- No.
- Do not distract the driver. Especially when the driver is trying to join traffic or to park. Yes, I realize you’re trying to be helpful: the best way you can achieve that is by shutting the hell up. For some reason, this second thing is most commonly done by people who can’t drive, too.
Touching any controls other than the radio and A/C (which I do inform my copilot (s)he’s in charge of) would mean a dead stop and one idiot kicked out of the car.
One passenger (now a school principal) reached over and turned on my hazard lights every time we came to an intersection!
Perhaps my driving scared him, but the same guy refused to buckle his seat belt until I told him I’d be annoyed to wash his blood off the windshield. 
(I could tell lots of amusing stories about driving in rural Thailand, but am afraid I’d end up irritated rather than amused. Once I mentioned being stranded in a parking spot for almost an hour when another driver blocked me, braked, locked his car, and drove with another person to another city; and received this confused Doper response:
)
Do NOT back seat drive. My wife does this all the time to me and actually caused an accident (before we were married.)
It was a dark and stormy night, no really. We had just turned a corner and noticed a stalled car in the right hand lane. I took my eyes off the road for about 3 or 4 seconds to check my rear view mirror to see if the cars behind me were avoiding the stalled car. I was just about to return my attention to the road when my wife started with "Doug. Doug!, Doug!, Doug!. Naturally, and spontaneously I looked at her to find out what the hell was going on. She had been complaining of stomach cramps all day, and my first thoughts were she was haemorrhaging, or something.
So, after having my eyes off the road for a completely safe 3 or 4 seconds, she distracted me for another 3 or 4 seconds. The car in front of me had stopped and was making a left turn. The roads were slippery and I didn’t have enough time to stop. I hit the brakes and then slid into the car in front at about 30 KPH. Hard enough to cause about $1,000 damage to each car. We weren’t married yet, so I kept my mouth shut and didn’t blame her for distracting me.
The moral of the story is: shut the fuck up and let me drive. She still does this, and tries to tell me when to change lanes, which parking spot to pull into, and what route would be the best to take, etc. A couple of weeks ago I yelled back at her to just “shut up!” Funny how I seem to be able to drive competently without all of your “helpful” advice and instructions when I’m by myself, 95% of the time!
(She does the “braking” thing too. Unbelievable.)
I’ve had people do the “braking” and a bf who would keep trying to step on the gas and who once complained that I was going too slow. I asked how fast did he think I was going, he snorted a “50? Tops! :p” (marked limit was 55). I pointed out that he could actually see the speedometer and to look at it. 65. I just happen to be a “soft” driver, and even more so at the time (for two years, I’d been borrowing my landlady’s car, but she always had to come and wouldn’t let me borrow it if she noticed any acceleration). He never complained about my speed again and took his foot off the imaginary pedal.
My normal reaction is just a huge internal rolleyes, but yeah, it’s annoying. When it’s someone who doesn’t know me, ok, but if I’ve been driving you around for months, please stop trying to use pedals you don’t have!
I think it is OK for passengers to flip off other drivers if it is **literally **on my behalf. If they know me well enough to know who I think deserves the bird, they should go for it! Maybe I watch too many B-movies and too much bad TV, but I would not flip anyone off in the USA, however.
Also, driver picks the music, passengers makes them happen.
Last: arse, petrol or cannabis - nobody rides for free.
LOL I love the difference between european drivers and american drivers. I think it is because of how stringent the learning and licensing process is, and how little many licensed europeans drive on a daily basis.
My german buddy and I would be chatting before I had to leave for work, and I was working 75 miles away from the house, and he always would wish me a safe drive as if the distance was going on some safari … then I explained to him that [at that time] I had personally put 750 000 miles on the various cars that I had owned in my driving lifespan to that date … he was thunderstruck as unless you are a professional truck driver you just do not get that kind of mileage under your belt there until you are old and grey.
Gum chewing is forbidden. You’re out of the vehicle if you continue.
I had a girlfriend passenger who saw a cop who had recently pulled her over. She yelled out the window, “Pussy cop!” and you know, I got pulled over for that.
I had a friend once lean out the window and yell “HELP” as we passed a cop. :smack::smack::smack:
It took 10 minutes of me and the other guy freaking out before she understood that we could get arrested for that.
Don’t move the shifter into Neutral. It may have been an accident on my mother’s part, but annoying none-the-less.
I sometimes feel guilty being the sole determiner for what to listen to on the radio, so wouldn’t mind if my wife searched for something she’d like when I can’t find something I like on the pre-set stations. Otherwise, I agree with most of the other responses.
The passenger is the navigator, radio changer, and air conditioning engineer–at the direction of the driver, with some sympathy for loved ones.
- not cool. Don’t.
- I can’t stand the sound of people crunching on food or chewing loudly… so if you’re gonna eat something while I’m driving (and thus not eating), you’d better be eating something soft and doing it in a quiet way (like eating gummi bears and keeping your mouth closed while you chew). I will get cranky very fast if you disobey those rules.
Back in the good old days when civility ruled, the driver of a DB5 would just press a button and SPROING! the rude passenger and the rude other driver would find themselves in a confluence.
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nope - i have 2 hands, if I want to flip, I will.
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If you insist on falling asleep in my passenger seat - you must do so without resting your knee against my stick shift and knocking things in to neutral. My ex did this to me a few times before i finally just stabbed him with a plastic spork.
Okay, I didn’t really - but I wanted to.
In the first few minutes of driving in the deep freeze, breathing becomes a hazard (it forms frost on the windshield), but emotionally it is pretty hard to press the ejection button on a loved one in the passenger seat just because he or she is breathing.
Now failure to breathe under a scarf and away from the windshield – SPROING!
[Sub](Well, not really. I just pull off the road, open the windows a little, and scrape the inside of the windshield.)[/Sub]
I had a passenger once who decided to get Bud Abbott mouthy to the cop who had pulled me over for going 10 mph over the limit. :smack:
Yes, I was wrong to drive that fast.
Yes, passenger was wrong (and was indeed a Jerk).
I may have gotten a ticket that day, but I learned to adopt new rules of the road when driving. While only operating a machine, I strongly believe that it is the Driver who determines
both when a drive begins as well as when it ends.
[Schwartznegger] “Get Out.” [/Schwartznegger]
This thread has caused me to reflect on the fact that I haven’t flipped off a driver in over 25 years.
My wife doesn’t do that either, although when she’s driving, the air gets colorful. Maldito! Animal! Asesino!
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God, no. I was a passenger in my friend’s car in South Florida once and some guys pulled up to the light next to us and proceeded to make their chicky-chicky-baby noises at me. I gave them a “meh” look and kinda rolled my eyes. They got out of the car – at the stoplight – and surrounded our car. My friend rolled up the windows and took off from the red light to get away. I don’t even make eye contact with anyone else in another car since that incident.
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I also do not stand much for loud gasps of alarm, “GASP Did you see that bumper sticker? HILARIOUS!” Hey, I thought someone was about to hit us, or I’m about to run into something or something life-threateningly dangerous was about to happen. Do NOT make panicked noises while I’m driving unless they happen to be directly related to my driving. If I need to react quickly and make evasive maneuvers, fine, gasp away. But don’t scare the shit out of me, thinking I need to be on super-high alert for danger, when you are just being a drama queen.
I had a passenger shoot a cop once. I got pulled over because I still had dealer plates on my burnt umber Ciera. I was trying to just, you know, take care of it right there, in Fargo.
As to the first question, I don’t think it’s terribly appropriate to flip someone off in any situation. But maybe that’s just where I live. People just don’t do that here. I was visiting some friends in a different city, and I was shocked at how often I saw people flipping others off as part of casual conversation.
As to the second question, I don’t like being touched when I drive. Even if it’s someone with whom I’m involved and normally like getting touched by – not when I’ve driving. It’s annoying and makes me all steer-into-oncoming-trafficky.
I will never forget the time I almost got some poor pedestrian killed. I was a passenger, and my husband was driving through a parking lot. I looked out my window and saw a lady on the curb who wanted to cross the driving lane - so I politely waved her across! I don’t know what possessed her to cross on a passenger’s wave, but she did. Luckily my husband saw her in time to stop.