(Ridig With) Astonishingly Inattentive Drivers

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I went on a delivery run with two coworkers in the company’s extended cab pick-up. The pick-up doesn’t get much use, so it’s an unfamiliar vehicle to almost everyone at our company — including the three of us making the delivery run. I sat in the back seat.

The rear window was blocked by cargo, and the driver mentioned that he would need help seeing behind him, because he couldn’t adjust the mirrors to be useful (I’m not sure why.) After making a nice left turn onto a medium busy street, the driver initiated happy talk with the front passenger.

He kept his right hand in constant motion, orchestrating his words.

He tried to engage the front passenger in eye contact while he talked — sometimes I see this in movies, with a driver only occasionally taking a forward glance, and regard it as bad dramatic license.

And the driver’s left hand held a cardboard cup of Starbuck’s coffee. Generally that hand didn’t touch the wheel, but it was still the driver’s primary driving hand. He could unwrap his fingers enough to push the steering wheel with his fingertips. Agh!

I said something like, “For god’s sake Mike, stop waving your hand around.” He laughed and paid attention to the road for 10 seconds.

I’ve worked with the driver for a couple of years, and we’re very friendly but not real close. He’s an interesting mix of nervous insecurity and stiff-upper-lip self-reliance… but his driving technique was the scariest I’ve witnessed in 20 years. It wasn’t an attempt to be hyper-cool, it was just a stunning lack of attention to the road, combined with long stretches of no-handed driving.

And yet, we got where we were going in fine fashion. Merges and backing-up were handled smoothly. An outside observer might not have noticed anything amiss about the truck’s motion. As far as I know, the guy was had no accidents in the time I’ve known him. My wife says her best friend displays a similar lack of attention, digging for CDs, looking at maps, with a similar lack of consequences.

2

I once had a mid-20’s coworker with what I thought were frightening driving habits. I was sufficiently put off that I stopped riding with her. Twenty-five years later, at a company reunion function I asked her if she had ever been involved in a vehicular crash. Nope.

I would think it astounding but I’d wager that for every one of her there are 29 others who have crashed for lack of attentiveness.

3

One of my former bosses, the head of the company, had a firm background in sales. In sales you always make eye contact with the person you are talking to. We were on our way to a business conference and I was in the back seat, he was driving.

He would make a quarter, almost half turn, to address me when he was talking!!! I am not a customer, you can keep your eyes on the damn road. But the habit was so ingrained with him that he just could not talk to someone if he wasn’t looking them in the eye.

4

Distracted drivers seem to be the rule nowadays, not the exception.

One day, I was stopped at a 4-way and about to proceed when the driver to the right of me crept right through the stop sign and into the intersection. She appeared to be a high school girl who probably just got her license, and her eyes were down the whole time staring into her lap where, undoubtedly, she was engrossed in texting. Suddenly, on an evil impulse, I accelerated into the intersection, laid on the horn, and came to a dramatic stop within three feet of her driver’s side door. Her eyes were as big as dinner plates as I raised my arms in a gesture that said, “What the fuck, you almost got us both killed!” I really enjoyed that. LOL

If you insist, I’ll be apologetic about it, but my heart won’t really be in it.

5

I know people like that: the question to ask is how many times their car has been damaged.

One co-worker with whom I will never ride again has trashed bumpers on her current car multiple times, and once needed her car towed after she wrecked it in a parking lot. No other cars involved though.

6

And there are probably plenty who have crashed due to her lack of attentiveness.

Dangerous drivers aren’t only dangerous to themselves. I’ve had a couple of times in my driving career that I have made a mistake that could have been quite bad if the drivers around me hadn’t reacted properly to avoid a collision, and many many times more than that, I’ve reacted to someone else’s mistake that would have been an accident if I hadn’t avoided it.

We only ever notice other drivers when they are at their worst, and so tend to judge them by that incident, but most people probably have a few times when they should have had consequences to their actions, but didn’t. People who drive like that all the time are still surrounded by drivers that want to avoid a collision, and so they can make mistakes without consequence, or even knowledge of them.

7

I read the title the first time as “inventive” drivers, which sounded interesting. This works too.

My sister, when younger, used to do things like turn left from the right lane. She once ran out of gas on the Hollywood freeway in LA, in the second from left lane, at light, because she just wasn’t paying attention to the gas level in the car. (It was my car, which she had borrowed.)

My father would do things like speed along in the left lane on the Pasadena freeway looking straight up and telling us all to do the same because the Goodyear blimp was overhead. I refuse to get in the car when he’s driving at this point. He has been in a number of small accidents at this point. I only hope he doesn’t kill someone. I am seriously considering reporting him to the DMV as an unsafe driver. I just need to find out how to do it.

8

I lived in Arkansas for a couple of years while Bill Clinton was governor. One interesting thing I heard about him is that you didn’t want to be in a car that he was driving, because he would constantly turn to talk to whoever was in the back seat.

9

I once tried to car share with a guy who went to the same events as me and lived on the same street*. Once.

Well, to be precise, I gave him a lift home once, then next week he gave me a lift home… doing 50 in a 20 zone, on the wrong side of the street, turning to talk to me and letting go of the wheel to gesture.

5 years later, and I’ve still not heard of him having a crash (and annoyingly I have, having been rear ended by a woman who was turned round talking to her kids in the back seat a year ago). I’m never getting in a car he’s driving again though.

*I’d call him a friend, but after subsequent events, that would be stretching the term further than I care to.

10

My wife does this. When she’s driving, it’s like she’s determined to do anything else besides drive. She complains that I drive too fast, and I do, but I’m paying my full attention to driving. I don’t even respond to her when she talks to me if the car is moving.

I insist on driving whenever possible.

11

Just today, two times I proactively reacted to what someone else was doing to avoid a collision - giving toots of my horn to let someone who was just about to turn into my lane know that I was indeed there, so don’t run into me.

I think this is exactly how they’re getting away with it - I call it “Mister Magooing their way through life.” Remember how Mister Magoo would wander around, not seeing anything, and somehow miraculously not get smushed? That’s how they drive. They make all kinds of mistakes, and other drivers who ARE paying attention do what it takes to keep them from getting smushed.

The inattentiveness is indeed an epidemic; I walk here for about an hour a day, usually around traffic, and I see what people are doing behind the wheel. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t see multiple people texting on their cellphones.

12

I’ve mentioned before that my BFF is a horrible driver and I go through contortions to be sure I drive when we go anywhere. I dropped my guard a few weeks ago and she drove us to a work party.

On the way home she turned into two lanes of oncoming traffic – one way lanes, she’s going the wrong way. Screaming ensues, oncoming cars stop in time, we don’t die.

Never again will she drive me anywhere!

Her driving style is an odd combo of inattentiveness AND over-attention. She’s an anxious person overall and this translates into tense steering wheel grip, bolt upright sitting, leaning forward and backward to look in the mirrors multiple times (while she swerves from her lane), turning her head to talk to me, not reading road signs (I.e., “ONE WAY”).

It’s like she misses the “big picture” of driving. It reminds me of the less-skilled teammates on my HS and college basketball teams who couldn’t focus on the immediate, important thing whilst still keeping peripheral awareness of where the ball/other players were. I wonder if good athletes tend to be good drivers?

13

I rode in a car once driven by a very nice guy who was in his mid eighties. He flew through a stop sign, scaring the hell out of me. When I mentioned the sign, he told me there wasn’t a stop there when he was younger. When we arrived at his house he parked by bumping into the cars in front of and behind his repeatedly. Never drove with him again.

14

Sorry about that, I’ll pay better attention next time. :slight_smile:

How old do you think I am?

Until they cut off someone else who is also paying attention to their phone, rather than paying attention to driving. (or of course, do something so stupid and unpredictable that even attentive drivers can’t respond.)

I do consider distracted driving to be a problem on par with, and arguably worse than, drunk driving.

15

These stories are giving me chills. It makes me nervous just to watch drivers on TV and in movies who turn to address their passengers for 20 or 30 seconds at a time.

16

Yeah this is about the only thing I don’t like about “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee”; it’s even worse because I know that Seinfeld is actually driving a real car on a real street at the time, and is not just pretend driving a prop car on a set.