I amuse myself by making up derisive names for categories of bad drivers. When I come home at night I can gripe to my husband about them, and he knows from the name I give them just what kind of driver I mean. I was inspired by our local driving columnist, Mr. Road Show, who calls slowpoke drivers in the fast lane “Road Boulders”.
Here’s my list:
Drifty McDotdriver: this one drifts onto the stripes and dots which mark a lane. He then jerks the car back into his own lane, but not before you think he’s drifting into your lane (and you), making you brake and lay on the horn.
Stripe Straddler: the one who ignores the lane stripes and drives with wheels on either side, because he won’t commit to a lane. Wants to stake his claim to whichever lane goes faster, I suppose.
Charlie Weaver: drifts back and forth inside his own lane, touching the dots on either side alternately. Probably looking at his phone and paying minimal attention to his driving.
Creepy Crawler: he’s entering your busy street from a side street. He’s stopped, sort of, but is slowly rolling forward despite the fact that there’s no traffic gap for him yet. You can’t tell if he’s just not paying attention or he’s planning to plunge forward in front of you.
On my recent long road trip, I encountered at least half a dozen Clueless Ass Crawlers. They’re the drivers who lurk behind you for miles on end, often within near-tailgating range, even though there’s ample room and opportunities to pass. Occasionally this happens when the CAC has an exit coming up within a few miles (or eventually), and is too lazy to pass you and get back into the right lane. More often it seems that they’ve decided your vehicle’s speed is just right and are willing to stay behind you indefinitely.
My typical response to dogged CACs is to gradually slow down. On interstates with a 65 or 70 mph speed limit, I often have to get down to 55 mph or less before the light bulb blinks on and they zoom by me on the left, rapidly disappearing into the distance.
A classic general derogatory term for bad drivers in the NYC area is Jersey Driver.
Driverius Timidicus: overly timid driver who drives too cautiously Motoramus Fidgitus: overly impatient motorist who is reckless in his actions Neglecterus Maximus: inattentive driver who endangers others with his distracted driving
Flatus brakefartius: This species has an uncontrollable urge to compulsively and constantly tap the brake.
Subspecies hilltappius: constantly does this while going down a steep hill, as if picking up 3-5 MPH is a dire threat to life and limb.
Wedgtius entitledeetus: you are a part of a line of vehicles in the left l trying to pass a slower vehicle on the right. Everybody is all patiently queued up- except for this species of the Assholius family, who thinks he deserves to jump his place in line, and will attempt to zoom up in the right lane and barge into the left lane, missing bumpers by 3 inches.
[Had a guy in a white pickup do this a couple of years ago. 15 min. later see him pulled over by a GA statie.]
I could be one of your CACs. I personally find multi-lane, Interstate driving to be highly stressful. I avoid it whenever I can and have been known to take significantly longer routes on smaller highways to avoid them. I usually prefer to plant myself behind an 18 wheeler mainly because they’re moving more slowly than the rest of the traffic. I try to be diligent about not tailgating, but yeah, that’s me. I fully concede that if I’m tailgating then I’m just simply wrong. Failing that, I don’t feel that my actions make me an objectively bad driver. YMMV.
The OP mentioned “Road Boulders”. To me, that label applies to drivers who blocks traffic on a side street so that they can chat with someone outside their vehicle. If you want to be neighborly and talk with someone on the curb, great. All is well. Just pull over to do it. If your chat inconveniences other drivers then you’re being inconsiderate.
And then there are the hand-holders, the vehicles on multi-lane highways/roads who precisely match speeds with the vehicles beside them, effectively forming a moving roadblock.
It’s like they’re holding hands as they drive down the road.
I usually call these people “Mr. Twitchy-foot”. It’s usually some idiot who is following too close, and so is constantly twitching his foot onto the brake pedal because they think they’re about to rear-end the guy in front.
If you’re that damn uncomfortable with how close you are, drop back a bit!
Dipshit moron: the driver merging onto the freeway into a clear rightmost lane, decides to take another lane, the one you are in and about to be cut-off by said driver, for no reason whatsoever.
“Me first, me first!!” - the driver who has to get in front of, well, everyone, weaving in and out, only to be the first one at the traffic light where we all end up stopped. But I guess he won, since he was first.
Then you have that class of driver on the highway that has to slow way down if there is a police car or accident off the road or even the other side of the divided highway. The Lookyloos are the bane of commuting.
They are also very dangerous. In that vein, I once had to stand on the brakes because the driver in front of me came to a completely unexpected stop because of an emergency vehicle that was passing in the opposite direction.
You say, “What?! That’s what he is supposed to do!” No, not if there is a raised 6-foot wide median strip with shrubbery growing on it separating the two sides of the roadway!
I’m too lazy to think up a more creative name, but I can’t think of anything worse that you can call a California motorist than “Orange County Driver”. The entire motivation of an OC driver is to anticipate what other motorists are trying to do and thwart them. As soon as you use your signals to indicate you are merging into their lane, they will speed up to prevent you from doing so. Ask an OC resident how to deal with lane changes and they will advise you to “Never use your turn signals! It just warns other drivers what you are going to do!”
“FIB”, or the plural, “FIBs”, which stands for Fucking Illinois Bastard/Bitch, is a pretty common (or at least well known) expression in Wisconsin used when the bad driver in question has an Illinois plate.
I learned that one after the first time I drove from Milwaukee to Chicago. Once in Illinois I quickly noticed that turning on a blinker would result in someone, almost instinctively, speeding up to prevent me from changing lanes, usually for no apparent reason.
Do we all know about Massholes? We don’t get them much in NJ, but they are legendary in Connecticut, Rhode Island and NY State.
It refers especially to overly aggressive Boston drivers. They’ll weave, cut you off, pull into traffic with barely enough time to slow down to avoid hitting them, etc.
