Prius drivers NOT the slowest on the road

A turtle calling a snail slow?

 

Let's not deflect one unfairly attached stereotype, by attaching it to a different group.

Most all street legal vehicles on the road today have the capability of being driven too slow, and too fast.

I've seen BMW's putting along....and Mini-Vans and Prius tearing down the road.

It's the driver, and how the driver chooses to drive. It's not so much the vehicle they happen to be driving.

 

It used to be Volvo and Rover drivers over here, but the old fogies have since moved to other vehicles. Makes it much harder to spot them, but a trilby and tartan rug on the rear parcel shelf give it away.



Prompting Clarkson to design this;


But nobody could say I am a slow Prius driver.

I have noticed that there is a higher incidence of facial hair prevalent on Prius owners faces though. do not know what that indicates?

 

The interstate here is posted 75mph, I typically set cruise control at 81mph.

Some drive faster than I, some drive slower.

The only vehicles I see that consistently drive slower are dump trucks. But then, my 'other' vehicle is a dump truck

 

i do not know, the soccer moms around here are all lead foot's.

 

Oi. I had a Volvo 340 like the red one you post and it was brilliant. Very comfortable and the variomatic gives the same driving experience as a Prius.
Only problems were that it would max out at about 100 mph and it wasn't really economical to drive at that kinds of speeds. About 3x the consumption of a Prius.

 

They were never brilliant

I guess in the late 70's they were a nice car. One of my school friends mum had one; a 1980 model in 1982 and I remember being impressed by the heated seats and headlamp wipers, but Volvo flogged the design too long and by the late 80's they were just horrid.

And in the late 80's and 90's the only people who drove them were in their mid 70's. I'm guessing this makes your age 95?

 

Drive behind me and then say that. I love the folks in big 4x4s with 30" wheels and one occupant cursing at me and weaving in and out of traffic. Time to thin the herd.

 

You had one of those new, fancy-schmancy Volvos?
We had a Volvo PV 544--the fenders were loose and would rattle when we went over railroad crossings and the body was a testimonial to the Chrysler Airflow models of the 1930s! The carburetors dripped raw gasoline and the starter solenoid would not transmit enough current, so I had to directly connect an 8 gauge wire from the + batter terminal to the starter terminal, which resulted in huge Sparks and was way too exciting what with the gas fumes in the engine compartment. Have no idea of gas mileage as neither the gas gauge nor the odometer worked. Driving such a vehicle made one devoutly religious as one ended up praying a lot!

 

A few months ago I saw a hummer driving down the freeway on my way to work. They were doing about 60 mph but not on cruise control so I eventually passed them up doing 60 on my prius with CC on during some hilly sections. Gas prices were still high, so I guess they were trying to save as much as they could with that vehicle.

I'm more surprised by how many drivers apparently forgot how to use turn signals. There have been times I'm getting close to another vehicle in a different lane, and they suddenly merge into my lane with no warning, or at best they signal as they're turning. Like that helps anyone. A lot of them usually seem to be on a cellphone too, which may explain why they're not signaling or even aware of other drivers on the road.

 

A few years ago, I was a foster-parent and had to spend a lot of time in waiting rooms of child therapists. So I read through a bunch of the popular psychiatry magazines, in the waiting rooms. At the time hummers were becoming very popular, so they had done surveys to figure out why people were buying hummers.

As it turned out, nearly all hummer owners had been in severe accidents, where they had been fortunate to walk away alive. Many of those accidents had included fatalities. Each of them had gone through the 'self-realization' that they were no longer safe to be on the road. They are unsafe drivers, very likely to be in future accidents, and likely to kill others again. So they buy a tank that guarantees the occupants will live through any future accident.

In other words, Psychiatrists think that hummer owners are people who understand that they are the most unsafe drivers on the road.

 

Any white Lexus, not just slow but dangerous also.

 

I pass and get passed by all makes and models. Just today I passed a Prius as another was passing both of us. At age 67, I don't drive slow, but I'm far from the fastest driver out there these days. Made it all the way through LA today, from Port Hueneme, with cruise set at 70, only had to back off near the 405 and 134 interchanges. Sometimes I was leading the pack, other times I wasn't. Saturday I was running 85 in the other direction and still getting passed. That's LA traffic for you.

 

I had one of the latest models, a '91. Which IMHO was one of the better looking. I don't really care for the early rounded design of the 343/345.
And my age was about 25 at that time.

 

Interesting.

My wife always just looks at the guy driving the Hummer and exclaims "how small IS his penis, anyway?"

 

Of course Prius drivers are not the slowest on the road. But there are a few things that give people that impression. First, some Prius drivers drive slow. (That's a true statement, but there are also too many other cars that are driving slow). Next, all you have to do is read these message boards and you get the Prius driver who says something like, "I'll drive as slow as I want and I don't care what anybody else thinks." You put those together and you get a very bad image of the Prius driver, which leads to the stereotype that all Prius drivers drive slow and are pissy about it. Once our attitude lightens up about our driving, then the stereotype will go away. Keep up the attitude and the stereotype will remain.

Mike

 

You mean it's out duty to speed? I'm cool with that. There's nothing that amuses me more than to fly past a slow Prius on the motorway. You just know they'd be grumbling to themselves about how much fuel I was wasting or how irresponsible I was.

 

I've lived both in LA and in the SF area. A joke that rings particularly true is that you can get a ticket for doing 80 mph on a freeway in California. In northern California it will be for speeding. In southern California it will be for obstructing traffic. Same laws, same road construction, same Highway Patrol.

 

For Max MPG I drive 55 to 60 in the slow lane.
i'm usually not in a hurry.
The only people who really get offended are the ones trying to pass slower fast-lane traffic in the slow-lane.
I have no sympathy for those drivers, i'm in the slow lane going slow.

I really enjoy it when I can see them in my mirror visibly look down at the speedo, with a confused look on their faces.
Is this guy really going 55, They are just shocked and dumbfounded that I don't want to speed like they do.
I find going 55 on the freeway relaxing, everyone passes me and I get 54- to 58 mpg.
I really don't worry about getting a ticket for holding up traffic, the CHP has plenty of fast drivers to keep themselves busy.