Are there really that many terrible drivers out there?
Are there really that many terrible drivers out there?
I see so many YouTube videos of people running blatantly red lights and getting in accidents or other videos of people stopped and gunning it backwards, hitting something, then they put it in drive and launch full speed forwards and hit something else. What is going through these peoples mind? I just don't get how there is such a high quantity of these videos.
Morons are everywhere, be prepared. Occasionally I'm one of them.
51Yes.
As somebody that drove truck for five years.
Yes.
No turn signals is the worst thing. But, a vehicle signalling to go to right, and then turning left. Lots of those.
Cars going off an exit ramp, and then leaving the exit ramp and coming back onto the highway. Looking at you Atlanta. I saw five cars do that in less than an hour in Atlanta.
40A tunnel near me used to always have traffic backed up behind it because the number of lanes reduced. Most people would merge early and just get through it. Some assholes would merge at the last possible second to get as far ahead of everyone as possible. But the true shit-eaters would use the last exit before the tunnel and its companion on-ramp to jump I dunno maybe 15 cars ahead? A constant line of people would be doing that, adding one more merge to slow everyone down.
If you ask people like that what they’re thinking, you’ll get some mishmash of the following:
“You don’t get that much ahead but take what you can get, you know?”
“Everyone’s doing it, not just me.”
“What? Did I do something wrong?”
“It’s not against the law so what’s the problem?”
“I’m supposed to get to my destination slower for the sake of other people? Why?”
“If I don’t do it, someone else just will anyway. “
Shit eaters, all of them.
12Not trying to argue because I see some dumb merging every day, but you're supposed to use the whole merge lane to form a zipper or traffic starts to back up behind you unnecessarily. It's as much about not blocking the intersection/ramp/merge that you just left as it is about merging the traffic onto the highway or whatever.
10Driving north out of Lincoln City, OR had a car come up the shoulder and nose in front of me. Then the police showed up and gave the car a ticket. One of the only times I was happy to see a cop.
5Google maps also likes routing this way
1
But, a vehicle signalling to go to right, and then turning left. Lots of those.
I did that once, at least I noticed myself doing that once, and felt like the biggest dumbass ever. Luckily it was on a small-ish road turning onto a bigger road but damn I wished I could signal "sorry" to the car behind me
1I mean, come to think of it, that’s funny. But very dangerous.
1
Absolutely. My dad always said “I’m not worried about you, I’m worried about all the idiots.”
It’s also gotten worse with phones.
27Oh absolutely. Most people here are staring at their phones when driving. I've definitely noticed more people running red lights too.
7
Yes, there are.
We made north american society wholly dependant on driving, without accounting for the fact that there is a sizeable portion of the population who should, under no circumstanfes, be allowed to operate a several thousand pound rolling metal pox powered by small explosions.
The fact that we are alright with having so many "ok" drivers on the road, who only occasionally do something so incredibly boneheaded that it would cause several deaths if not for other driver's paying attention, just goes to show how held hostage we are by car culture.
22Most people are decent drivers, but there are a lot of drivers out there. 1% of a big number is still a pretty big number. If there are 500,000 drivers in your area, and only 0.1% of them are lethally incompetent, that's still 500 dangerously fucked up drivers on the road almost every day. That's still a lot of really bad drivers!!
17This is also why most videos you see of incompetent drivers are from the USA or Russia and not countries like Slovenia or Singapore. A huge populaiton means that that small percentage of absolute idiots will be a bigger number.
4This is also why most videos you see of incompetent drivers are from the USA or Russia and not countries like Slovenia or Singapore. A huge populaiton means that that small percentage of absolute idiots will be a bigger number.
1
Here's my hypothesis so far.
People have to drive. That's the way cities in North America are made, and I suspect the same applies in a lot of other countries.
There are people that enjoy driving, but when it becomes something you have to do in order to get chores done, it's understandable if it's not fun anymore.
These two points above make some kind of case for why I would say most people driving don't actually want to be driving most of the time.
Now, we also have annoyances while driving. There is a street light I often have to wait at which will give me an eternal red light even when there is no traffic. There are a lot of cyclists here that want to be treated like cars, but don't want to show the same considerations to cars. Basically, driving can be aggravating, and people may form bad habits in response: such as driving very close to cyclists to pass them without going into oncoming traffic, or racing to beat a red light at all costs.
In conclusion, I think a lot of people don't really want to be driving, don't stay mentally engaged while driving, and will act like assholes while driving because they expect other people to do the same to them and the driving experience is frustrating.
15Most people take one 3-month driving class when they're 15 or 16, then take one test, then never get tested again for the rest of their life.
15Are you talking about usa? Bc it is the same in many countries but they usually don't deal with such a big amount of terrible drivers (ain't saying that to "usa bad" talk, just my pov)
2Yea my friend (don't know if he is a good driver or not :D ) got his license in like 2 weeks (in Finland btw)
Edit: but you have to be 18 to even attempt the drivers tests
2
I'm in the UK which ordinarily has quite a difficult driving test that takes a lot of training. But even here, when I was at uni my housemate managed to get a license from a 1 week course. On our first trip out I had to drive us home in his car because his girlfriend was too terrified to get in the car with him driving lol
1
My city’s DPW recently performed 2 traffic studies as part of their pedestrian plan.
One was driver yield rates at unsignalized crosswalks. The results of this study indicated that of the 825 yielding oppurtunities observed, drivers yielded only 173 times (aka, 79% of drivers failed to yield in violation of state law).
The other was a speed study. Of the 35 observed roads, all 35 had a measured median speed that exceeded the speed limit. 34 of the 35 had measured average speeds that exceeded the speed limit..
Based on these findings, An overwhelming majority of drivers fail to abide by basic traffic laws. I would argue that breaking basic traffic laws makes one a terrible driver, so yes. A large majority (like 79%) are terrible.
12More than that, look at the number of drivers who fail to follow turn signal laws or speed limits. It's gotta be hard to find more than a handful of people who follow the basic traffic laws.
2
Probably not. It's just that there are a lot of drivers, and it's the bad ones that are particularly noticeable.
You don't tend to notice the hundred or so good drivers you pass before you notice the bad ones, and people aren't likely to share footage of good ones.
12The scariest is how many people I've been in a car with who just don't see what happens around them. Like they get shocked when someone "comes out of nowhere" when they were there the whole time
9As someone learning to drive (L plates), I have already experienced a few people that have cut me off and done dangerous things. It has just made me more determined to be a better driver, remember to use my turn signal, etc
9No, but also YES. It's less that most people are bad drivers, but that there is a fucking SHIT TON of people driving. The thing is you're always going to notice the idiot driving a multi-ton death machine on the same road as you, more than you will the soccer mom driving speed limit in her minivan. Think about how many cars you pass every time you drive and pay no mind, but how you immediately notice when someone is driving like a jackass.
9If one out of every 10,000 drivers is a complete idiot who got their license in a box of Cracker Jacks, in the US there are about 36,000 idiots on the road. This is only full-time idiots, there are part-timers who do so only as a side hustle.
8Yes. People get so used to driving that they react poorly in new situations (like tunnel vision but on a grand scale). Driving became a chore and muscle memory to them.
The thing with driving though is it is very dynamic, you can't simply half ass your way through it forever.
One of the first things I learned when getting my motorcycle license was to treat every driver as a threat, and I've applied that to my driving as well.
Just remain vigilant and aware while driving.
8As a hardcore roadie that spent years commuting almost exclusively in Southern California, including 2 years of a 66 mile per day commute to a full time job. It feels like somewhere around one in a hundred passing drivers are lethally incompetent, and around one in a thousand are actively homicidal.
If there are 8B people on Earth, and only 0.01% are crazy, there are 80M crazy people. Nearly everyone has a camera on them at all times now. That's a lot of potential to record these situations.
6I mean, someone has to be the sludge at the bottom of the septic tank ….
4
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Yes, definitely.
5Short answer: no
Long answer: the percentage of drivers that are outrageously bad at driving is probably a fraction of a percent. This still equates to a very large number of drivers, but there is also very much a bias at play. You only ever see videos of shitty drivers and probably never see videos of good drivers which skews your view of how good or bad the general population is at driving.
All this to say, yes there are a very large number of lethally dangerous drivers, but several orders of magnitude more drivers who are not. You just don’t notice them because they aren’t bad drivers.
1
I think more people are distracted than dumb, their brains are on auto pilot and they’re not paying attention to the road.
5Imagine your average driver. Uninspiring, right? Half the drivers out there are worse than that.
5Wild shit happens all the time somewhere. But before the internet your sample size was small and you didn't see it. Now you see anything you want.
4I think the Internet has also rationalized stupid driving for a large number of people.
2
Where I live, absolutely. Everytime I hit the road I see at least 5 idiots turning left from the far right lane, driving half the speed limit, running red lights, having no idea what the right of way is or how intersections with only one stop sign work.
And I don't drive that much, in 2.5 years I've put 20k miles on, 3k of which were road trips and Im not counting those drives in my idiot count.
3Probably just confirmation bias (or maybe it's called something else) as you never see videos of people properly yielding or stopping at red lights.
2Yeah I've only been driving for a year and I've seen some crazy stuff. I cannot fathom what goes through their head to make decisions like that.
2Yea and no. There are a lot of drivers on earth. We are talking about hundreds of millions, quite possibly even billions of drivers. Even if only 1% of all of them are bad drivers, it is is still a lot. You will also only see videos of bad drivers because filming a good or even a normal driver is just boring. A guy parking normally, respecting the speedlimit etc. will never go viral. Mind the bias !
2Within the last week, I had the driver in front of me decide to just cross the intersection despite our light being red (nothing had changed, there was nothing that could've fooled them into thinking the light was now green), an oncoming driver attempt to turn left across me, despite me having a green light and them having been stopped for a good while already, and at least three major incidents where someone turns out of a side road in front of me and decides to stay straddling both lanes going 5mph for an extended period of time, forcing me to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting them.
Leaving work almost every day, people pull into the intersection to block the whole thing as their light turns red, despite the car in front of them already getting stopped in the intersection. I'm talking like 3-4 cars deep lines blocking the entire intersection, all from one direction of traffic being assholes. At this point I just lay on my horn from the moment my light turns green until the moment they get out of the way.
On average my dashcam gets one video worth showing my friends every two days. I don't even drive every day.
1