When I was a kid my dad and I would go camping, visit the grandparents, etc. He said you always have to watch out for old men driving while wearing hats. The idea is that nobody under a certain age would wear a hat, and that people who did were slow or poor drivers. Did anyone else hear this while they were growing up?
Incidentally, I’ve taken to wearing a pork pie hat. I often wonder if there are people who have heard the ‘hat thing’ and are being wary of my driving?
In fact we always refered to them by the akward acronym: LOMWH…Little Old Man Wearing Hat.
I see the hat as more of an explaination, however, than a warning.
If your not driving 10 under the speed limit, with your left turn signal on for the last 4 miles, and stopping at green lights, most people aren’t going to look for the hat. Oh yeah, and shaking your fist at drivers who pass you.
Old men with hats and little blue haired ladies that look through the steering wheel barely over the dashboard are scary.
Indeed they are. Especially on the highway.
I don’t know if you guys have special Veteran’s license plates or not, but we have them in Canada now. I was wondering why, yesterday, when it occurred to me that they can be a handy warning system. “Warning: Occupant of car never, ever looks around him. In fact, he’s hardly aware he’s IN a car.”
(Old people not knowing when to hang up the car keys is a peeve of mine. Mostly because they can, you know, kill me.)
I feel the same way about Oregon plates. 
I’d never heard any saying about old men driving while wearing hats, but I managed to figure it out on my own. It’s practically ingrained in me to do everything I can to avoid getting stuck behind one.
Also, oldish boxy cars are generally occupied by slow drivers.
Where I live, there are a lot of 2-lane roads that become 4-lane for a few hundred yards either side of a stop light. (And then it’s 5-10 miles to the next stop light.) If I see a car being driven by a man wearing a hat, I’ve got a brief opportunity to be in front of him, rather than behind him, even before I see whether he’s going to be the guy leading a parade without a permit. So I’m in a position to use the information constructively.
I live next to a building the blue hairs and old men in hats go to play bridge - I am always scared when they back up to leave and it is dark.
I’d say 99% of them should no longer be driving in the day - never mind night driving by the way they back up and leave.
Before they widened the roads around here I used to have to use this strategy all the time to keep ahead of all the slowpokes (who often exhibited all the warning signs of a slow driver). One time, however, my strategy failed. I was at an intersection where, after passing through it, there was only a couple hundred feet to go before the two lanes merged into one. Old guy complete with the hat/earlaps ensemble and driving a big boat-like car was in the left lane. Thinking for sure he’d hold me up if I stayed behind him, I got into the right lane, expecting to race ahead of him once the light changed to green. How wrong I was! That old son of a bitch stomped on the gas and was determined to keep ahead of me, only to force me to drive his speed once the merge had passed. Dick!
We always said: Watch out for old men wearing earflaps. You know the kind of hat that has furry flaps that are often snapped on top when it’s not all that cold? We determined that more often than not, old men wearing earflaps were the kinds of drivers you wanted to avoid.
My MIL gave my husband a hat with earflaps - I thought it was funny! 
I completely agree! One of my cardinal rules when driving is to get past anybody driving while wearing a hat ASAP. (There are certain exceptions, of course, such as guys in muscle cars wearing feed-corn caps. I use them as highway patrol bait instead) Likewise, if I can’t easily see anybody in the driver’s seat I take it as a given that it’s an old mini-woman who’s only clear view is of the tint stripe across the top of her windshield.
I used to work for one of those. He drove a mid-80’s Buick Electra 225. He was 5’4" (not including hat). He would push the seat all the way back and drive with his tiptoes. He’d never get over 50mph.
He was once pulled over on the interstate by a state trooper and told to either pick up the pace or get the hell off the intersate or he was going to get killed.
" Beware of men driving while playing the saxophone and wearing a porkpie hat"
~~ old Interstate traveller’s saying.
I had a Little Old Lady tell me that a policeman had told her that everyone going faster than her was on drugs, so she should pull over and let them by, because there was no telling what they’ll do. Bless him.
I feel the same way about Volvos. The double whammy is old man with hat driving Volvo. I haven’t encountered any old men with hats driving Volvos with Oregon plates yet - I wonder what that would be like.
Yes, and it’s still a standard joke/observation around here, likely to result in the “wise” comment, “Ah, a little old man wearing a hat.”
glares
Actually, the mildly amusing thing is that when I first moved to Eugene I was advised to change my plates ASAP because I’d get a lot of, shall we say, unwanted attention with California plates on my car.
Now I go back home and people are giving me wide berths right and left
~mixie
(formerly of Davis, CA)
Get ready to duck, Manduck! I too have a thing about Volvo drivers. However, there is a little pack of them here on the boards that will attack you as soon as they figure out how to take the emergency brake off.
And yes, old men wearing straw hats in their car generally mean they will turn right at the next intersection, despite the left blinker having blinked for the past 9 miles.
And sorry, Johhny LA, but I think porkpie hats look like a bottle cap stuck on a guy’s head. Can’t stand them ever since the first Rocky film. Still see stupid Stallone wearing it and can’t shake the image.
It’s an old story. My dad told me about old men wearing hats when I was about 14 (1936). He had heard it from his father who was born in 1860.
I’m an old man and I never wear a hat while driving, and for a reason.
About 40 years ago three guys (and a dog) from here were going fishing at a lake about 60 mi. away. To get there they had to go over a mountain pass that includes a sharp, hairpin turn (safe speed about 15 mph.) Their vehicle was a crew cab pickup and right in the hairpin the dog decided to jump into the front seat which knocked the drivers hat over his face. The truck went off the road and rolled down a boulder strewn slope killing two of the guys and the dog. The third guy spent a year in hospitals and rehab.
I don’t drive around with many dogs but that’s not the only way a hat can get knocked off.
I witnessed an old guy having an accident once - he was backing out of his parking spot, and the car that was stuck behind him was honking, driver waving his arms, all he could do to get the old guy’s attention, and the old guy backed straight into him without looking behind him once. Heh. It’s funny cause it wasn’t me.
Another time, I saw this old guy get out of his car once he parked it, and oh so slowly shuffled into the building he was going into. Oh yeah, you know that guy’s reflexes are topnotch.
