I know these stories are always fake anyway but holy shit, buy a bike and chill out for a few years.
I personally know someone who totaled 4 cars before turning 18. He literally treated the gas as an on/off switch.
So people that bad at driving are out there.
Truth be told, drivers here in the US are TOTALLY untrained for the most part. My oldest is currently in driver’s Ed and it is a joke, in regards to actually how to drive a car. I have spent a lot of time training him as I have a long history taking racing and advanced driving courses. I’ve held SCCA and FIA racing licenses and I have taken some courses that are usually reserved for police officers The only problem is I do not feel that I’m a very good teacher for him. But he has picked up some things, even if he isn’t up for threshold or trail braking.
Most of the USA also seems to lack options for adults to take a class and be given professional instruction on how to drive, for some odd reason. If you’re out of high school there are no classes for you.
I wonder if it’s like that in most other countries as well?
Learning to drive as part of high school is a super American thing that is really indicative of your attitudes towards driving and car ownership
It’s pretty standard in Britain to learn to drive when you’re 17. The testing seems to be much more rigorous than whatever happens in America though, and Anon would hopefully have lost their licence by now!
I suppose it is technically possible for Anon to have been ruled to not be at fault for all of those accidents, but that’s like winning the lottery twice.
Unfortunately in huge swaths of America a driver’s license is practically a necessity – there are no realistic alternatives. A 30 minute to an hour drive to go to work or get groceries isn’t uncommon.
Not in Hungary. Getting a category B license, which covers automobiles and mopeds, starts with a long course in driving theory, basic maintenance, and traffic laws, capped by an exam. Then a one-day first-aid training and exam. The next step is driving practice with a certified instructor – basic skills on a practice course, then real traffic, plus parking and reversing maneuvers – 30 hours total, which must include one hour of highway and one hour of night driving, and has a minimum required distance travelled, ending with a one-hour exam with the instructor and an examiner employed by the state. Next you have to pass a medical exam (sight, hearing, balance), and THEN you can apply for a driving license.
All in all, it took me about six months and cost 150,000 HUF (~400 USD using today’s conversion rate). I passed the driving exam on the second attempt – the first failed because I didn’t yield to an old beater with a busted indicator light.
Also, just for comparison, when I started driving, my insurance was around 170 USD a year and it’s only gone down. $500 per month is fucking absurd.
We’re no where near $170 a year but $500 is very high. I haven’t had a ticket or accident in about 15 years, I think insurance companies can only go back 6 years, and I’m paying about $75 per month.
that has to be liability only
I have full coverage with decently high coverage values (above minimum across the board, some substantially so)
I pay 60/mth, but I have a flawless driving record (driving since 04, not so much as a ticket) and live in a rural low cost state so that may factor in.
For someone who’s over 25 with a clean driving record you can get good coverage for one vehicle for about $500/6 mo. My wife and I have no tickets and 1 accident (deer on a county highway on a blind curve, completely unavoidable, but totaled the car) and our rate hasn’t changed in the 3 years since we last made any adjustments
yeah the cheapest I can find is 300 month. yes i have clean record.
That’s insanely cheap insurance, I pay that to insure a vehicle that is parked up and not driven.
Wow, 400€ is good, I (or rather, my family) paid about 4000€, and that was even with passing every exam the first time and generally being a good student. But I’m from Germany, not Hungary. Still, that can surely not account for such a vast difference, can it?
It can, easily. Hungary is cheap, both the wages and cost of living (although the ratio of the two is getting worse every day), compared to the rest of Europe and even many former Soviet republics. Foreign companies are flocking here for cheap, skilled labor. That 150,000 HUF was a significant part of the average gross monthly salary at the time.
Your info is outdated. A the cost starts at 300k, assuming they only need the minimum required driving hours to pass. Which is rarely the case.
Y’all have to hear to drive?
Not necessarily, but the state then requires proof that the reduced hearing (1) does not impact balance, and (2) can be compensated sufficiently by the driver (e.g. actively looking out for blinking blue lights because they cannot hear the horn of police/ambulance/fire brigade vehicles).
You don’t?
We have to show that an imperfect hearing is not a hindrance, e.g. you won’t hear a siren coming from the left when it’s from the right.
Nah I’m hard of hearing and allowed to drive without hearing aids. All our traffic signals are predominantly visual and sirens are treated as a secondary component to the flashing lights. Hell, cops often only use the auditory components when the visual has failed, the visual never fails for me because I understand that I absolutely must rely on my eyes when driving.
So actually this is an area of professional interest to me and yeah, it’s often horrifying how easily many systems could incorporate visual sirening but choose not to. Fire alarms have flashing lights in every workplace in my country, but tornado sirens basically never do.
In as car centric of a country as America it would be a fairly extreme injustice to prohibit the deaf from driving if we’re able to effectively use visual signals within a reasonable margin of error (I’d say so long as our best drivers are better than the average hearing driver)
i mean, in fairness, how would you incorporate non auditory sirens into a tornado siren?
My wife didn’t even do drivers’ ed, since she didn’t get her license until after high school. She just had to pass a test and got her license that day. I did the whole drivers’ ed thing, but it barely prepared me at all, and I ended up getting into 2 accidents while still in high school since I just didn’t have the experience to deal with unusual situations, and I locked up when I happened to get into a couple dangerous situations. Luckily we’re both experienced drivers by now 10+ years later, but yeah, those first few years are basically just learning how to drive by driving, being a danger to everyone.
curious what those two accidents were caused by.
Tailgaters. I was terrified that if I slowed down too quickly they’d smash into me, so one time I took a turn too fast and crashed into a car I couldn’t see because of a hedge, and the other I didn’t brake quickly enough to stop for a guy who suddenly realized he wanted to take a left turn right then. I eventually told myself that if tailgaters crash into me, that’s their problem for being so close behind me, and I just need to focus on what I’m doing.
ah, yeah that sounds about right. Tailgaters are the worst shit dude.
NL here: driving education is something you have to do at driving schools, separate from regular schools. Getting your license requires a written exam (traffic rules, hazard recognition, stuff like that) and a practical exam, with both the practical and all lessons done in regular traffic. If you see a car with a blue square sign with a white L in it, that’s a student driver.
It also costs a few thousand euros to go through the process. Though getting your license for cars does often get you a license for some other vehicles. Mine came with a moped license.
Getting your license requires a written exam (traffic rules, hazard recognition, stuff like that) and a practical exam, with both the practical and all lessons done in regular traffic.
Sounds the same as the US, although zero lessons required and costs like $45 or something.
In the USA some states don’t require licensure for mopeds and similar pedal operated vehicles.
Umm my insurance gives me a discount if I take a refresher course every two years or so. It wasn’t really hard to do.
Brazil: You need to do psych and eyesight evaluations, 40 hours of classes, 20 hours of practical lessons ( you need separate practical lessons for cars, bikes, semis etc) and tests for both.
There was a kid at my high school who was famous for wrecking 7 cars his senior year. Parents just kept buying him new ones. Like, brand new. Off the lot. It was insane.
Don’t even have to change the oil at that rate.
Sounds like a hell of a car salesman!
Kid’s parents probably bought that person their house.
As someone that ended up being the teacher for the majority of my friend group. If you are struggling with the teaching more than likely you’re trying to give answers to their questions. Which is actually more unhelpful than helpful.
If they’re asking you how to make a certain kind of turn, or how to know how close they are to something. Just giving them an answer isn’t really useful because they don’t know how to arrive at that answer, instead you need to help them ask the correct questions.
" you didn’t quite make it in that parallel park, get out and take a look at where the car is. The back of the car is only just barely in the spot, so clearly you didn’t end up deep enough in the spot. What do you think you need to do to change that"
And have them keep practicing until they start to figure it out, it will seem frustrating for them in the moment but it’s genuinely more useful for them to try things on their own and attempt to reach the answer. than it is for them to be handed the answer, because then they understand not just the answer is, but the why of the answer. Why did I not make that turn, what does it feel like to not make the turn properly. Which is very important for being able to apply those same principles of vehicle control to other situations.
One of my favorite things to do with people is to set up some cones or a block of wood or whatever and just tell them to try and park as closely as possible to that object without touching it. I have them do that, get out, go look at how close they were to it, and then try again if they were nowhere near it until they can get it to Within less than a foot. Great way to help train sense of vehicle position.
Yes this. We teach kids, slow down in the rain, but give no guidelines on how to calculate how much they should slow down. Hell I have ran into very few adults that even understand the concept of out driving your headlights.
My parents took me to a parking lot after a fresh snow and told me to give it a try. Learning how the car handles is yuge.
Around here you be Lucky to get snow once every 4 years. So yeah good idea but not doable here.
It’s alright, he probably doesn’t need to know how to do a PIT maneuver or corner drifts :P
Yeah, people like this are why my (absolutely spotless record, not even a parking ticket) insurance is so high. They drive rates up for everyone around them, simply due to the fact that you can get hit by them through no fault of your own.
I dated a girl whose brother had four accidents on his record at the time. He was 17 years old, so just barely old enough to have his license, (in my area you can get your permit at 15, and license at 16). After his second totaled car, their parents told him he was buying his third car with his own money. For them, the first totaled car was a fluke; The second was a pattern. So he got a job at 16, bought a junker with his earnings, and totaled it six months later.
The worst part is that two of his accidents happened in the exact same circumstances. Slick roads from an ice storm. He takes one particular corner too fast, hits a patch of ice, and ends up totaled. He totaled two cars on the exact same icy corner, because he didn’t learn from the first accident.
New intern at work was talking about smashing 2 cars while speeding just weeks apart. Then starts talking about wanting to get a motorcycle. Kid isn’t going to make it to 25.
Can you get him to sign up to be an organ donor? My state lets you do it online.
Who says natural selection is gone?
hey, at least he wont kill a woman and their child, just himself.
Wouldn’t they have revoked your license by this point?
Not necessarily. Actual accidents don’t always confer citations and many of those can be discharged for simply proving your insurance paid the other person. It’s not illegal to be a klutz, it’s just expensive.
Depends where in the world this is.
I have a friend who has, give or take a couple, wrecked vehicles more than 20 times. Most were minor, barely involving damage to the vehicle he was driving or the vehicle/object he hit, but a couple were catastrophic. I think the majority were because he has roadway hypnosis/narcolepsy. I’ve had him fall asleep mid sentence talking to me when he was a passenger. A perfect candidate to have that license taken, right? The two ways I know of to take a license involve driving while intoxicated or a doctor personally notifying the licensing agency about a person’s inability to drive. Believe it or not, most doctors have a vested interest (because they want clients) in not personally notifying the agency. However, there is no set path to revoke a license for simply being a bad driver.
With that he definitely would loose his license here in Germany. It’s insane to drive with narcolepsy.
It’s surprisingly hard to take someone’s license away.
You’d be surprised…
I did know people like this growing up, but they were always driving fucked up one way or another.
That’s bound to work out great with their history of crashing…
Is there any hope for me?
Yes, public transport.
Is this a European joke I’m too American to understand? /s
As an American living abroad I can honestly say I don’t miss being required to drive everywhere. Haven’t owned a car in six years and there’s like 2 times a year I need a car so I just rent one. Way cheaper that way.
Move to a city, it would be cheaper than this absurdity.
You can still take a taxi I’m sure, may just be more expensive than this guy’s insurance premiums.
Yes, there’s hope. Stop driving a car.
The insurance agencies really need a way to recommend the government take someone’s license when they’re a public danger like this.
Well they do give them a strong incentive to stop driving.
They only give them a strong incentive to stop driving legally.
Taking someone’s licence also gives them a strong incentive to stop driving legally
And this is the problem. People who have their license suspended often drive anyway. Sometimes they have to in order to get to work because the U.S. has a shit public transportation system in vast areas of the country.
My state doesn’t require insurance to drive.
Of course sir, you’re new low cost car insurance policy is right through this door over here … 🔒
Give insurance companies the will power to say no im not going to insure you. And then cap insurance rates. and by cap i mean no insurance should be more expensive than the rate new drivers are allowed to be charged.
Where i live insurance rates have a discount for being a good driver. Goes up each year to cap at about 40percent. This is tied to your liscence not insurance.
Increase that discount for good drivers and make sufficiently bad drivers unable to be insured.
Keeping people like this off the road is one of the biggest reasons why every place needs robust public transportation systems.
Bro needs a bus pass
Sounds like my wife’s asshole cousin who has been in so many crashes and totaled so many cars at this point that he’s had his license taken away and has to get around Indianapolis on a scooter. And he’s in his 20s.
I remember the day at a family function when the roads were icy him bragging to us about how he made it down to the function doing 80 on icy roads and sliding around everywhere but didn’t crash. Seriously, he was bragging about it as if it made him Mario Andretti.
His dad is a doctor, so I’m guessing he was paying that high insurance for quite some time, but no longer. His dad also bought him a Cadillac which, obviously, he totaled. I love his dad, he’s my GP, but he has a big blind spot when it comes to his son.
doing 80 on icy roads and sliding around everywhere […] bragging about it as if it made him Mario Andretti.
This, at best, makes him kinda okay at Mario Kart.
But even that game forces you to give up if you crash too many times.
It’s one of many reasons I can’t stand him.
The fact that his voice has two volume levels, secretly mutter something offensive and shout at the top of his lungs no matter how close he is to your ear, makes me hate even going to her family’s functions.
Has he ever considered becoming a park ranger?
Are they in the habit of muttering offensive things and yelling in people’s ears?
It’s a Parks & Rec reference:
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bragging about that is like bragging about negligently discharging a gun in a crowd of people and miraculously, nobody gets hit.
I wouldn’t put that past him either. And I hope he doesn’t have any guns, but I have a feeling he does and I have a feeling he’s pointed them at people as a “joke” before too.
probably didn’t exercise trigger discipline when he did, and who knows whether it was loaded.
Suppose i should probably put up my premature simpsons “vision” and say that he is going to get fucked up some day.
I was actually surprised at how recent the bike infrastructure was in downtown Indianapolis so using a scooter to get around would not be bad in downtown at least.
He’s in Greenwood. Less bike friendly.
So best case for someone like this: don’t drive. Get other people to drive you, use public transportation, get a bike, etc. But this is probably America and that is 100% not possible everywhere. Or even most places.
There is another option: State-Owned High-Risk Auto Insurance. These are insurance plans owned by individual states. Because US states all require auto insurance to drive a car and because driving a car is goddamn necessary in a lot of America, this exists.
It’s VERY expensive. Like when I was looking at getting good coverage for 2 newish cars I was staring down $500/6mo. Our state’s high-risk was $2,000+. But it exists for people like in the post who are just too expensive for ordinary insurance companies to want to insure.
At this rate I bet it’s cheaper for them to Uber everywhere.
No way. Even just commuting assuming $20 each way (cheap for rush hour) that’s $4,800 every 6 months. Probably 2-3 times as expensive as the high risk insurance.
The post said they had been paying $500 a month ($3000 for six months) and it went up with every accident. When you factor in gas and maintenance (let alone deductibles for all their accidents), ride share services might well be cheaper.
$4,800 every 6 months is only $800/month. The OP pays $500/mo on insurance, let’s say $100 on gas a month, that’s only $200/month payment on the loan for an old used car. Car ownership is expensive, but it’s probably more common for the car payment to be $500/month and insurance to be $200/month. This doesn’t even factor maintenance
Where on earth are you getting insurance for 2 cars for $500/6 months? I’m middle aged, drive a 10 year old car, and have a perfect driving record, and mine’s about $100/month. I’ve priced the same level of coverage with other companies and that’s pretty much what all of them offered.
Eta: I’m literally asking. I have no loyalty to my current company, if I can get it cheaper, I’m out.
That was a few years ago. But I have the same coverage and cars for $580/6mo. BTW it’s cheaper to pay all at once usually.
But our cars are compact and subcompact about 9 & 10 years old. We carry 100/300/100. It’s GEICO is MD but it was also about the same with progressive in FL. Only one of us has a perfect record, the other is still minor and rare.
So you may just live in an expensive state for insurance.
Totally possible. CO has gotten pretty expensive for everything. :/ It may still be time to get some other estimates again, though.
I’m in a similar position, middle aged, clear driving history for about 15 years, car’s an '18. I pay ~$450 every 6 months with Progressive. Paying the whole amount up front gives me a good discount. If you can’t do that size payment at once you can pay with PayPal credit and it should be no interest for 6 months so you can get the discount and still pay monthly.
I need to check on whether I get a discount for paying all at once. I’m finally at a point where I could manage it but I have no idea what it would save.
Ooh, just checked looked and nope, USAA gives me $16/month off for autopay but no pay in full discount. Lots of pretend discounts for other stuff but that just puts them around what other insurers would charge anyway. What a rip off.
Farmers
2003 Subaru WRX and 2001 Toyota MR2
250 bodily injury per person
500 bodily injury per accident
100 property
Comprehensive and collision on the MR2.
Total is 494.50/6mo
I live in the Netherlands and now pay €188 a year. It’s just a “wa” insurance meaning if I hit something they pay the damage of the other’s, but not mine damage.
I drive a car from 2009 and have 10 years of no damages. So if your willing to move to the Netherlands wait 10 years you can lower your payment. (Not really a option I guess)
Where can I find more humor like this?
Hopefully not on any road near you.
I actually believe this is a real story
I believe it. A childhood friend of mine had totaled like 7 (very cheap) cars by the time he turned 25.
After a particularly brutal crash, he was diagnosed with epilepsy after having an absence seizure in the presence of an ER nurse.
Hasn’t wrecked since.
Are you saying he drives better with epilepsy or that he hasn’t driven since?
He got medicated
I still don’t have an answer to either of my questions though!
Medication meaning the epilepsy is now effectively treated and he hasn’t had a seizure since.
If it isn’t a real story, there are plenty of real stories like it. There are just a disgusting number of people who are reckless drivers.
Almost no one in the town I live in uses their turn signals. It’s infuriating. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve almost rear-ended someone who suddenly slam on their breaks in the middle of an intersection and turn off. I also live in a subdivision with no sidewalks and a speed limit of 25 mph. People are regularly walking their dogs and kids are everywhere. I see people flying down the curvy subdivision roads doing at least 50.
I’m amazed I haven’t heard about anyone getting killed.
A lot of it is also people who know they shouldn’t drive but have no other choice. In the vast, vast, vast majority of the US, if you don’t have a car you can’t even go to the store or get a job.
This is my partner. Has epilepsy, but no family, money, or insurance.
Ironically since they can only get part time work with flexible hours, they’re stuck in customer service, meaning when their hours get cut they have to doordash to make rent.
Worst part is if you did rear end them in that situation, you’re the guilty party for insurance etc.
Exactly. It both pisses me off and terrifies me every single time. And it happens at least once almost every time I drive. I honestly don’t understand it. I’ve never been in a place where so many people refuse to use turn signals.
Many people need a near death experience to teach them respect for the mass and energy involved in driving.
I had a bad crash over a decade ago where somebody ran into me at low-ish speeds. It was head on though, and it was more than enough for me to remember for life. I wasn’t a bad driver or anything before that though.
the best way to teach people how mass and inertia works in a car, is to put them in the passenger seat, get up to highway speeds, and then send the brake pedal to the floor.
They won’t be able to breathe.
There are the “Worst driver” TV shows. There are some real head cases in there.
I can believe this is not sarcasm
I legitimately don’t get people who can’t drive. It’s actually ridiculously simple to not break the law or get in an accident. I’ve never had a ticket or been in an accident. Closest was I slid on ice and hopped a curb once, but there was no damage at all because, get this, I was driving slow enough for the bad weather conditions :0
It’s actually ridiculously simple to not break the law or get in an accident.
Driving a car is absurdly difficult, incredibly dangerous, takes only a second of distraction to kill yourself and others and in general is such a nightmare that it is contrary to what you say a miracle that people aren’t crashing into each other all the damn time.
Like, everybody I have gotten in a car with for the past 10 years invariably will get stressed out significantly by the unavoidable chaos of driving enough to visibly become emotional about it even during a short drive. Driving is miserable.
I can agree with some of your response to what was said by the other commenter, but my impression is that person was shocked that someone at a young age has been involved in double digit accidents that mostly sound like their fault. Some people really just are incapable of driving, though that shouldn’t diminish that small lapses or true accidents do happen.
I would disagree that driving in general is miserable, though I’m sure this can vary by location. While i would prefer better access to efficient public transit (live in the USA), being able to get in a car and go anywhere is pretty freeing, provided it isn’t during high volume times, especially on a freeway.
i have never been in a serious accident. over 30 years driving, probably 2/3 of it in major metro areas with notably terrible traffic, and i have had maybe 5 fender benders… i would have to really think about it.
driving is absolutely dangerous and terrifying. but wow, it’s kinda nuts that the person in the screenshot has had so many accidents!
I can totally understand, and that makes a lot of sense. I think the sheer volume of accidents in the post are what’s so shocking. I’ve only been in a vehicle with an obviously reckless driver two times (so far. And to clarify, two people, once each), and from my perspective, some people really shouldn’t drive. Heck, one of those two times was supposed to be a casual date (she was picking me up, we were in college), and i asked her to drop me off immediately. Big nope.
true accidents do happen
I disagree. It’s like a gun. There’s negligence, but “true accidents” I’m not sure if I buy it.
A person can actually, literally, control whether their car hits anything. It’s a solvable problem.
I don’t think it’s fair to assume, at best, an accident is negligence. There are numerous things that can lead to an accident that wouldn’t be negligence, such as normal wear and tear causing problems with something such as brakes or steering (perhaps not caught during routine maintenance as they weren’t issues at the time), something falling into the road (weather related, wildlife, erosion), a glitch of some kind (two green lights, not negligence necessarily) , or visibility issues (even cautious and solid drivers can be at risk during poor conditions). These are just some examples, but in the cases nobody involved would be at fault.
I believe the comparison to a gun is woefully inaccurate and invalid. Both are machines with the capacity to cause harm, but the similarities end there.
I> A person can actually, literally, control whether their car hits anything. It’s a solvable problem.
That is a really silly way to look at car accidents and the tragedies that come out of them. Just because you could rewind time and change what the drivers were doing to avoid a crash happening doesn’t really mean anything about the inherent risk factors to driving. Accidents are going to happen, we live in the real world not the one in which people behave consistently and perfectly and freak unexpected situations never happen.
Further, most people HAVE to drive their car in order to live their life on a daily basis (getting to work and back being the most obvious need). Driving isn’t a choice for most people at least in the US, so people are absolutely always going to be driving when they really don’t want to or aren’t at their most alert. It is just something we have to do sometimes in order to make ends meet in our lives.
I disagree. It’s like a gun. There’s negligence, but “true accidents” I’m not sure if I buy it.
No, you can walk around with a gun, even with it cocked and so long as you keep your finger off the trigger the likelihood of an unavoidable or unforeseen accident is still fairly low. A gun is an inert object that must be compelled to become lethal by the pressing of a trigger. A 5000 pound SUV on the other hand, by simply moving at normal driving speeds in close proximity to other people, consistently presents lethal opportunities that the driver must actively take steps to prevent from becoming realities.
A gun and a car are almost precise opposites in that respect. A car is like a gun that periodically aims at someone and automatically begins a firing sequence and you have to be paying attention enough to actively intervene and stop it.
No, you can walk around with a gun, even with it cocked and so long as you keep your finger off the trigger the likelihood of an unavoidable or unforeseen accident is still fairly low. A gun is an inert object that must be compelled to become lethal by the pressing of a trigger. A 5000 pound SUV on the other hand, by simply moving at normal driving speeds in close proximity to other people, consistently presents lethal opportunities that the driver must actively take steps to prevent from becoming realities. A gun and a car are almost precise opposites in that respect.
This is, I think, an apples:oranges comparison as you’re not taking the objects’ functional properties into account.
What is a gun, objectively, designed to do, in the most basic terms?
Fire a projectile when the trigger mechanism is actuated.
What is an automobile designed to do, in similar terms?
Move, when the accelerator is pressed and slow when the brake pedal is pressed.
An apples:apples comparison would be something closer to this:
You can walk around with a safely holstered gun and, barring a very unlikely malfunction or external factors, it will not go off, until the trigger is pulled. You can also walk around a safely parked car and, barring a mechanical malfunction or external factors, it will not move, unless someone presses the accelerator.
Like a computer, cars and firearms generally just do what their operator “tells” them to do.
being able to get in a car and sit in traffic anywhere is pretty freeing
Fixed that for youuu
That’s why i added not high volume times, so what i meant was regarding specifically driving when you aren’t stuck in traffic. I’m suggesting that the act of driving itself isn’t normally a horrific experience, though yes, sitting in traffic is awful.
Edited for some clarity
Driving a car is absurdly difficult, incredibly dangerous, takes only a second of distraction to kill yourself and others
Yes and no.
It seems that most people are falsely convinced (or even peer-pressured to some extent) that you must drive at the speed limit or even above it. But you actually don’t have to. You must adjust your speed for weather conditions, road conditions, traffic intensity, surrounding safety infrastructure (or lack of it) and your skills and current condition.
It seems that learning how to choose your speed is missing from most driving courses worldwide. Sometimes, road maintenance provides some advice on that, for example in France you have different speed limits for wet/dry road. But in other cases drivers ignore that guidance - sometimes highway speed limit is lowered due to lack of hard shoulder or animal fences but very few people understand that and most just ignore the limit.
And then there’s your own condition - if you’re tired, slow down, your kids are crying in the back, slow down, you’re on new road, slow down, have a gut feeling, slow down!
What you’re describing is actually mostly a case for driving too fast for given conditions. Even if you’re not speeding but you can’t read and comprehend signs, road, other cars, pedestrians and navigation - you’re driving too fast, slow down.
So I think both your and OP’s comments boil down to attention. As long as you remember essential driving rules and pay attention to road, surroundings and those rules it’s difficult to cause an accident. But if your attention is slipping then it’s a slippery slope.
And if you observe that you often struggle to pay attention to one of those things, you should review your actions and skills and apply necessary corrections.
Driving is easy in a way that it’s schematic and there are not many rules compared to say aviation. But it’s not mindless! You must think about your skills, capabilities and your state of mind and act according to those. In aviation pilots do thorough risk assessment before and during flight, and drivers should do that as well. What makes driving easier than flying is that when you identify the risk as too high you can just slow down or stop.
So to summarise. For God’s sake SLOW DOWN! It saves lives.
Driving is easy in a way that it’s schematic and there are not many rules compared to say aviation
I just don’t agree with this, flying an airplane has got to be harder in a lot of ways but one way in which driving is more difficult is the the amount of things you can hit while driving and how easy it is to hit those things.
The entire point of an airplane is to get up into the sky so it doesn’t have to worry about hitting other things when it goes fast…
In terms of regulations, there’s a ton of laws that private pilots must observe.
In terms of situational awareness, I would say in some cases driving and flying are comparable. When flying VFR you are responsible for the separation from other aircraft and for navigating. So pilots need to look outside to stay away from others and look on map/ground to stay away from restricted airspaces, which gets intensive in busy airspaces.
I’m sorry not hitting another flying object in an absolutely MASSIVE three dimensional space that is 99.99% empty is a trivial task next to driving through a busy city in essentially a two dimensional space (you can’t go above or below to avoid hazards) with high speed traffic going the other direction only inches away, abrupt requirements to stop when something pulls in front of you, a dizzying variety of cars, pedestrians, bicyclists and other hazards to keep track of and the constant pressing need to ALWAYS be ready to brake or steer violently in order to avoid crashing.
Also when air airspace does get relatively congested like say at an airport, there is usually a tower full of people who’s job it is to route traffic so all you have to do is follow their directions and communicate effectively. You don’t have to make instantaneous choices like someone trying to get to an exit across 5 lanes of busy highway traffic that isn’t letting them in.
Let me put it this way, with an airplane cruising on a level flight path, how long could the pilot let go of the controls and ignore the environment around them before they hit something? That is a difficult question to answer, it could be 10 minutes… it could be more (assuming the aircraft can maintain a cruise speed and level flight). With a car, the answer is simple, it takes no more than 3-5 seconds of ignoring the environment around you and letting go of the controls to hit something. At highway speeds the difference of a second or two can determine if you collide head on with another vehicle at a combined velocity of 120+ mph.
An airplane pilot rarely is put in a position as risky as driving a car unless they are acting extremely irresponsibly. The rules of flying set out to make it so the pilot ideally never needs the kind of split second reactions that driving requires on a day to day basis (except for perhaps during landing).
The numbers support my claims too, flying is BY FAR AND AWAY safer than driving a car. It isn’t even close, driving is by the numbers extremely dangerous compared to everything else we are required to do in order to live our lives.
Yeah it’s easy to hit things. But it’s also easy not to. Just like, look at where you’re going, go slow enough that you can stop if you need to.
It’s far easier to get to the grocery store without hitting anything with the car than it is to, say, pass the first level of Super Mario Bros.
It’s far easier to get to the grocery store without hitting anything with the car than it is to, say, pass the first level of Super Mario Bros.
Then why don’t we let kids who can beat Super Mario Bros in their sleep (and thus from your perspective have demonstrated the skill required to learn how to drive) drive cars?
Again just because it is easy to aim the steering wheel and press the gas peddle doesn’t mean that every time you so much as drive to the grocery store and back you aren’t literally doing the most dangerous (mandatory) activity in most adult’s lives (both in terms of risk to yourself and risk of killing or hurting others).
Because they can’t reach the pedals or grasp the moral cost of killing people, and those kids failed a lot at Mario Bros before they got that good. We can’t afford to have people fail a lot with cars until they get good.
Then why don’t we let kids who can beat Super Mario Bros in their sleep (and thus from your perspective have demonstrated the skill required to learn how to drive) drive cars?
Well for one they can’t reach the pedals or see over the steering wheel, and the safety systems in the drivers seat are built for adult sized humans. I totally believe the average 10 y/o possesses the mental capacity to operate a motor vehicle though. I was riding dirt bikes around town at that age. Now, their risk assessment abilities might be off, but I’ve seen plenty of people way into adulthood that don’t seem to have those abilities either.
And oh my god did you just call driving mandatory? Why don’t you care what words mean that is ridiculous.
For the vast majority of Americans having a car is a mandatory part of having a job?
I can’t remember the last job I applied to that didn’t ask specifically whether I had a drivers license and car.
Yes, owning a car is mandatory at least in most places in the US. I don’t like it, but to believe otherwise is a strange distortion of the reality for most.
Hi I live in America, the word “mandatory” is definitely apt
I mean, I guess I could add a few hours to my commute by taking buses, but our public transit blows
I never said it didn’t suck, but it only sucks because other people are terrible drivers. It isn’t absurdly difficult at all unless you’re incredibly incompetent.
I never said it didn’t suck, but it only sucks because other people are terrible drivers.
This is the least important reason driving sucks is because other people aren’t perfect at driving. The reasons driving sucks:
-1. There are wayyyyy too many cars on the road
-2. In order to try to solve 1, the entire landscape has been devoted to facilitating more and more cars which makes it depressing as fuck to go anywhere because where you are going is functionally the same as where you came from.
-3. Owning a car is absurdly stressful, massively stressful so everybody on the road at a minimum is stressed about making sure their car doesn’t fall apart and they can’t get to work.
-4. People spend massive chunks of their lives sitting in cars commuting to work for almost no reason, highways are filled with people everyday stopping and starting, stopping and starting over and over again in traffic using fossil fuels to move several thousand pound objects miles and miles all for nothing.
It isn’t absurdly difficult at all unless you’re incredibly incompetent
-5. This bring me to my last point. Just because it isn’t physically difficult to press the gas and brake pedals on a car and use the steering wheel doesn’t mean driving is easy in the slightest. It is one of the most difficult things human beings have ever been expected to do on a daily basis in terms of extreme life ending consequences for losing attention or control for only the briefest of moments. It isn’t hard to drive a car compared to say riding a horse, but driving a car is so mind numbingly frustrating and exhausting in modern life that there is a good chance one day you won’t be paying attention when that freak rare situation occurs and you need to respond instantly in order to not hit another several thousand pound object hurtling towards you with fragile humans inside (not to mention humans everywhere on the street, barely an arms length from your metal box traveling at lethal speeds).
Driving is extremely difficult, look at how stupendously self driving cars have failed to tackle the challenge even when we created AI opponents that can easily beat the best Go players in the world years ago. The fact that wayyyyyy more accidents don’t happen all the time is actually pretty incredible in terms of the daily volume of sustained, unbroken focus it takes from every single person driving to prevent more crashes.
You think this because you were desensitized to it as a child riding in the car and then a teenager who learned to drive early on. My wife is from a large city where they don’t drive and she only learned as an adult and is basically paralyzed by how terrifying it is half the time.
Yeah just in the same way a person who learns to walk as a toddler is “desensitized” to the dangers of balancing on the ends of long sticks to get around.
She might want to look into some CBT for that. It’s not the only way it has to be.
unless you’re incredibly incompetent
Wow. Not for me. I drive ten hours a day sometimes. Never freaks me out.
If you don’t start yelling at somebody or something within 10 minutes of getting in the driver seat you are in the vanishing minority of drivers. Are you some kind of monk?
Ancient ninja secret of give-no-fucks.
People have become so jaded by driving that they’ve lost the perspective on how much it beats the hell out of walking. Even if you consider being in 25 MPH highway traffic to be “slow,” you’re still covering more distance in an hour than most people would be able to cover on foot in an entire day.
Driving loses your perspective on speed because you’re in a big metal box. Being on two wheels can regain the sense of speed at lower driving speeds, but I’ve noticed after 6 months of motorcycling that even those speeds can begin to feel slow on a motorcycle, especially on long rides. Sounds like that’s my calling for the track :)
True. I went from homeless two years ago to having a car now, and I appreciate the reminder.
It’s so much fucking better than having to walk, or take public transit where any trip is minimum one hour even if it’s only a ten minute drive away.
Oh you mean just yelling at people? I thought you were talking serious emotional distress. Well of course I yell my head off at people it’s my civic duty as a driver to yell at people.
However I quit caffeine last week, and since then it’s down to maybe 5% as often as before. And I no longer find myself ranting after the thing is over. Just things like “whoa what the fuck!” and then it’s over.
Also, an accident is just a matter of time / miles. You can be the most careful driver in the world and a car can pull in front of you on the freeway and come to a dead stop. You’ll hit them from behind and the insurance company will blame you.
I legitimately don’t get people who can’t drive.
Setting aside folks with serious disabilities, folks with long term mental decline, folks with mechanical difficulties, folks with rambunctious kids in the back seats, folks in neighborhoods with high speed limits and generally unsafe driving conditions, folks who have to drive through inclement weather, folks who don’t regularly maintain their car’s brakes and tires, folks who drive cars that have poor visibility (big trucks, particularly), and folks who just never learned rules of the road before getting a rubber stamp from a DMV that does not give a shit…
It’s difficult to understand why other people don’t drive as well as I do.
One sec. Sorry. Banging this out on my phone while driving and I had a whoopsie-doodle. Let me clean this up and I’ll finish my post.
Ok so obviously if you have a medical condition that makes you unsafe to drive, you shouldn’t drive. If you don’t maintain your car that’s entirely on you. If you choose a car with poor visibility you’re purposefully endangering everyone around you so you shouldn’t drive. If you don’t understand the rules, you certainly shouldn’t be allowed to drive but that’s a whole separate issue.
Not everybody has a choice or an option, there are so many places in the US where the place you live absolutely necessitates the use of a car to do literally anything related to living your life. Living in places with actual transit infrastructure that allow independence from cars are sometimes too expensive or have high COL’s
Not everybody has a choice or an option, there are so many places in the US where the place you live absolutely necessitates the use of a car to do literally anything related to living your life
People have the choice to move. I’m sick of this “no choice” horseshit people do to justify unsafe driving.
“Well bonking baby heads with a hammer is the only job here so I have to do that. I’m not a bad guy I’ve got no choice”
Unless you live on a little island with no trees to fashion a raft from, but plenty of baby bonking jobs, you can go to a different town.
Yes I’m well aware, I live in one of those areas.
Yet every fucking “car forum” is just filled with people who believe that it is their God given right to do 100mph+ on every highway, and that if you slow them down they are then justified to aggressively weave in and out of traffic.
Practice just going the speed limit. It is liberating.
I’m one of those people! I demand passage and all other cars are what I like to call Enemy Traffic. Whenever I encounter Enemy Traffic I just lay on my horn until they surrender.
I’m a real person and not a caricature. I exist.
Also, I blast music when I hike.
Whenever I encounter Enemy Hikers I just stride confidently down the middle of the trail and they bounce off my football pads like ping pong balls.
One time at Chautaqua Park in Boulder a lady asked me to hold her dog’s leash while she used the restroom. So I had a stranger take a quick video of me helping out: https://youtube.com/shorts/OGBDBl6MuDc
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/shorts/OGBDBl6MuDc
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Let us accept that these people exist. They are one of the many reasons walking, biking, bussing, and train riding should all viable as main modes of transportation. If your town is too small for a train, leave that out. If it’s too small for a bus, leave that out. Ain’t nobody’s town too small for good walking and biking layout and design. We did it naturally right up until we got hooked on cars.
I totally agree and fully encourage people to not drive whenever possible. Most of the truly stupid drivers won’t do that though
I was actually thinking more in terms so that the rest of us can avoid being on the road with these morons, but getting some of them off the road would also help.
Some people have zero spatial awareness and/or an inability to judge speed and distance – their brains just aren’t wired for it. They can be perfectly normal in every other way, and some don’t even realize (or are willing to admit) it’s a problem.
Yep, and we should have driving tests that actually are challenging so people like that don’t get a license.
I haven’t driven in decades. It’s something I’m terrified of. Luckily I’ve lived in dense urban areas so even well before Uber/Lyft there was always plenty of public transit and cab stands everywhere.
I don’t have the gross motor coordination to safely operate a car. I could probably drive one remotely with a controller, but I can’t make the full-body motions needed to press pedals and steer with my arms at the same time.
I was obviously not referring to people with medical conditions. The average able-bodied person should be able to safely operate a vehicle without causing an accident.
Well, almost slow enough
Maybe you should learn how to fucking drive?
Pffft, that’s what the insurance is for, so they don’t have to learn.
Makes me wonder how having a personal driver would affect premiums. Does the owner of the vehicle pay it? Does the driver? Do both?
Depends who owns the car or who has the loan out against the car. If you own the car and hire the driver, you insure the car and put them on the policy as the primary driver.
Huh. I’ve never thought of that, and it’s a really good question. I’m guessing there may be some kind of “I own it, but don’t drive it” group within insurance that deals with it, or maybe be kind of shared responsibility between the two.
Skill issue!Not everyone has health good enough to drive car safely. Or drive at all.Then don’t fucking drive. 🤦♂️
My suggestion would be to:
- Move to a place where not driving is a viable way of getting about. If you already live there, great!
- Get a lifetime transit pass and consider getting a bicycle
- Ditch your car and never look back
From the amount of accidents they have had. Maybe start with walking and see how that goes first before getting anything with wheels.
Yeah, I was about to suggest an e-bike or e-scooter. But probably better to just walk or take a bus/tram/metro.
at least with a bike the likelihood that they get into a fatal accident is incredibly more apparent.
And hopefully they realize it.
https://www.marketwatch.com/guides/moving-services/cost-to-move-out-of-state/
Average cost of moving out of state - $4000-$12000
https://fortune.com/2024/02/01/emergency-1000-expense-most-americans-broke-debt-bankrate/
Less than half of Americans can currently incur a $1000 expense right now
Lifetime transit what now?
Easy, just move to Luxembourg.
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Never thought I’d take the side of an insurance company.
The best insurance company for this person is take the bus.
I got quoted $840 a month for insurance. Clean accident history. Insurance is bullshit levels of expensive.
How old? What kind of car?
At the time it was a 3 year old Scion IQ.
That does seem very high o.O
Just a tad.
Damn. I managed to get basic insurance for like $75/mo but it’s one where they require you to install a tracking app on your phone for the first month that gives you a higher rate if you accelerate or brake hard. I just drove like a grandma for a month and uninstalled it after.
Yeah I pay ~1k now for all the cars in the house for a year. No tracking app. 3 cars.
That’s a pretty typical rate except for comprehensive for an entire year
This was a month.
I’ve noticed that some insurers give insane “fuck you” quotes for no reason. I had Progressive under my parents since I started driving, and when I got my own insurance, it was around $500/6 months through them. I wanted to get other quotes from some other insurers and the rates were absolutely insane by comparison. Like, $500-800 PER MONTH. I have no idea why they were so much more. I know there are loyalty discounts and such, but I don’t think they’re going to be ~85%.
Car insurance generally hates young adults. I paid through the nose for 6 months of crap insurance through progressive than immediately jumped to a broker who got me a lower rate on better coverage (and actually knew what the right amount of coverage was) and they’ve consistently got me more coverage for a lower rate ever since. Granted some of that probably comes from my aging out of that high risk 18-25 bracket but still
I totally get that, but what I don’t understand is why Progressive was so reasonable compared to literally everyone else for literally identical coverage. It’s like for whatever reason they were the only ones who didn’t care I was in that <25 age bracket.
