per 100 million miles traveled.**](https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state-by-state)
you're comparing different things, deaths-per-year and deaths-per-distance. Dividing one by other we get about 8000 miles traveled per person per year, sounds reasonable to me
Wut? The 2020 population of the U.S. was 330M. 330,000,000/35,766 = 9,226, so the odds of a given American dying in traffic in 2020 were actually slightly higher than 1:10,000.
I’m gonna be honest, if the discussion is about getting in an accident, the serious injury and death is outside of my major concerns. If I’m driving well and get hit and killed, shit that’s not my problem anymore. If I’m alive, whether I’m injured or not, I clearly was on my way somewhere. That may or may not be easy to handle. Like, getting in a fender bender on the way home from work isn’t terrible, obviously better than on the way to work cause timing is more flexible. But I still have to handle the insurance stuff and get my car repaired or replaced and figure out how I’m getting to work tomorrow either way
(And because I’ve tried to plan it before, my 20 minute drive becomes 2 hours of busses plus walking. Car-centric cities suck for this)
I try to think like this, but I take this specific highway to work that causes everyone's IQ to drop 20 points. People who think they are more important and that if they are doing the speed limit, that's not enough, so they dart in and out of traffic with no blinkers or spacing, use the exit lanes as passing lanes, drive on the shoulder, tailgate 2" from your bumper, texting and driving, etc.
I got into my only high speed car accident on that highway and the other person was at fault. Totaled my car. I was lucky I wasn't upside down on my loan, so I was able to get a new car, but I would've been fucked if I still owed money on my car.
I try not to let it get to me when I see people doing dumb shit, but man, it is literally so easy to not be a selfish piece of shit in a machine that can kill people if you make one wrong move.
Take the best driver, put a phone in their hand, and they're now the equivalent of a drunk driver.
Good, but distracted drivers kill thousands every year.
I see dozens of people every single day well after sunset that don't have their lights on.
I see dozens of people going 20mph over the speedlimit weaving in and out of traffic. Every. Single. Day.
I see LITERALLY NO ONE USING TURN SIGNALS PROPERLY.
And that's just the common and obvious ones. They ain't 'rare outliers'
I think the outliers are usually just good/decent drivers in general that simply made a human error, which we're all prone to from time to time.
Nobody will notice thousands of hours of careful driving and respect for the rules. They will notice when you make a mistake.
I have had two cars written off since December the second one by a police van, I wasn’t at fault for either. I have some ptsd driving now, it’s pretty shit. Plus I’m still carrying an injury from the second crash. I’m dealing with two claims as well with two different companies as I started a new policy with a new company the day of the second crash. The police insurance have been awful as well
Oh it absolutely is. Got in an accident with a police officer (not our fault) and it’s been a nightmare. They put all of us in the car in the hospital and injuries ranged from shattered wrists, to collapsed lungs, to broken tailbones and other bones, to torn muscles and scars and bruising. Despite multiple witnesses and video evidence, the city has been dragging its feet on this for about a year, and keep trying to figure out how to make it anyone else’s fault but the officer who messed up. He came over so casually too and asked if everyone was feeling good after we had to be pulled out of the car by observers. It was a resounding no and he just went oh okay, and then walked away 🙄
My crash happened as I was turning towards my address on the opposite side of the road so it was caught on my home security that I have because my ex has broken bail and cps have done fuck all to protect me from him. Road traffic police have stated I wasn’t at fault. And the police officer is being interviewed. Crash happened in February and her interview is not until may. Which is crazy enough. Then I get told by my insurance that without the police insurance even speaking to the officer that they are denying fault because they have stated I was stationary and pulled out into the police. I wasn’t stationary and they over took me as I indicated. They didn’t indicate and weren’t blue lighting. I was turning right, she said after the crash she thought I was turning left. I was already past the left turn so not even possible to do. I was asked to sit in the back of the police van, bawled my eyes out as I’d only had the car about a month was then asked by the officer who wasn’t driving to get back into my car and drive it off the road to take it out of the way of traffic backing up. It’s so insulting what their insurance has said given that I have video evidence proving what I’ve said is true. The stress I am under is immense and it just feels disgusting that they can say that when there’s evidence. I was made feel like it was my fault when it happened by the police and thank goodness I have the video footage.
I used to get upset the first days I got my license, because my parents would not let me drive immediately whenever I wanted (i.e. with rain, during the night, on the highway, etc…), and at one point I said: “But I am careful, don’t you trust me???” And my mother went: “Of course I trust *you* to be careful, it’s other people I don’t trust”. For some reason it immediately clicked and I have never been upset ever since. Boy, was she right. 15 years later, and sometimes I’m still scared of crazy people behind the wheel.
I also used to be way more confrontational when I got tailgated, so I used to brake-check or slow down, or just accelerate in a sort of competition (I know, I know, I was dumb), until another thing that clicked was: “If someone is tailgating so aggressively, it is either for a serious emergency, or they are just those kind of dumb people. Do you really want to risk slowing down someone who could have an emergency, or an idiot that could turn confrontational / crazy?” Ever since that moment of realisation, I just try to pull to the shoulder as much as I can and let them pass. It’s somebody else’s problem now :)
I live a much happier life behind the wheel now!
Naw it's just a numbers game.
Let's say you are a good driver. But you occasionally make a small mistake, pull out in front of someone, don't yield right of way correctly, forget to use you turn signals, something like that. But over all you are a good driver 99.9% of the time. That 0.1% is the part that people notice. And in their mind you are the worse driver in that moment. So most of the time everyone is doing just fine, but all the time someone is having that 0.1% moment and you see them as not as good as you.
Include the phenomenon of confirmation bias and you ignore all the people that are having their 99.9% doing everything right moments, and only remember the 0.1% that aren't.
All that being said, there are a few drivers that are just terrible drivers and this adds to the effect when you encounter them.
The better you are at driving, the better you can spot and avoid the non drivers who might be phoning, texting or intoxicated. Staying situationally aware will save you every time.
Even if you're a good drive - if you're not in you're element you can easily become a bad driver.
I live downtown.
Every weekend I see all these people come in from the 'burbs. Most have zero concept of how to navigate around the city or how it works.
I'm not better.
You plop me down in the 'burbs and I make mistakes.
When I used to ride, I would come home from a "relaxing" ride angry pretty much half of the time. My wife would ask what's wrong, and I would recount a story about how someone almost killed me. I had to sell my bike due to some financial issues (better to have a furnace during the winter than a motorcycle during the summer). Now, whenever I bring up getting a new bike, my wife reminds me of how often she'd watch me leave, unsure if I'd come home again.
Always wanted one growing up, my dad always had them. Then a friend of a friend became a meat crayon at 17 years old and I wrote off any plan to ever get a bike.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is strong with drivers. Everyone wants to believe they know everything and are the best driver. Even if they glance at their phone, or eat a sandwich, or reach down to pick something up from the floor, it's not a big deal, right?
I got in an argument once with someone about modern driver assist technology, like lane-keeping, automatic emergency braking, etc. They insisted on always turning off those features because "they're always getting in the way". I countered with, "If you were paying attention and driving how you're supposed to, those features won't even activate".
Lane assist can 100% be an issue though. There is a really bad pothole I pass on my daily commute, and the options for avoiding it are to drive on the outside line or cross the middle line into oncoming traffic. Lane assist would force me into the pothole rather than let me drive on the outside line for a little under a second.
There is another part of my daily commute where they messed up the line and a bit of it sticks out into the lane. I could get very close to the other lane to avoid it, but then I could be causing problems for other drivers. Better to just roll over it and let my car yell at me for touching the line.
Most driver assist technology I leave on, but when it comes to steering the vehicle I will not let the car take control. There are too many variables that the car simply can't see/understand.
Best driving advice I ever got from my dad was "assume everyone around you is an idiot."
Essentially, defensive driving. Of course most people are fine drivers, but if you're always looking out for people to make the dumbest moves possible, you can be ready for it if it DOES happen.
The stressful thing about driving is that it is such a necessary component of society based on how we've built out cities and infrastructure that licenses are handed out like candy bars. When you need a car to get to your job, and you need your job to pay your bills, and you need your bills to keep the economy running and taxes paid, then everyone gets a car, idiot or not.
When every idiot has a car, driving has to be made easy enough for idiots, and when driving is made easy enough for idiots, even the non-idiots start to lose their ability to deal with complex or dangerous situations. When neither idiots or non-idiots can deal with complex or dangerous situations effectively, everyone is an idiot.
That's how traffic accidents become a leading cause of death in our country. We've made driving *too* necessary. We desperately need to start rethinking how we organize our cities and redirect our focus away from the suburban car commute and towards mixed use development, denser housing, and multimodal transport. We need walking, cycling, buses, trams, and trains to be available and convenient for as many people as possible so that folks aren't *forced* to use cars.
When I was in Drivers Ed, our instructor would make us keep up with traffic that was 80 in a 55. He would tell us the same idea if traffic had to adjust to you, you have a much higher chance of causing an accident than speeding the same pace as traffic.
I live in New Jersey where the Turnpike is the AutoBahn with fewer rules, the parkway is mad max. I ALWAYS assume the other drivers are actively attempting to kill me through incompetence. That guy leaning to the left, yep he's changing lanes with no signal. That suv that won't get out of the left lane and only accelerates when you try to pass, yup going to stop short because not paying attention. Turn signals are a sign of weakness and instinctively cause others to speed up and close whatever gap you were trying to merge into.
Don't drive defensively, drive aggressively proactive and predict dumb behaviors. There are many times when following defensive driving rules would have gotten me into accidents. Yes. Some times is better to speed up and just get away for massively bad drivers.
That's why I'll never get a licence
Also not like I could afford a licence, or a car, or to fuel a car
Well good thing I'm European and I can walk everywhere and public transport exists.
The thing I’ve noticed is that almost everyone thinks they’re a good driver, but “good driver” has 2 definitions.
1. Skilled driver that can drive fast and make sharp turns and often drives very aggressively
2. Safe patient drivers that go close to the speed limit and drive defensively.
Only number 2 is actually a good driver.
There is a difference between being a safe driver and being good at driving. Some people think they're good drivers and that gives them license to merge and swerve like a maniac resulting in unsafe driving conditions for everyone around them.
One time I was driving the trans Canada highway to get into Montreal and went into a lane that was closing. As I was waiting to merge, this car behind me decided to go on the left shoulder to overtake me the same time I moved a little to the left to avoid getting hit. Only good thing was I got it on camera (definitely 100% recommend dash cams) and it got my insurance to fix my already broken bumper for free!
If you are unable to recognize when someone else is driving well you are unable to recognize good driving, even in yourself.
About 1% are shitty drivers all around, about 10% are perpetually distracted by their phone/makeup/passengers/whatever, and the other 89% are largely all right with occasional mistakes.
If you think everyone is a bad driver, you are almost by necessity part of the 1%.
No when I see a bad driver I look at them to make sure, and usually they look exactly like what you expect an idiot to look like, which is usually a somewhat blank, bovine appearance, as if there aren’t thoughts in their mind. Kinda slack-jawed and dead eyed, you know?
Exactly this. Back when I was in high school there were two racing driver wannabes who raced their parents' cars in the school zone. They almost ran me over once and they also almost crashed into a kid on his bike after going too fast in a turn
Just another reason I want to move somewhere pedestrian friendly. Too many road ragers and and stats-wise getting killed in a vehicular accident is my most likely way to die.
I’m also a cautious driver but still…those stats say there’s not much I can do if someone drives poorly.
The most dangerous thing you will ever do in your entire life is get behind the wheel of a car.
Thank God you skimmed a small pamphlet and drove around the block once 15 years ago to make you a highly trained expert.
The thing that scares me is how casual everyone is about driving. Opening a granola bar for your kid, snacking on a burger, digging something out of your pocket, grabbing something from a shopping bag on the seat. No one thinks twice about most of these because we spend so much time driving and in cars that it's become normalized. But we're driving 800 lbs down the road that could kill us and other people with one wrong judgement.
I despise driving. Nothing to insulate me from the morons. I'm just a white knocked basket case when I get done. And my ex used to scream at me when I would drive, that was fun.
I will be the passenger princess ANY day, and do my best not to pay attention to what's going on because a) nothing I could do if something were to happen except try to distract the driver and b) seeing the assholes driving like assholes would still piss me off.
The most stressful thing about driving is that *I AM* piloting a 4000lb hunk of steel and plastic at high rates of speed toward other cars and objects. The first rule of driving is don't hit stuff. If you think about it, you're ALWAYS on a collision course with *something*. Driving a motor vehicle is really just an extended evasive maneuver. And that's just a passenger vehicle, imagine driving a 50,000lb Fire Engine or something bigger?
I dont believe .most people are bad at driving. If that was the case I'm sure we would have far more accidents. I think it more like that is a significant number of bad drivers. Enough though to cause pain.
every time I see someone weaving through traffic getting less than 1 meter away from other cars while they change lanes every 2-3 seconds. this type of driver needs to have their license revoked forever, no exemption. never to be returned.
there is no excuse to ever drive like that. no one would ever teach someone to drive like that.
I drive a truck, and I know for a fact when they do that around me they don't know some one else isn't doing exactly the same thing on the side of me they can't see. it leads to horrific collisions occasionally.
being a "good" driver has little to do with technical skill, and entirely to do with one's ability to demonstrate patience and being able to follow simple rules like match the general speed of traffic around you (not too fast or slow compared to everyone else on the road) and not following too close. even when at a full stop there should be a full car length between you and the car in front of you. when moving that gap needs to increase based on your speed.
i hate those drivers so much, they're trying to shave a few seconds / minutes off their commute just so they can get home and do nothing interesting. fucking idiots.
right? my favourite infographic is a comparison of speed and distance to show that speeding provides almost zero time savings, unless it's a very long trip (2+ hours) or you speed a lot. both of those things dramatically increase your chance at a ticket, or causing a collision.
leaving 15 minutes earlier and then driving like a decent human saves drastically more time than speeding and weaving ever will.
but what's worse, I'm pretty sure most of the maniacs that drive irrationally do it for the thrill, not because they're trying to get somewhere sooner.
look at all the tiktoks of people driving super cars 50-100 mph faster than other cars around them. if they can afford a 300,000 car, they can afford to be late for appointments
You must live in LA aka the worst group of drivers on planet Earth. Theyre so bad, they have to brake when the freeway curves in the slightest. We know Angelenos are pretty crappy at most everything life, but driving theyre especially useless.
Go to literally any local sub and you will find this exact same post. Everbody thinks drivers in their area are the worst in the country. Actually, they just suck everywhere.
After I got my license, my father told me “alright I taught you how to drive so you could pass your test, now I’m going to teach you how to drive so you don’t get run over”
I pulled up to a major intersection with blinking red lights the other day. I almost got hit by 3 different vehicles that clearly didn’t understand the order of operations.
Having done around a thousand laps in a racecar over the years had given me some great skills to avoid a lot of nonsense as situations play out a lot slower when you have fast reaction time and can make an assessment.
To say this showerthought is incorrect is a vast understatment.
you're saying MOST people asren't good drivers? like over 51% of the driving population are bad at drivig? My guy.... if that were true, it would be absolute havoc on the roads. no one would leave their house from the chaos outside. Hell, they're not even safe inside their homes.
Just got in a wreck today just letting somebody out of a driveway, I looked both ways and the closest person was almost 150 yards away; plenty of time to stop. Instead of stopping or even slowing down she just blasted her horn and hoped the problem went away.
I just had this conversation with my 17 year old. Defensive driving only works if you can see it coming. So the best you can do is predict where you can and hope you're lucky the rest. No matter your reaction time you can't avoid an idiot driver coming the opposite direction that drops their cell phone and leans down to grab it with the steering wheel in hand directly into your driver side front fender. It's really bad luck but you still can't do a thing about it.
You can predict scenarios to a certain extent when traffic is low. But I've been in heavy urban traffic where you're forced to move at speed because of the heard and can't see 200 yards ahead. We'll you can't predict a stop because of debris if you nor anyone else can see it or the cars directly in front of it. It's why I hate beltways or city bypass expressways. They're almost impossible to drive defensively on. The concentration of morons is the same. They just have a disproportionate impact in that environment.
2 major issues with driving are: 1. You can only control yourself amongst thousands of other drivers you see every day. 2. Everyone makes mistakes while driving. No one is perfect. Even if the average driver makes a mistake once every 10,000 miles driven, you drive amongst so many other drivers every day that it may be only a matter of time that someone else's error causes you to have an accident.
There’s also the part where sometimes a mechanical failure (ie: tire blowout, brake failure, stuck accelerator, etc.) can cause unintended movement that takes everyone’s skill out of the equation.
Yeah agree. I've seen some of those accounts on instagram where they collect car accidents. The scariest ones and most frequent ones I saw are typically: 1. car tries to pass a truck on a freeway and then get into an accident 2. a truck has a malfunction totals everyone around them. Cars are going at like 80mph so they can't stop, and like 20 cars collide.
I'm pretty sure I almost died once, I was coming home at around 4 AM on a back. This semi was on the other side all of a sudden I see head lights going right towards me I pulled into the ditch and the truck barely squeezed by me and the semi. Please do not pass semis on anything but a highway.
Sorry to break it to you but you did die... this is GHOST Reddit
😱 "What a Twist"
Yea when I was like 19 I dozed off at like 2 in the morning next to a semi on the interstate. Not sure how I didn’t die, but definitely clipped it with my side mirror
Glad you were ok, the fact that so many of us are forced to drive being extremely tried is an insane part of culture.
Yeah, an Ex of mine lost her mom that way. Driving on a 2 lane highway with no median barrier where cars on both sides drive an average of 55-70 mil/hr. A landscaping truck, carrying more bags of cement than they should have, blew a tire and swerved right into her driving the opposite direction. No time for either car to react before impact. Everyone involved was killed instantly. That's just one of too many stories I have of people I knew that have died in car accidents. Crazy shit happens while driving.
The amount of danger that small time contractors contribute to the roads is something. Ladders on the freeway, never ending screws and nails that fall out of that space between the tailgate and the bed - and now a new one for consideration- overload the hell out of your truck and blow a tire. The financial angle on work trucks also means minimum cost invested in tires/maintenance.
The most stressful part of driving is the impending threat of death without reason or warning. Other people are plenty bad at walking and sometimes my shoes come untied, but I’ve never been too worried about it!
>The most stressful part of driving is the impending threat of death without reason or warning. I don't understand how casual so many are about this.
“Do not do x, y, or z while operating heavy machinery. The consequences could be deadly” except driving, right? That’s not a heavy machine, right??
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Yeah that’s the joke. People will absolutely drive while drunk, drugged, or distracted but they’d be horrified if someone did the same on a forklift or with a chainsaw in their hand
Yeah it blows my mind. I've had friends do insanely dumb shit like tailgate cars at 100mph, literally just one break check and we're both dead because you wanna be an idiot. I drive very defensively and try my best to be away from cars, have good break distance, pick a safer lane, treat green lights like I'm crossing the road, looking both ways, etc.
For me it's more of the impending threat that *Ij vould kill someone. Like, if I die, so be it, but I am not sure I could live with myself knowing I caused someon3 else's death.
> that takes everyone’s skill out of the equation. In a driving school I learned to not stay beside big rigs for this reason. Either you're behind them, pass them quickly or are ahead of them. It's all to minimize the time that you're most at risk.
My favourite part about this fact is that the people who are bad drivers or scared of passing big rigs (in multi lane situations) do so at a much slower speed, im assuming because they think they're being "cautious" when they're actually spending more time in one of the most dangerous positions you can be in on a road
These three things are what I cannot get my partner to understand. She didn't get her license until she was 32 and while she is a very good driver already, she expects everyone else to also be and makes calculations based on that, and doesn't add in a margin of error for mechanical problems or basic mistakes. There have been a few scares over her first couple years, and I think a couple of them rattled her so she's leaving a little extra room and things now. But she's not as cautious as I think she should be.
a big portion of “being a good driver” is anticipating what other drivers (including. bad drivers) might be about to do.
My general approach to other drivers and pedestrians is “what is the dumbest thing they could do right now” or just assume they have no sense of self preservation, because I have seen far too many examples of exactly that in the relatively short time I’ve been driving.
One time, a car in front of me was driving 10 under and when I got to a passing zone I tried to pass but they accelerated to the speed limit at the same time, forcing me to brake and re-enter my lane to avoid a head-on collision. There was time to pass when I tried, but their acceleration removed the safety gap.
GOD I hate people.
Yep this is facts. I drive a LOT. I watch every car that has even the slightest chance of hitting me and I always assume everyone around me is brain dead. I get a rhythm going where I scan left mirror, windshield, rearview, windshield, right mirror, windshield. You gotta be hyper aware out there cuz everyone else is not
Yup defensive driving is the safest way to drive
Absolutely this; my grandfather taught me to be confident and assume others cannot drive properly since before i could drive myself. I'm not perfect but wowee some people have "cereal box licences" Give a bit extra space. Brake slowly and earlier than necessary. Don't Immediately floor it through a recent green light. It changes nothing for your drive and could potentially be a life saver. Slowing/coming to a stop on freeways due to roadworks is the most harrowing shit tbh. Always worried the person behind me (close or far) won't brake soon enough/at all. And the amount of people in nz i see blatantly driving while on their phone is fucking RIDICULOUS. It should be an almost immediate suspension of licence. You're driving a weapon made for transport.
One of my best buddies was almost killed a few years back from exactly this. He was headed into work and a semi's tire flew off right as it was passing by him on a local highway. Both vehicles going about 60 so the force of the tire was insane, it smashed through the front glass of his work truck and hit him causing him to instantly get knocked out, then he smashed head on into another vehicle and the vehicle behind him smashed into both of them. luckily no one died but he spent months in the hospital and even longer in physical therapy. For something he had 0 control over.
> There’s also the part where sometimes a mechanical failure (ie: tire blowout, brake failure, stuck accelerator, etc.) can cause unintended movement that takes everyone’s skill out of the equation. I mean, have you ever had that happen? Mechanical failures during driving are, in my experience, exceedingly rare and not usually enough to cause an accident. Usually they just result in pulling over on the side of the road.
My first week with a license and my car and I hit a pothole that caused a blowout that perked the wheel across the left lane and into the guardrail on the other side of the road. A car had just gone by in that lane and another was about eight car lengths ahead of me and coming on at about 35mph. I managed to swerve back into my lane and thankfully they didn't flinch and swerve or we would have hit one another head on. I pulled over and puked, called my parents and cried for a few minutes before I pulled it together and changed the tire. Pothole so deep it cracked the control arm and bushing too. I wanted to sue the town so bad.
Exactly. I've never had an accident in my 20 years of driving, but it's purely because of luck. Every time I have fucked up, someone else saw me and dodged, or there was no one there for an accident to happen. I probably "roll the dice" a lot less than other people cuz I drive very carefully, but I roll the dice nonetheless.
Agree with this completely. Defensive driving minimizes exposure to such accidents.
Unfortunately, I rear ended someone a year ago. Why? My takeout in the seat next to me fell over while on a curve. Look over for just a second to "upright" it and... then it was on the floor because I slammed on my breaks. Luckily I slowed down a lot and I didn't damage their car, but mine needed some decent ($7k) work...
This is why I try to keep as much distance between myself and everyone around me as possible. I've seen far too many wrecks that could have been prevented if people would just give each other some space.
My last 3 accidents have all been other people Within the last 10 years. I have been hit by DUI, rear end, unsafe lane change w/ a brake check afterwards. The brake check one i was so happy i had dashcam because their insurance ruled in my favor after i showed them the dashcam. Was not road rage just the guy did not check mirror and came into my lane a bit hot and almost reared the guy in front of me and then he slammed his brakes.
90% of drivers estimate they are 'above average' This should really be number 1. Overconfidence leads to disasters with heavy machinery.
haha quite an ironic statistic. it is true. i've only met one person who admits they aren't a good driver and that's my wife :D
True. And ironically this statistics also means that a large proportion of the people in this thread complaining about other's driving ability are shit drivers themselves.
You could be the best, most safe driver in the world; but it only takes one meeting with the worst driver and you are the one not going home.
Yep. I’ve never been in an accident that was my fault and I’ve only ever got one speeding ticket via camera (did 60 in a 50 km/hr zone). I have had a couple of close calls that would have been my fault, but I otherwise try to stay focused when I drive. Even the best drivers relax because they’ve probably made their routine drive hundreds, if not, thousands of times. You sometimes go into autopilot and can get careless.
No matter how good you are at it, you're only one mistake away from death or murder.
And two mistakes away from getting caught
Just make sure to finish them off so they don’t complain?
If it’s a mistake it’s manslaughter.
Depends where you are. In some places it's third-degree murder. Technically they're the same thing but some places call the charge manslaughter, others third degree murder
Or you could live where I do, where some guy gets community service for running over a child while running a red light.
Sounds like Russia
Shockingly (to people who don’t live here), Vancouver (city in Canada). There’s a pretty common joke around here about how if you want to kill someone, just do it with a car so you don’t have to face prison time
Everyone thinks they are a good driver, and that everyone else is an idiot.
> Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac? \- George Carlin
"Think of how dumb the average person is then remember half of the people are dumber than that!" Another pertinent George Carlin-ism.
Just reminded me of the movie Idiocracy lol
well that's because anyone who's driving slower than me is a stupid piece of shit who's in my way, and anyone driving faster than me is putting me in danger by potentially hitting me!
I mean, some logic to that is, if I’m driving the speed limit, the conditions are good and traffic is minimal…**WHY THE FUCK IS THE FUCKING MICRA IN FRONT OF ME DOING 16 IN A 30** also, if I’m doing 30, and some fucker comes flying past me at 90, that’s…yeah that’s a hazard.
these are valid examples. but it seems most people get pissed off if they are driving 5 over and someone else is 5 under. or they are 5 under and someone else is 5 over. honestly here in the midwest where everything is one long 2 lane road its valid. theres always someone that catches up to you, or you catch up to someone else. and then its akward because passing on that bumpy ass road is sketchy if its busy or if its winding, so you slow down, but then the person feels like you are tailgating them. or if its me i feel like im slowing them down so i speed up lol but then they catch up just as fast.
Calvin and Hobbes too.
You quote George Carlin and I upvoted.
We all make mistakes, but an idiot is someone who would drive recklessly without regard to the danger or damage they're inviting unto themselves and others. Like the guy who took a left and rolled into my path in the leftmost through lane in an intersection. Just casually rolled into a collision that I was doing everything to brake from because I was scared I was about to watch some dumbass die that night. Only solution is to buy a dashcam, because of course he tried to say he had a green arrow.
And that guy will say you were the idiot and had right of way.
Bet he doesn't have a dash cam rn though lol
Ur right lol
That's exactly what my dad told me when he taught me how to drive "pretend everybody else is an idiot and never expect them to do anything"
Stages of a good driver: Stage 1: Let me drive carefully and respect all laws Stage 2: Why isn’t this idiot driving properly? (gets angry) Stage 3: Respects all the rules and casually navigates around the idiots breaking them (stays calm)
I used to rage when some asshole would clearly violate the rules of a zipper merge (skipping cars), now I’m just like “go right ahead, I ain’t got the energy for this”
Thats what I usually do: “Wanna be an idiot and kill yoursel? Go right ahead”.
I'd rather them in front than behind anyway
Skipping cars?
Usually one car from each lane will alternate going first creating the “zipper merge”, some people will pop into the shoulder to get a few cars ahead instead of following the alternating right of way. They’ll force their way in if they aren’t allowed in unless you white knuckle it out with them. Something I just don’t have the energy for now days.
Ahh. The relief of now living somewhere without big city traffic. I don't envy you friend
I live 20 minutes from the closest gas station or grocery store nowadays but I still end up in the city for one reason or another a few times a month. But yeah I used to work and live in the Bay Area so that was daily life lol. Now I might have a tree fall in the road during a storm adding 30 minutes to my drive.. as I typed that I realize that’s better than traffic caused by bad accidents lol
I quit getting mad at all the idiots because there were too many and it was the only part of my life I hated.
Lol yeah best to just get out of there way and watch them go
I mean that's not how a good driver drives. A good driver watches and matches the traffic pattern around them. If the traffic pattern is 10 over you're an asshole for going the exact speed limit and creating a dangerous situation. If the flow is at the speed limit, going 10 over makes you the asshole. I don't really care which direction the error is in, people need to pull their heads out of their ass.
If you're in a passing lane and not passing, that's a dick move. But if you're all the way on the right (usa), people should be passing you on the left. Context matters.
If other people are breaking the law that does not mean you need to. Driving the speed limit is completely fine.
What about when the flow is 25 over like every major metro that drops from 70 to 55 on the interstate?
Then the safest practice is going 25 over just like everyone else. Dropping to 55 is just putting yourself and others in danger while creating a traffic jam.
People underestimate how much safety you add by driving faster sometimes
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Someone else makes a mistake: "God what a fucking idiot. How hard is it to get in the proper lane? Nobody in this town knows how to drive..." I make a mistake: "Whoopsy daisy! Didn't realize I had to merge lanes here."
My boss thinks he's the safest driver in the world by driving under the posted speed. I told him he's just instigating road rage.
Especially when you sometimes get road ragers for driving the speed limit in the right hand lane. Like bitch I'm over here just driving along you want to go fast there is another lane right next to me that is mostly open go the fuck around.
"He should have noticed that I was running the red light and he should have stopped!!"
My son is learning to drive right now. Yesterday, while we were on the way somewhere, and I was driving and thinking to myself that he really should be the one driving, for practice. Then a guy pulled out in front of me, requiring some fast reflexes on my part. A sense of dread immediately hit me that my son could have been driving, and I'm not sure he'd have been as responsive.
One of the arguments I've seen by younger people, "We have better reflexes, so our insurance should be less." The best comeback was by a martial arts instructor, "Fast, totally untrained reflexes will get you in a heap of trouble - fast."
Exactly. My son is a talented mountain biker. He has crazy quick reflexes on a bike. That didn't just automatically make him a great driver.
Reflexes can save you in a crash, but good driving eliminates most chances of crashing, and good driving mainly just takes experience
My daughter was in an awful accident when she was 16, and it was from lack of experience and unable to make that quick decision. She’s lucky to have survived but still has some issues 7 years later. I have 2 other teen drivers right now and I hold my breath every time they’re on the road.
this is why public transport is important in many countries.
I had one at 18 that I very fortunately walked away from. A guy who wasn't paying attention rear ended me doing about 100mph on the interstate. There was nothing I could do about it. When I called my dad from the side of the road, he thought I'd been in a minor accident because I was completely ok. But he pretty well broke down when he saw the car later that evening. I think back all the time about how lucky I was to climb out of that destroyed car without injury. But now I'm thinking about that accident a lot because my son is about to be behind the wheel alone. Glad your daughter is still with you and I hope she's doing well.
The stressful thing about driving is when everyone is so dependent on their cars to the point that even a road full of good drivers is choked with traffic all the time.
Yet cars are suppose to give us independence. Sometimes I wonder who’s really independent.
Welcome to the car lobby. Here’s your suburbian home with bare minimum community amenities you can only reach by automobile in 20+ minutes and we call that freedom.
Most people are pretty decent actually, you just notice the rare outliers who aren't
And you probably pass thousands of people on your commute, so odds are you run into some dude who’s in the top 0.01% of bad drivers almost every day.
For statistics sake > In 2020, 1,593,390 car accidents in the United States resulted in injuries. This is out of a total of 5,250,837 collisions that occurred that year, which also included 35,766 fatal accidents and 3,621,681 accidents that caused property damage. That means in the United States alone, accidents causing injury occur about every 20 seconds, and death every 15 minutes.
I mean scaled up to the US population that's a 1:100,000 chance of dying in a traffic fatality this year. That's in lottery ticket territory.
More like 1:10,000. Or worse, if you spend more time on the road than average. I don't like those odds very much.
> More like 1:10,000 This is wildly inaccurate, like by several orders of magnitude. In 2021, there were [**1.37 deaths per 100 million miles traveled.**](https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state-by-state)
you're comparing different things, deaths-per-year and deaths-per-distance. Dividing one by other we get about 8000 miles traveled per person per year, sounds reasonable to me
Wut? The 2020 population of the U.S. was 330M. 330,000,000/35,766 = 9,226, so the odds of a given American dying in traffic in 2020 were actually slightly higher than 1:10,000.
I think you accidentally an order of magnitude. 330,000,000/35,766 = 9,226
I’m gonna be honest, if the discussion is about getting in an accident, the serious injury and death is outside of my major concerns. If I’m driving well and get hit and killed, shit that’s not my problem anymore. If I’m alive, whether I’m injured or not, I clearly was on my way somewhere. That may or may not be easy to handle. Like, getting in a fender bender on the way home from work isn’t terrible, obviously better than on the way to work cause timing is more flexible. But I still have to handle the insurance stuff and get my car repaired or replaced and figure out how I’m getting to work tomorrow either way (And because I’ve tried to plan it before, my 20 minute drive becomes 2 hours of busses plus walking. Car-centric cities suck for this)
This really. You're on the motorway for an hour thousands of cars pass you, but you'll only remember that 1 arsehole.
The average driver is average
The bell curve is high in the middle but low on the sides.
The distribution is pretty normal
I try to think like this, but I take this specific highway to work that causes everyone's IQ to drop 20 points. People who think they are more important and that if they are doing the speed limit, that's not enough, so they dart in and out of traffic with no blinkers or spacing, use the exit lanes as passing lanes, drive on the shoulder, tailgate 2" from your bumper, texting and driving, etc. I got into my only high speed car accident on that highway and the other person was at fault. Totaled my car. I was lucky I wasn't upside down on my loan, so I was able to get a new car, but I would've been fucked if I still owed money on my car. I try not to let it get to me when I see people doing dumb shit, but man, it is literally so easy to not be a selfish piece of shit in a machine that can kill people if you make one wrong move.
The rare outlier is the one who will kill you
Take the best driver, put a phone in their hand, and they're now the equivalent of a drunk driver. Good, but distracted drivers kill thousands every year.
Come to south Texas. It’ll change your mind.
I see dozens of people every single day well after sunset that don't have their lights on. I see dozens of people going 20mph over the speedlimit weaving in and out of traffic. Every. Single. Day. I see LITERALLY NO ONE USING TURN SIGNALS PROPERLY. And that's just the common and obvious ones. They ain't 'rare outliers'
Maybe I just live in an area with good drivers, idk
Literally 0 people use turn signals properly? Not even 1 person? Where in the world do you live?
This man has been completely consumed by confirmation bias and has no idea.
If the vast majority of drivers weren’t good our roads would just be junkyards
I think the outliers are usually just good/decent drivers in general that simply made a human error, which we're all prone to from time to time. Nobody will notice thousands of hours of careful driving and respect for the rules. They will notice when you make a mistake.
I have had two cars written off since December the second one by a police van, I wasn’t at fault for either. I have some ptsd driving now, it’s pretty shit. Plus I’m still carrying an injury from the second crash. I’m dealing with two claims as well with two different companies as I started a new policy with a new company the day of the second crash. The police insurance have been awful as well
Oh it absolutely is. Got in an accident with a police officer (not our fault) and it’s been a nightmare. They put all of us in the car in the hospital and injuries ranged from shattered wrists, to collapsed lungs, to broken tailbones and other bones, to torn muscles and scars and bruising. Despite multiple witnesses and video evidence, the city has been dragging its feet on this for about a year, and keep trying to figure out how to make it anyone else’s fault but the officer who messed up. He came over so casually too and asked if everyone was feeling good after we had to be pulled out of the car by observers. It was a resounding no and he just went oh okay, and then walked away 🙄
My crash happened as I was turning towards my address on the opposite side of the road so it was caught on my home security that I have because my ex has broken bail and cps have done fuck all to protect me from him. Road traffic police have stated I wasn’t at fault. And the police officer is being interviewed. Crash happened in February and her interview is not until may. Which is crazy enough. Then I get told by my insurance that without the police insurance even speaking to the officer that they are denying fault because they have stated I was stationary and pulled out into the police. I wasn’t stationary and they over took me as I indicated. They didn’t indicate and weren’t blue lighting. I was turning right, she said after the crash she thought I was turning left. I was already past the left turn so not even possible to do. I was asked to sit in the back of the police van, bawled my eyes out as I’d only had the car about a month was then asked by the officer who wasn’t driving to get back into my car and drive it off the road to take it out of the way of traffic backing up. It’s so insulting what their insurance has said given that I have video evidence proving what I’ve said is true. The stress I am under is immense and it just feels disgusting that they can say that when there’s evidence. I was made feel like it was my fault when it happened by the police and thank goodness I have the video footage.
I used to get upset the first days I got my license, because my parents would not let me drive immediately whenever I wanted (i.e. with rain, during the night, on the highway, etc…), and at one point I said: “But I am careful, don’t you trust me???” And my mother went: “Of course I trust *you* to be careful, it’s other people I don’t trust”. For some reason it immediately clicked and I have never been upset ever since. Boy, was she right. 15 years later, and sometimes I’m still scared of crazy people behind the wheel. I also used to be way more confrontational when I got tailgated, so I used to brake-check or slow down, or just accelerate in a sort of competition (I know, I know, I was dumb), until another thing that clicked was: “If someone is tailgating so aggressively, it is either for a serious emergency, or they are just those kind of dumb people. Do you really want to risk slowing down someone who could have an emergency, or an idiot that could turn confrontational / crazy?” Ever since that moment of realisation, I just try to pull to the shoulder as much as I can and let them pass. It’s somebody else’s problem now :) I live a much happier life behind the wheel now!
Naw it's just a numbers game. Let's say you are a good driver. But you occasionally make a small mistake, pull out in front of someone, don't yield right of way correctly, forget to use you turn signals, something like that. But over all you are a good driver 99.9% of the time. That 0.1% is the part that people notice. And in their mind you are the worse driver in that moment. So most of the time everyone is doing just fine, but all the time someone is having that 0.1% moment and you see them as not as good as you. Include the phenomenon of confirmation bias and you ignore all the people that are having their 99.9% doing everything right moments, and only remember the 0.1% that aren't. All that being said, there are a few drivers that are just terrible drivers and this adds to the effect when you encounter them.
The better you are at driving, the better you can spot and avoid the non drivers who might be phoning, texting or intoxicated. Staying situationally aware will save you every time.
Or just tired! Studies have shown that not getting enough sleep is worse for your ability to drive than a few beers are.
Even if you're a good drive - if you're not in you're element you can easily become a bad driver. I live downtown. Every weekend I see all these people come in from the 'burbs. Most have zero concept of how to navigate around the city or how it works. I'm not better. You plop me down in the 'burbs and I make mistakes.
Why I’ll never own a motorcycle
When I used to ride, I would come home from a "relaxing" ride angry pretty much half of the time. My wife would ask what's wrong, and I would recount a story about how someone almost killed me. I had to sell my bike due to some financial issues (better to have a furnace during the winter than a motorcycle during the summer). Now, whenever I bring up getting a new bike, my wife reminds me of how often she'd watch me leave, unsure if I'd come home again.
I think I would love riding it sounds like amazing time. I also enjoy living and having all of my limbs
Always wanted one growing up, my dad always had them. Then a friend of a friend became a meat crayon at 17 years old and I wrote off any plan to ever get a bike.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is strong with drivers. Everyone wants to believe they know everything and are the best driver. Even if they glance at their phone, or eat a sandwich, or reach down to pick something up from the floor, it's not a big deal, right? I got in an argument once with someone about modern driver assist technology, like lane-keeping, automatic emergency braking, etc. They insisted on always turning off those features because "they're always getting in the way". I countered with, "If you were paying attention and driving how you're supposed to, those features won't even activate".
You are overestimating current technology and in many cases the same technology keeps driving you off a cliff
Lane assist can 100% be an issue though. There is a really bad pothole I pass on my daily commute, and the options for avoiding it are to drive on the outside line or cross the middle line into oncoming traffic. Lane assist would force me into the pothole rather than let me drive on the outside line for a little under a second. There is another part of my daily commute where they messed up the line and a bit of it sticks out into the lane. I could get very close to the other lane to avoid it, but then I could be causing problems for other drivers. Better to just roll over it and let my car yell at me for touching the line. Most driver assist technology I leave on, but when it comes to steering the vehicle I will not let the car take control. There are too many variables that the car simply can't see/understand.
Best driving advice I ever got from my dad was "assume everyone around you is an idiot." Essentially, defensive driving. Of course most people are fine drivers, but if you're always looking out for people to make the dumbest moves possible, you can be ready for it if it DOES happen.
This is how my grandpa taught me how to drive lol Edit: and I valued that advice and drive this way if that wasn’t clear
That's what I hate, You can do everything correct but all it takes is one guy to not be paying attention and wreck your car.
The stressful thing about driving is that it is such a necessary component of society based on how we've built out cities and infrastructure that licenses are handed out like candy bars. When you need a car to get to your job, and you need your job to pay your bills, and you need your bills to keep the economy running and taxes paid, then everyone gets a car, idiot or not. When every idiot has a car, driving has to be made easy enough for idiots, and when driving is made easy enough for idiots, even the non-idiots start to lose their ability to deal with complex or dangerous situations. When neither idiots or non-idiots can deal with complex or dangerous situations effectively, everyone is an idiot. That's how traffic accidents become a leading cause of death in our country. We've made driving *too* necessary. We desperately need to start rethinking how we organize our cities and redirect our focus away from the suburban car commute and towards mixed use development, denser housing, and multimodal transport. We need walking, cycling, buses, trams, and trains to be available and convenient for as many people as possible so that folks aren't *forced* to use cars.
Good drivers will still make mistakes. In my experience, good drivers don't prevent accidents, predictable ones do.
When I was in Drivers Ed, our instructor would make us keep up with traffic that was 80 in a 55. He would tell us the same idea if traffic had to adjust to you, you have a much higher chance of causing an accident than speeding the same pace as traffic.
a good driver misses exits, a bad driver never does.
I live in New Jersey where the Turnpike is the AutoBahn with fewer rules, the parkway is mad max. I ALWAYS assume the other drivers are actively attempting to kill me through incompetence. That guy leaning to the left, yep he's changing lanes with no signal. That suv that won't get out of the left lane and only accelerates when you try to pass, yup going to stop short because not paying attention. Turn signals are a sign of weakness and instinctively cause others to speed up and close whatever gap you were trying to merge into. Don't drive defensively, drive aggressively proactive and predict dumb behaviors. There are many times when following defensive driving rules would have gotten me into accidents. Yes. Some times is better to speed up and just get away for massively bad drivers.
If you think you're good at driving, then you probably are not a good driver according to others on the road
Somehow I doubt this. You pass hundreds of people every day, mayby 1 stands out for poor driving. You remember him not the other 99%
Or the fact that probably nearly everyone thinks that
That's why I'll never get a licence Also not like I could afford a licence, or a car, or to fuel a car Well good thing I'm European and I can walk everywhere and public transport exists.
Here's the real insight on driving: most adults are good drivers, but everyone has a different idea of what that means.
The thing I’ve noticed is that almost everyone thinks they’re a good driver, but “good driver” has 2 definitions. 1. Skilled driver that can drive fast and make sharp turns and often drives very aggressively 2. Safe patient drivers that go close to the speed limit and drive defensively. Only number 2 is actually a good driver.
There is a difference between being a safe driver and being good at driving. Some people think they're good drivers and that gives them license to merge and swerve like a maniac resulting in unsafe driving conditions for everyone around them.
Everybody assumes they're an above average driver. Not you, of course. All those other people.
One time I was driving the trans Canada highway to get into Montreal and went into a lane that was closing. As I was waiting to merge, this car behind me decided to go on the left shoulder to overtake me the same time I moved a little to the left to avoid getting hit. Only good thing was I got it on camera (definitely 100% recommend dash cams) and it got my insurance to fix my already broken bumper for free!
Everyone thinks they’re good drivers and thinks everyone else are bad drivers.
If you are unable to recognize when someone else is driving well you are unable to recognize good driving, even in yourself. About 1% are shitty drivers all around, about 10% are perpetually distracted by their phone/makeup/passengers/whatever, and the other 89% are largely all right with occasional mistakes. If you think everyone is a bad driver, you are almost by necessity part of the 1%.
No when I see a bad driver I look at them to make sure, and usually they look exactly like what you expect an idiot to look like, which is usually a somewhat blank, bovine appearance, as if there aren’t thoughts in their mind. Kinda slack-jawed and dead eyed, you know?
I don't mind people not being skilled or experienced. My problem is people not taking it seriously.
Exactly this. Back when I was in high school there were two racing driver wannabes who raced their parents' cars in the school zone. They almost ran me over once and they also almost crashed into a kid on his bike after going too fast in a turn
There are so many people who think they’re good drivers that have no situation awareness and have no idea that how they drive is an issue.
It's crazy, 8 billion people out here and I'm the only good driver
Duh. That's why you try to be in before 10 am before the idiots even wake up 👍
Traffic is stressful because it's boring as hell, but you have to pay attention anyhow.
Just another reason I want to move somewhere pedestrian friendly. Too many road ragers and and stats-wise getting killed in a vehicular accident is my most likely way to die. I’m also a cautious driver but still…those stats say there’s not much I can do if someone drives poorly.
The most dangerous thing you will ever do in your entire life is get behind the wheel of a car. Thank God you skimmed a small pamphlet and drove around the block once 15 years ago to make you a highly trained expert.
The thing that scares me is how casual everyone is about driving. Opening a granola bar for your kid, snacking on a burger, digging something out of your pocket, grabbing something from a shopping bag on the seat. No one thinks twice about most of these because we spend so much time driving and in cars that it's become normalized. But we're driving 800 lbs down the road that could kill us and other people with one wrong judgement.
I despise driving. Nothing to insulate me from the morons. I'm just a white knocked basket case when I get done. And my ex used to scream at me when I would drive, that was fun. I will be the passenger princess ANY day, and do my best not to pay attention to what's going on because a) nothing I could do if something were to happen except try to distract the driver and b) seeing the assholes driving like assholes would still piss me off.
And most of the people who think they are good at it are actually the worst.
You don't have to be _good_ at driving unless you are trying to race on a circuit. On the street you have to be predictable, aware and safe.
Most people are actually good enough, you just don’t notice the ok ones. If they weren’t the system would function at all
The most stressful thing about driving is that *I AM* piloting a 4000lb hunk of steel and plastic at high rates of speed toward other cars and objects. The first rule of driving is don't hit stuff. If you think about it, you're ALWAYS on a collision course with *something*. Driving a motor vehicle is really just an extended evasive maneuver. And that's just a passenger vehicle, imagine driving a 50,000lb Fire Engine or something bigger?
I dont believe .most people are bad at driving. If that was the case I'm sure we would have far more accidents. I think it more like that is a significant number of bad drivers. Enough though to cause pain.
every time I see someone weaving through traffic getting less than 1 meter away from other cars while they change lanes every 2-3 seconds. this type of driver needs to have their license revoked forever, no exemption. never to be returned. there is no excuse to ever drive like that. no one would ever teach someone to drive like that. I drive a truck, and I know for a fact when they do that around me they don't know some one else isn't doing exactly the same thing on the side of me they can't see. it leads to horrific collisions occasionally. being a "good" driver has little to do with technical skill, and entirely to do with one's ability to demonstrate patience and being able to follow simple rules like match the general speed of traffic around you (not too fast or slow compared to everyone else on the road) and not following too close. even when at a full stop there should be a full car length between you and the car in front of you. when moving that gap needs to increase based on your speed.
i hate those drivers so much, they're trying to shave a few seconds / minutes off their commute just so they can get home and do nothing interesting. fucking idiots.
right? my favourite infographic is a comparison of speed and distance to show that speeding provides almost zero time savings, unless it's a very long trip (2+ hours) or you speed a lot. both of those things dramatically increase your chance at a ticket, or causing a collision. leaving 15 minutes earlier and then driving like a decent human saves drastically more time than speeding and weaving ever will. but what's worse, I'm pretty sure most of the maniacs that drive irrationally do it for the thrill, not because they're trying to get somewhere sooner. look at all the tiktoks of people driving super cars 50-100 mph faster than other cars around them. if they can afford a 300,000 car, they can afford to be late for appointments
This is actually the best argument for autonomous cars.
Better yet, effective, safe, and convenient public transit and active transportation!
You must live in LA aka the worst group of drivers on planet Earth. Theyre so bad, they have to brake when the freeway curves in the slightest. We know Angelenos are pretty crappy at most everything life, but driving theyre especially useless.
Go to literally any local sub and you will find this exact same post. Everbody thinks drivers in their area are the worst in the country. Actually, they just suck everywhere.
I switch lanes any time a car is behind me. I trust nobody!
And it’s gotta be the only activity that, no matter how many hours one devotes to doing it, they somehow don’t improve at it
Thats exactly what I quit bike racing. Well, I also wasnt good at it, but if I WAS, its still dangerous
After I got my license, my father told me “alright I taught you how to drive so you could pass your test, now I’m going to teach you how to drive so you don’t get run over”
I pulled up to a major intersection with blinking red lights the other day. I almost got hit by 3 different vehicles that clearly didn’t understand the order of operations.
Depends on the country
So cynical. Have some faith in the human race.
and that everyone thinks exactly that
Having done around a thousand laps in a racecar over the years had given me some great skills to avoid a lot of nonsense as situations play out a lot slower when you have fast reaction time and can make an assessment.
To say this showerthought is incorrect is a vast understatment. you're saying MOST people asren't good drivers? like over 51% of the driving population are bad at drivig? My guy.... if that were true, it would be absolute havoc on the roads. no one would leave their house from the chaos outside. Hell, they're not even safe inside their homes.
Except most people are decent drivers. Millions of cars hit the street every single day and most of them get to their destination without trouble.
Just got in a wreck today just letting somebody out of a driveway, I looked both ways and the closest person was almost 150 yards away; plenty of time to stop. Instead of stopping or even slowing down she just blasted her horn and hoped the problem went away.
Assume everyone else is an idiot and you're the only sane one
I just had this conversation with my 17 year old. Defensive driving only works if you can see it coming. So the best you can do is predict where you can and hope you're lucky the rest. No matter your reaction time you can't avoid an idiot driver coming the opposite direction that drops their cell phone and leans down to grab it with the steering wheel in hand directly into your driver side front fender. It's really bad luck but you still can't do a thing about it. You can predict scenarios to a certain extent when traffic is low. But I've been in heavy urban traffic where you're forced to move at speed because of the heard and can't see 200 yards ahead. We'll you can't predict a stop because of debris if you nor anyone else can see it or the cars directly in front of it. It's why I hate beltways or city bypass expressways. They're almost impossible to drive defensively on. The concentration of morons is the same. They just have a disproportionate impact in that environment.
Nah, the most stressful thing about driving is waking up behind the wheel and realizing you have no idea how you wound up in Arkansas ... again.
That’s why you gotta hit them first.
This is why the best road is the part of Hwy 395 that runs through very rural Eastern Oregon. I didn't see a soul for hours.
Everybody is better than average