Right now 83 drivers are above average or super while 13 are below average or terrible.
Besides being the smartest message board in the world it must be one with the best drivers.
I’m better than average. I haven’t had a moving violation in 25 years. I was involved in a rollover accident 17 years ago, which was the other person’s fault.
I figure I’m about average. I’ve never been at fault in an accident (I was rear ended once stopped at a light and someone T-boned me when he ran a stop sign). However, I do occasionally talk on my cell phone while driving and sometimes day-dream past my exit and have to take the long way to where I’m going. I also tend to speed a little bit (I generally drive 120kph in the 110kph zone).
Oddly, I think I’m a much better driver now than I was when I was younger, but back then I thought I was a great driver. So, I’ve objectively gotten better, but subjectively gotten worse.
I think I’m below average. Even when I had a car I wasn’t great, but now I drive only 3-4 times a year, so I get very little practice.
People I know who are clearly bad drivers think they are awesome. How about asking how many accidents you’ve been in where you were found at fault, how many moving violations you’ve had, etc. Nah, people will lie then, too.
Or my analysis in post #47 is correct. If you want an example of an unsafe driver, then go read the OP in this thread. An idiot like that more than compensates for 5 slightly below average drivers.
I get your point about distribution. But if you throw out the obvious outliers like that psycopath in the post you linked, or the chronic DWI’s I think you would have a reasonable curve.
So, what we need is an empirical, objective measure of good we are all driving.
But you can’t throw them out. 10% of the drivers get 50% of the citations, get into 50% of the wrecks, and so on, or numbers to that effect. Most people are safe, sane, reasonably good drivers; it’s the bottom 10% you’ve got to worry about-and yes most especially that includes those who suck who are deluded into thinking they’re great.
Yes you can-it’s done all the time when developing measures.
I’d like to question what we all mean by “good driver,” and the apparent notion here that it is somehow associated with a low number of traffic tickets.
If we’re defining “good” as “virtuous,” i.e., obeying all the traffic rules, then maybe a lack of tickets makes one a good driver. But I took “good” to mean “having more than average skill at driving.” The two are not the same.
For instance, few would deny that Mario Andretti is a highly skilled driver, but depending on how he chose to drive on the public streets, he could have gotten thousands of speeding tickets (all given to him by cops who walked up and said, “Who do you think you are, Mario Andre— hey!”). This wouldn’t mean he was a bad driver, only an unwise one who got caught.
Conversely, it is no stretch to imagine a very poor driver who always stays 15 miles below the speed limit and has never collected a ticket. Some posters here might qualify.
The fact is that many of the car control abilities that I associate with being a “good driver” can only be acquired in relatively extreme conditions that most drivers rarely if ever experience, and are therefore not prepared for.
So I’d like to challenge anyone here who has crowed about how few tickets he/she has gotten to offer some additional evidence of driving skill, beyond a mere lack of interaction with LEOs. Professional training, self-taught skills (doing donuts in a snowy parking lot to develop skid control), long experience driving in snowy, icy, or rainy climes, etc., would all fit the bill, IMHO.
And I strongly urge anyone who would like to improve their driving skills (and have a shitload of fun in the bargain), to get involved in HPDE. Taking one or two day-long courses will do more to improve your driving skills than years of ordinary street driving.
This is exactly the point I was going for in the OP. I have never had a moving violation, but I feel I lack talent at driving. It is counter-intuitive to me. It requires every spare brain cell for me to do. It is exhausting. Since I started driving into and around Philadelphia, I have been unable to even enjoy music on the radio because I have to devote every bit of attention to the road. I know others who barely think twice about it and seem to get equal results. I am a careful and somewhat anal-retentive driver, but ‘‘good’’ would require a sort of improvisational skill I don’t have. I can follow the rules wonderfully, I just can’t, you know, drive.
(I do meet one of your criteria though, ‘‘experience with snow driving’’–but so does everyone else who ever lived in Michigan.)