I rated myself as average. The truth is I’m not so sure; I got my license and my first car when I was 14 and I’m 69 now.That’s 55 years of driving. I’ve had three accidents, one of which I all but avoided and was not my fault, one of which happened in heavy rain and was my fault and the most recent where I was rear-ended, definitely not my fault. I’ve had a ton of speeding tickets; I’ve always had a lead foot and with all the years of driving under my belt, I think I am slipping on paying attention and being alert and defensive. At my age, I know my reflexes have slowed down and I know my eyesight isn’t as good as it was even a year ago. I think I’ll be able to drive for shopping until I’m around 75 and then I’ll probably have to give it up. Maybe my vote should have been that I’m worse than average; if there were categories for high average, average, and low average I might have picked the last.
Don’t worry, Tapioca Dextrin. You’re not alone. I, too, am an average, run-of-the-mill driver.
I’m not a skillful driver at all (driving terrifies me), so I consider myself below average. But I’ve never caused an accident. So far, anyway. (Unless that time with the scooter counts. But no one was hurt, except the scooter.)
We’re all above average.
I read Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) last year. Of course the issue of who is and is not a good driver comes up. His assertion is that one’s actual accident record isn’t really the best indicator. Rather, it’s the frequency of the “close calls” one experiences. Do you get honked at a lot? Get startled a lot when another vehicle “pops out of nowhere” or something unexpected develops in your path? If so, then you are more likely to experience an accident - whether your fault or not - than someone who isn’t routinely startled/surprised by traffic events in his immediate proximity.
If you are surprised a lot when you’re behind the wheel, this is a liability, and - not to be melodramatic here - lives may be at stake, starting with your own. Next time you find yourself startled by a close call out there, take some time afterwards to try to figure out exactly what happened, and - whether the close call was your fault or not - try to see what you might have done differently to maintain a more generous safety margin. This is what is done on a detailed, shit-picking level in aviation accidents and close calls, and while it’s not necessary to launch a million-dollar investigation when someone honks at you, it may be possible to derive some benefit/lessons by doing something similar on a casual scale.
Similar experience here. I’m better than average in the sense that I’ve never had an accident and people have usually told me that I’m a good driver, even my husband says he likes the way I drive, and that is high praise.
I live in Montreal so I’d better be a defensive driver, but I’ve also driven all over France, including Paris, all around Italy, including Rome and Naples, all over Belgium. I’ve driven in several U.S. cities including NYC.
Many people have told me that I’ve never experienced scary driving yet because I haven’t driven in China or India, but I’m not ambitious that way, I just want to survive, get where I’m going, and enjoy the drive.
I love driving, especially city driving and driving in the midst of a snowstorm when few drivers are on the road and many of them have skidded out of the way. All my cars have had standard transmission, I feel I have better control that way.
I have been driving for almost 30 years and I have been told by more than a few people that I am a good driver. I was overjoyed when my father told me that I was the only person alive with whom he could relax while sitting in the pasenger seat. I credit most of that to riding motorcycles and doing a lot of driving. I have put 200K miles on two pick up trucks and one car and have been to 43 different states in the continental US in all types of weather.
I feel that in order to be a good driver you have to be aware of your surroundings and always anticipating that someone near you is going to do something dumb. How you handle yourself when those situations arise is what determines how good a driver you are.
Depends on what you define as the center. There are plenty of people out there who would be complete menaces if they got behind the wheel-and some of them actually do. Those that don’t can’t be called drivers if they aren’t driving (of course). On the low end the really bad drivers will be selected out, usually by piling up too many points and getting suspended, if not something worse; in that group you’ll find chronic drunk drivers, natch. It’s here that you’ll find the most accident-prone. It may be that the median is quite a bit ahead of the mean if things skew that badly at the low end of the spectrum: if you call the latter the “average,” then yeah a solid majority of people will be at or above it, driving rather safely the vast majority of the time.
Simple example:
Accident rate 100,000 miles:
Al: 15
Bob: 4
Carl: 3
Dave: 2
Ed: 1
Carl at 3 is the median, but the mean is 5, with 80% of the drivers above average.
Indeed, now that there are more than 100 respondants to the poll, over 60% say they are above average.
I’m a highly offensive driver. I drive like I’m going somewhere and aim to get there as quickly has humanly possible. If you are in front of me I am, in all likelyhood, cursing you like you have never been cursed before. I drive at whatever rate I can get away with, I roll through stops, and I use my blinkers just enough to warn you that I’m coming over right now. In your eyes I’m a terrible driver. In my defense, in 30 years of driving, I’ve only totalled one car and gotten one speeding ticket.
I’m a very good driver. I’ve narrowly avoided many accidents due to other drivers in my 20 years of driving and never had one of my own. I am a stickler for obeying speed limits and probably annoy people every day.
My only problem is I am an* angry* driver.
I’m average. I know there are drivers out there who are much better and much worse than me.
I like your definitions - those are all the things I aim for as a driver (and usually achieve - I have the occasional brain fart that I find quite embarrassing).
Joe Frickin Friday, I like yours, too - I am almost never surprised when driving. Just the opposite - I call it reading car body language. I know when a driver is about to come into my lane because I noticed him checking his mirrors or the way he’s started to drift to the right. My youngest sister who started driving late-ish and is not a confident driver is amazed by this. I don’t think it’s all that amazing - it’s just paying attention.
I think it would be very interesting to do a companion poll to this - compare people’s number of tickets and accidents with how they rate themselves as a driver and how they were trained - if they were professionally trained or just drove with their parents until they were good enough to pass a (very easy) road test.
ETA: I should also say that I aim for being an extremely good driver - I figured when I started driving that it is just as easy to develop good habits as bad habits, so I made it my rule to develop only good driving habits and keep working on fine-tuning my skills.
Well, I teach high performance driver’s ed (i.e., driving on race tracks), so I’ll leave it to you to guess how I replied to the poll.
I haven’t had an accident in over a decade (knock on wood), and I rarely get tickets (knock on wood), but I’m also lead-footed and aggressive. One of these days my number is going to come up, I know it.
I think I am a good driver. That being said, I do have some things on my personal driving record, though my DMV record is clear:
I have had one speeding ticket in my life. I was 17. He dropped it to a seatbelt violation. Never again. I’m going to be 34 next week.
I have been in three accidents. Two of them were completely the other person’s fault. Hell, in one of them I was slowly down for a light when someone made a U-turn right into my car!
The one that was my fault, was entirely my fault, but thankfully I was just pulling out of a parking spot and it was minor.
And I got a ticket and my license suspended years ago for failure to carry insurance. Long story, but entirely my fault also.
These days my record is spotless. Yes, I speed - about 5-10 mph over the limit, consistently.
I learned with my parents but I took three classes with a professional - how to parallel park, and stuff like that.
Oh, and I have also learned not to be angry. Whatever. Just let it wash over me. He’s in a big fat hurry to get in front of me? Just let him go.
The professional lessons are worth it just for that - since I learned to parallel park from a professional instructor, he gave me the instructions on how to do it properly with any vehicle, in any situation. I used to amaze myself by being able to parallel park in a spot that was a foot longer than my car (and it feels good when you throw down a perfect parallel park and hop out of the car and you’re a woman. {snaps a zed}).
First of all, be aware of the Lake Wobegone Fallacy in surveys of this type (“All the children are above average.”)
I rated myself above average because I have good driving skills and have avoided many dangerous situations not of my own making. But I do not have a perfect record. In this light it is crucial to define what we mean by a “good driver.” I have never been in an accident with personal injury regardless of fault. Below is my confession. I have not bothered to list incidents where I was not at fault but I have been rear-ended at least twice where it was 100% the other person’s fault.
1973: Got driver’s license at age 16
1973: Minor at-fault one-car accident (skidded off road in rain), ticket for failing to stay right of center
1974: Ticket for 66 in a 55
1978: Ticket for running a stop sign. On my bicycle. Damn Ann Arbor cops. :mad:
1979: Ticket for running a stop sign (did you know that “stop” means “a complete cessation of motion”? Very instructive police officer :rolleyes:). Also was detained because I had failed to pay the 1978 bicycle ticket for $20. Damn Ann Arbor cops. :mad:
1980: Ticket for 64 in a 55 (written for lower than clocked speed)
1981: At-fault accident, unable to stop on black ice at red light. No ticket. Saw four more cars do the same thing while we were exchanging information, but I was the only one who hit someone.
1982: At-fault accident, slid sideways on ice downhill in low-speed collision. My fault because I was the trailing car but the car in front was skidding just as much as I was. No ticket.
1983: Ticket for 46 in a 35
~1997: Ticket for illegal U-turn
~1999: Ticket for 74 in a 55
2008: Camera ticket for 56 in a 45
But I have also avoided many incidents where some nut was changing lanes without looking, saw a kid about to run into the street between parked cars, and a lot of other situations where a less-skilled or less-observant driver might have been involved in a serious accident.
On the one hand, my wife tells me that I am the best driver she has ever seen. On the other hand, I see her grab the oh-shit handle quite often and she also seems to think there is an invisible brake pedal in the floor on the passenger side of the car.
I’m average at best. I don’t crash into stuff, but your average driver doesn’t crash into stuff either. If you think you’re above average just because you don’t crash into stuff, you’re sorely mistaken.
Ann Arbor cops are the devil. I got a parking ticket last year and I don’t even own a car. My friend lent me her car for like, two days, and I managed to get a parking ticket. The only one I’ve ever gotten in my life. I’m still not even sure how what I did was illegal, but it wasn’t very expensive and I wasn’t up to fighting it.
Poll doesn’t go high enough, I’m way better than one of the best.