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Almost every German in the world. They seem to think driving more than two feet away from the car in front of them is a waste of space, even if they are driving over 100 miles per hour.
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My friend Bonnie. Driving home with her after a party, traffic was at a standstill, so she simply turned, DROVE ON THE SIDEWALK for a block, and then went back onto the street. You should have seen the faces on the pedestrians.
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My grandmother, godresthersoul, had a 1950 Ford Falcon and never drove it over 30 miles per hour…on highways! I remember as a little kid she drove me home once and my father asked how the drive was. I said, “A moped passed us on the highway.” I don’t think I ever heard my father laugh so loudly.
Just a heads up. My MIL took a senior citizens driving course of some sort and is MUCH better than she was. I mean the difference is really noticable.
This is a woman that stoped on a highway and tried to backed up IN THE LANE (as if backing up on the shoulder would be better, but really) because she missed her turn off.
My grandfather. Recently, my dad and his doctor (my grandfather’s doctor) finally forced him to give up the license for good. Although prior to that, he hadn’t driven for over two years. He has epilepsy and doesn’t always follow his doctor’s orders, so after a string of several severe seizures, he had to wait so long without one until he could get back on the road. Only he’d have another one, and then the waiting period would start fresh.
Even when he was younger, he drove like a maniac-cutting people off, speeding, not paying attention. My dad told me a story of the time he was driving HIS grandfather down to their house. As they turned onto my dad’s street, this truck comes screaming out of the corner, like a bat out of hell.
Great-Grandfather: Who the hell was that maniac?
Dad: That was your son.
It only got worse as he got older. My grandmother NEVER let him drive her car-she always drove anywhere they went (unless they took the truck). My parents rarely let me go anywhere with him behind the wheel. I don’t know how many accidents he’s been in, or how many vehicles he’s totalled. Probably set a few records.
Now he’s still bitching about it, claiming he’s lost his independence, he’s like a caged animal, etc. Which is absurd, considering the fact that he has numerous children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, etc who would take him where he needs to go. He had Access, but they refused to take him anywhere because he got so nasty and abusive.
One bonus point to the whole thing, though: I told my dad to remember this when we eventually have to get him to give up the keys.
Me!cackle cackle !
My uncle Harold. He’s legendary in his part of the world for his bad driving. Honestly, when people saw him coming on the country roads, they’d pull off and just let him go on by. He’s dead now, but it wasn’t from a car wreck. Even his wife was surprised at that.
My MIL. Bless her heart, she’s from England and never drove anywhere because her husband would ferry her back and forth to work and on errands. After he died she had to learn to drive, but she’s a nervous driver and easily frazzled.
I was driving with her one day when the van stalled at a tollbooth. She started to freak, until I said, “Mom, wait.” I turned off the AC and the radio, had her put the car in park and restart the engine. It started up again immediately and we got to our destination. I think due to her lack of experience she didn’t know how to handle little emergencies.
She also likes to ride the ass of the car in front of her, and is a very late braker when coming to a stop. Once in the car with her behind the wheel is enough.
Not the worst, but the stupidest: a friend once volunteered to drive even though he knew his brakes were not working properly.
Everything was fine until we took a freeway offramp and ended up careening our way through a right turn at the subsequent intersection.
“Oh, man, that’s the first time the pedal has gone all the way to the floor, dudes!”
My grandfather used to scare me. He was a great guy, WW2 vet, carpenter, construction foreman, all around handy and smart guy. But when he drove he drove with 2 feet, left on brake, right on gas, and oneor the other had to be almost fully pressed at all times. Sometimes both. Although I can’t say I remember him getting in any accidents so maybe results count.
My wife. She speeds evrerywhere. Rolls through stop signs. Floors it at changing reds. When my son was growing up ,his friends were afraid of her driving and asked me to take the.
We were driving down a snowy street one day and I asked her to slow down. She said why? the speed limit is 40 and I am going 35. I said I can feel the lack of traction in the tires. She said mind your own business. She then did a 360 spin in the middle of the street.
It finally slowed her down but she was lucky.The 2 kids in the back seat said “do it again.”
When she got a radar detector ,she viewed it as a licence to drive even faster.
My mother’s late aunt; Aunti helen was OK driviong, but parking was another story=parallel parking took her a Looong time-plus lots of dented bumpers!
My best friend, who is also a limo driver. She locks her keys in the running vehicle. She digs through a giant bag that’s in the back seat. She eats and drinks and smokes while she’s driving. She searches for stuff on the floor of the vehicle. She’s had LOTS of accidents, though most of them are inconsequential enough that she never gets a ticket. I love 'er, but keeeee-rist…
Drivers in Jakarta, Indonesia.
A driver’s license there is a revenue source, nothing more. There is no attempt made to see if you know how to drive, it’s just a matter of ponying up the rupiah.
My first day there, the taxi ride from the airport to the hotel aged me nearly 20 years.
I used to know a guy who HAD to look you in the eyes when he talked to you. :eek:
If you think it was scary talking to him as he drove & talked to you as you sat in the passenger’s seat - imagine if you were sitting in the back instead! :eek: :eek: :eek:
D’Mother - thankfully she no longer drives. She used to drive fast when she should have been going slow, slow when she should have been going fast, too close to the line down the middle of the road and would over take other vehicles by going about 5mph ‘faster’ than they were…
shudders at the memories
My father-in-law thinks he’s a race car driver. You know the type – passing people on the left 100 meters before he has to veer over 3 lanes to exit on the right. Last year he completely totalled his car – probably fell asleep at the wheel and drifted into a big rig which bounced him off the road-- and that seems to have made him realize he’s got to practice restraint.
But aside from him, I nominate the woman I met at the DMV one day, who was asking why she hadn’t received the “card with her picture on it.” Turns out she’d been driving solo for 6 months with a learner’s permit that requires having an experienced driver as a passenger. She’d never taken a road exam and thought you only needed a written test to get a license!
Several elderly nuns whom I have known. They were dreadfully bad drivers.
Back in high school, a friend of mine had what he considered a dream car. An Audi with a broken speedometer. The following, best as I can remember, is an actual exchange between us, while he was driving us to some event.
Me: Uh, William?
William: Yeah?
Me: That’s a red light up there.
William: Uh-huh.
Me: It means “stop”.
William: Oh!
He slammed on his brakes about 15 feet before we reached the intersection. By the time the car screeched to a halt, we were halfway through it, and narrowly missed getting rammed by a van.
I was going to say that. They even do it on motorcycles. I seriously want to know why they do that, 'cuz its not something that happens every so often. Its every single fucking day. Do they teach that speed limit signs are only a suggestion in german driving classes? I’m not talking about autobahns either. Theres a stretch of road here between Oberammergau and Garmisch where the speed limit is 80 KPH, yet germans are whizzing through there a lot faster. I got a ticket for going over 80 KPH there once, and amazingly on that same day so did three other americans here. Coinky-dink? I dunno… :dubious:
To answer the question, I guess my sister was the worst driver I was ever in a car with. Now, to be fair, Sis has problems and they only really became manageable with the discovery of ‘Prozac’, but that’s 20-20 hindsight.
I remember being 4 and being in the back of the family station wagon while my mother attempted to teach Sis to drive. It was an experience. The one memory of that day that over-burned the others, however, was as she approached a crosswalk by a railroad station.
In mid cross-walk was a kindly 70-something older woman in a fur coat with a small cap with a lace veil elegantly topping her white hair. She was walking with confidence across that cross-walk. The problem was that Sis wasn’t doing what Mom or Dad always did when someone was in the crosswalk, which was slow down. I can still remember my Mom shouting “Watch that Old Woman!” to which sister replied, while wildly craning her head 90 degrees to the right and then 180 degrees to the left “What Old Woman…?!”
Me? I got the best view in the house. I had the window seat in back and got to see that poor old woman’s face as she rolled along the side of our car, her mink stole spinning wildly…her cap spinning off to who-knows-where.
I remember my Mom asking in a panic “Did we hit her? Did we hit her?” I still remember my reply too:
“Not exactly. But Sis almost got her fur coat with the door handle …” :eek:
There was the time when Sis was in college where if her car wouldn’t start, she’d beat the battery with a crowbar to teach it a lesson. One time, she picked my brother and I up from school. My brother noticed the idiot light was on.
“Sis, how long has that been on?”
“Oh, about a week. Don’t worry about it.”
She was very angry when we demanded to get out of the car right then and there. My brother took the key, so the engine could cool down. That car died one long and painful death…
When I was older and had my license, I was asked to mover her VW in the driveway. I was more than happy to oblige. But the car didn’t seem to want to start. That was when I noticed worried family members waving their arms at me desperately and screaming for me to get out of the car. One look at the flames in the rear view mirror convinced me too, and I got out and ran. It was my brother who took the kitchen fire extinguisher and put it out. All the while, Sis is shaking me like a rag-doll, screaming “What did you do to my car?! What did you do to my car?!” It was my brother who lifted the rear-hood on the beetle and asked her a question.
“Sis, did you disconnect this large hose here?”
“Yes. The heat wouldn’t shut off, so I disconnected it.”
“Sis, where you aware that this is what Cools The Engine on a VW…?”
That car died horribly too.
There was also the time where she asked me (and the 5 guys I was with) to help her push her then Ford Grenada back to the house because it had died. So, off we went (notice that by then we had all just stopped asking her why her cars would stop working) to push her car. Now I was pretty strong back then and lifted weights regularly. My friends did too…and this job seemed pretty easy. Still, the 6 of us pushed….and pushed…and pushed….and darned if this car wasn’t moving 2-3 cm per second max given all our efforts. “What’s she got in there?” asked one friend. “…cause I’ve pushed vans lighter than this thing.” Suddenly, there was a ka-Chunk sound, and the car flew forward…and everyone pushing landed face first on the ground with a mouth full of asphalt gravel. To this day, Sis refuses to admit that she had us pushing her car for 20 minutes with her behind the wheel and the emergency brake on…and then suddenly released it in mid-push. But there’s only thing that I’ve ever heard that makes that exact ka-Chunk sound on an automobile, and that’s the sound of the emergency brake, under great presure, being released.
Now car quality has made remarkable strides since the days of the Ford Grenada and in truth I have no idea what she drives today. Still, I like to imagine that there’s a picture of her in every auto design workshop from Detroit to Tokyo to Berlin as a lesson (and warning) to all future design teams….