Advice for distracted drivers and/or those that distract them

You two certainly sound pretty far out at opposite ends of the bell curve. I’m sorry you’re both dealing with that.

Yeah. At our previous intersection to our house (two gravel roads), it could be hard for the driver to see to the right as there was often a piled up snow bank, so it did work well for the passenger to give a ‘clear on the right’

Now my wife did this once with a friend of hers, and the friend thought it meant it was clear in both directions. It was not. No accident though.

Between my wife and me, that does work: generally the passenger operates environmental controls (seat heating, steering wheel heating, windshield and back window heating, windshield defogging, heating set point and ventilation setting, etc.), and also mostly navigation system settings, under the overall authority and instructions of the driver - basically everything that the driver would need to look down and right. When she drives I also advise when in doubt whether or not to take an exit, or based on traffic data on my phone whether to divert (as a passenger she mostly is not interested in navigation)

A small point of contention is that I insist that I only get in or out of the car when the engine is shut off, and get out only when I see that the parking brake is set (as a result of one or two near accidents).