Many of you had that "Aggressive driver in your back seat" suddenly?

i live on a street with an elementary school. 20 mph limit. i can't tell you how many times i've backed out of my driveway, saw no one coming for a good 1,200 feet, and as soon as i put it in drive and look in the rvm, there's an important brilliant grille in the reflection.

it happens everywhere, and gets tiresome. you can't even drive the speed limit in the right hand lane on a 4 lane highway, without a continuous line of important brilliants coming up your butt.

 

If there is something to be thankful for in this situation, be thankful it is at least a car and not a motorcycle. Had three near misses that I viewed today:
1) going to work and by a notorious bad intersection(while it is still dark out) a lane splitting yokel decided that since traffic was going 50, he needed to get ahead of everyone. This was while a big rig was changing lanes and getting out of the truck scales exit. Near miss #1.
2) while going down the freeway and about 15 minutes after near miss #1, while getting into the lane to exit the freeway, yokel #2 decided to pass on the right in between those coming onto the freeway and me exiting the freeway.
3) while heading home going behind 2 big rigs, a very bright motorcyclist decided to lane split the 2 big rigs.

Just another day on the roads in the east Bay Area.

 

With 168 hp in a 2900 lb car, I shut them down if feeling frisky. Then let them lead the parade to find a cop.

Bob Wilson

 

+1

 

Backing out anywhere today gets you this. I look both ways and s-l-o-w-l-y back out of my driveway and still some idiot out of nowhere is on the street!! Heck, try doing this in a mall parking lot!! This is my unsolicited reason for all of the irrational drivers today. Driving School. It was a part of your High School curriculum and you had to pass it!! Two semesters!! One semester class room time teaching all the basics. Second semester was classroom with driving simulators and the end of the semester you drove real live cars!! You had to know how to drive to even be able to go to the DMV!! Not using turn signals got you an automatic "F". Not yielding to the car on the right at a 4 way stop got you an "F". This was a required course, even if you weren't going to own a car!! Now we have independent driving schools. The kids know which schools are "easier" to pass and the end result is someone running stop signs, not using turn signals, driving as nasty as they want in your neighborhood and just being foolish.

 

I always back s-l-o-w-l-y INTO my driveway.

 

Had one just on our return trip getting off the turnpike near home. After the toll, there is a light with two lanes for the left turn. We ended up in the left lane after going through the toll. There was 6 cars in this lane and only 2 in the other of this red light. We were running out of time in getting to the vet to pick up our cat before they closed, so I decided to switch lanes.

Watched one car come up and pass, and saw a Subaru farther back coming up. I should have had plenty of time to get into that lane. Almost all the way over, I heard squealing tires. I thought it was me at first, since I was trying to be quick about this, but then there was the horn. The Subaru wasn't planning to go left but wanted the right turn yield ramp, and felt like he did not need to slow while approaching a bunch of stopped cars.

There was no contact, and I pulled up to the next car. When he was level with us on the right turn ramp, he stopped for about five or ten seconds to yell at us.

We had drivers' ed in school, but not time in a car. My cousin's school did have practice in cars.

 

Oh yeah, Montgomery, brings back a lot of good memories! That high school "Driver's Ed" course was a lot of fun. I think it's the only subject I got an "A" in! And those simulators were great! Like watching a movie. Then we headed out on the streets, and we drove a 1972(?) Oldsmobile Cutlass! It was a blast. Our instructor was also the Geometry teacher. Great guy.

How do kids learn these days??! It's kind of scary, because it seems like lots of people still don't know the "rules of the road." One pet peeve of mine, is people still don't pull over to the right curb when an emergency vehicle is coming from behind! They just stop smack dead in the middle of whatever lane they are in! Blocking everything!! And if the fire truck is coming from the opposite direction, on the OTHER SIDE of the divided road, people STILL slam on their brakes even though the fire truck is way on the other side... and there is a barrier in the center divider! Heaven help us! Nobody is teaching theses people!!

When I took the written drivers test at the DMV, way back when... you could only get TWO questions wrong? And you failed. Boy, they have really gotten slack on that test! Now you can probably miss 8!

Now I keep my Heatshield in the back hatchback window much of the time, while I'm driving, and I don't see ANY tailgaters!

 

I drove a 74 Cutlass. Teacher was the wrestling coach. Guy was mean as hell.

 

A while back, I'm driving on a residential 4-lane road to my house. Speed limit is 35, but everyone does 40-45. So I'm doing a bit over 40 so I can keep a constant speed in electric mode. Some guy doing 50+ comes up on my bumper in the right lane, then rides it for a while as he is unable to pass me due to cars in the left lane. I make eye contact in the mirror and eventually left off the accelerator as there is stopped traffic ahead. At the first opportunity, he floors it to pass me on the left then swerves back into the right lane in front of me to get around another car in the left lane, only to realize he suddenly has to stop at the red light he didn't notice. When he looked back at me in his mirror with a scowl, I gave him a polite golf clap (suitable gesture as I had kids in the back). He gave me the finger, of course, as his quick passing maneuver was completely wasted by waiting with the rest of us. He was on the next guy's bumper immediately once traffic started moving and up until the next stoplight a half mile later. So much road rage leading to unsafe driving and not saving him even a minute of commute time.

I have two teen drivers right now, one just got their license this week. Having them driving at all is scary enough as it is, if only based on the grim statistics for teen drivers. Anything out of the ordinary is a lot harder for a new driver to anticipate. It does seem like it would be harder to learn to drive with so much more extreme driving today, from road ragers to reckless drivers to the ultra-cautious and even diligent hypermilers.

Case in point, a few years ago, I was at an automotive media event and sat down at a table with some other media members. One was apparently an expert hypermiler. He was telling a story about drafting behind semis, doing manual stop/start with the ignition, riding under the minimum speed limit partly on the shoulder and other stuff I might not dare try myself for safety reasons, even if my kids were not in the car. I also can't imagine having them try to learn some of the more basic hypermiling techniques like pulse & glide, or even having to anticipate if another driver nearby is doing them, as that probably means there's also a road rager in the vicinity, too.

 

Guessing it was not too long after when I bought my Highlander Hybrid, so maybe 3-5 years ago. I recall we were talking about test drive experiences with hybrids and I remarked that all the media fleet ones I receive had very low fuel economy averages in the computers compared to what I achieved after a week. He asked what I drove and when I said I had a Prius and Highlander Hybrid, he was not fond at all about the Highlander and didn't mince words. Now even I admit, the Highlander isn't a great choice for supreme fuel economy, but at the time it was the best choice for a minivan or 3-row SUV alternative, since our Prius doesn't have room for a family of 5 plus luggage/grandparents/friends etc. So I asked out of curiosity if he had kids, and he abruptly stated he had to talk to someone on the other side of the room and suggested I mingle with everyone else lol. The woman next to me chuckled and said something to the effect of "definitely no kids". I'm not good with names, but if I got a card I could probably find it in my stash of business cards.

Right- I hypermile to some extent myself, though sadly not as much as when we first got our Prius and Highlander. As for driving, once you put kids in a carseat your perspective on driving changes it a bit, and I can attest it changes even more once you put keys in their hands. Plenty of ways to do a great job with fuel economy without putting yourself or anyone else in danger.