Is it just me or do most little old ladies drive the biggest damn cars they can possibly buy on the market? They are out there people, driving those goliath Lincolns and Chryslers, you know the ones with 1500 pounds of nonfunctional chrome and accessories.
It would seem to me that as a person grows older and more feeble they should be driving something that is small and easier to handle. Something with less surface area in which to bend other things.
I stated this in an another thread so I will be brief , but I was recently rolled like a cheap burrito down the driver’s side of another automoblile as I was standing street side talking to a driver of another car by one of these little blue haired ladies. She let her 20 foot cadillac Seville drift into me as she stared the other direction at a cop car with its lights on. She struck me then just kept on driving till she got home and had to be fetched by a highway patrol back to the scene of the accident.
Yep dad has passed away and left mom with enough insurance money to buy a zepplin of a car. Two tons of rolling missle with a driver at the wheel with no more on her eighty-year old mind than an early bird breakfast at the sundowner grill. And don’t get behind one if you want to arrive anywhere in a timely manner because they drive a dangerous 15 miles per hour and turn corners slower than the sun sets in the evening sky.
I am sure these gargantuan cars are a status symbol and that driving is the last vestige of true freedom for the lil darlin’s but maybe we should pass legislation that requires that after 70 one should be required to step down in car size. I mean they aren’t going anywhere but around town anyway so why drive a Macy’s day float?
Maybe we should…oh never mind…
“I think it speaks to the duality of man sir.”
(private Joker in Full Metal Jacket)
I think they like to drive the big cars out of a sense of security. They know they can’t drive that great and if they are in these huge cars at least if they get hit they’ll have plenty of protection.
“Do or do not, there is no try” - Yoda
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El Presidente
Self-Righteous Clique *
Those old ladies didn’t buy those big cars – their husbands did, and then they died. They aren’t gonna sell them for something smaller because (1) they think they’ll get shafted in the deal, or (2) they think their kids want to inherit them.
And many older women are afraid to take a taxi – won’t catch them getting into a car with a man they don’t know.
And they probably do feel a bit safer in them too.
And since this is the pit, ahem – hum, uh, never mind.
I’ve noticed this with youger (comparatively) weomen, driving the HUGE ASS SUV’S. Little tiny gal, and a Cadillac Escalade or Lincoln Navigator. Get a real car, fer crying out loud.
I live in Las Vegas. Nevads. Retiree capital of the known universe. My boss has been nagging me to get a car, or at least a motorcylce. I think he feels sorry for me because I take the bus to work. I don’t think he understands the safety factor involved.
Half the drivers here in Vegas have an attitude. The other half are clueless retirees. I’m scared. I want a five ton bus between me and everything else on the road, not some soda can of a car.
I’m a big proponent of the idea that every driver over the age of fifty should have to undergo an annual road test with a live human evaluator in order to keep their driver’s license. Call it discrimination if you will, but my personal safety is at stake here…
The trouble with Sir Launcelot is by the time he comes riding up, you’ve already married King Arthur.
Okay, if we’re generalizing out the wazoo here, yeah, a lot of older folks drive land yachts. I think some of it has to do w/ the cars they’re most familiar with. If you grew up driving heavy cars, lighter cars probably feel flimsy or “floaty”. (They did to my mom anyway.) They probably don’t feel as safe, and for sure not as familiar.
And while I commiserate with the “little old lady peering through the steering wheel” syndrome, the biggest danger is that sometimes some of them simply lack the reflexes or actuity to drive.
That said, the slowness is an inconvenience, not a danger. Any competent driver in control of a vehicle should be able to safely avoid a very slow driver. There’s a difference between nuisance and danger.
In terms of pure generalization, I’ll take the snails-crawl land-yacht captains any day over the aggressive, darting “sporty little car” twerps. I’ve come closer to bad wrecks from aggressive, dart-and-weave idiots driving for show and ego.
