(edit: Does this belong in Great Debates? Perhaps not, hmm…)
Hello all
If we take, at first, the axiom that generally speaking the more people do stuff the better they become at it, then how is it that those who drive cars aren’t really good, and how come people don’t get better for every subsequent year that they drive?
I drive every day, as I’m sure many of us do. I’ve never had a crash, and I don’t run red-lights very often - but I could improve a great deal in terms of my driving. Sometimes I go a bit too fast, sometimes a bit too slow. I don’t steer rounds corners quite as smoothly as I could, and my reverse parking sucks. Yet I do this every day. Why don’t I, and millions like me, ever get better?
A few thoughts come to mind…
Actually, that initial axiom is false. If it were true, then everyone 40+ would be a really good conversationalists, lovers, and judges of character. People get better at things that they try at, but people on the whole don’t try to get better at driving - they reach a plateau where they’re good enough, then they stop endeavouring to improve.
Even average drivers are actually very good when you look at the bigger picture. Driving’s a massively complex and nuanced skill - hundreds of years from now, our successors will watch videos of us driving now and say to themselves “Wow - it’s amazing they did that and not crash more often!”. Maybe we don’t ‘get better’ because we’re already very good - most of us hit our skill-limit somewhere in our 20s.
It’s a case of cognitive resource allocation. I could focus all of my mental faculties on driving when I am behind the wheel, but what would be the point? I’d rather listen to the radio, think about what I have to do today, or occupy my mind some other way. Being a kick-ass driver during my daily commute does not pay off. Focusing on the minutiae of every-single-thing-about-my-driving is a chore - I’d rather compromise and drive well-enough to get where I’m going to go and not crash…
#2 and #3. I suspect that there’s also factors of interest, understanding, and natural aptitude. If you’re not interested, then you’re going to have a hard time focusing on what you’re doing, regardless of whether you have the radio playing or not. If you don’t understand the physics or friction or how transmission works, etc. then you won’t have the underlying knowledge on what things you could even try so as to improve. If you simply have poor motor skills (by which I mean control over your body), you’re also going to have poor motoring skills.
Part of it may be that people are really good at driving, but get complacent or start taking dumb risks.
Or are just impatient. Always on the highway you see these guys frantically changing lanes when the traffic slows, which of course slows it still further. They must know it makes more sense to just stay where you are, that the next lane is not going to be magically faster by any useful amount, that everyone would be better off and move faster if they just stayed where they were - but they frantically change lanes anyway.
Can driving skill be quantitatively measured? What criteria go into that? Is “skill” simply an inverse measure of the number of crashes and/or tickets per year or something like that, or would there be more specific knowledge, reflex, memory, visual, etc. assessments involved?
I know that most jurisdictions have a small number of driver’s license levels that one can try for - but it would seem that the exams they give don’t even begin to delve into the possible nuances of skills that people might have in theory. Could you design a 10-level driver’s license system where drivers scurry to “level up” every few years in order to qualify to drive on more dangerous roads or apply for more complex driving jobs? The Pennsylvania Level 7 exam with the driving through the rain while being chased by tailgating rednecks who are blasting “Never Gonna Give You Up” on giant speakers ends up dashing most driver’s hopes to go on and most end up settling on the Level 6 for life…
I would put most of the blame on your axiom being false. Mere repetition does not build skill.
This is especially true when
you might not be practicing good habits in the first place - repetition of a bad thing makes you worse. Most drivers get zero feedback on their driving habits after the first few years. Mostly we tend to think “I haven’t crashed, so I must be doing it right.”
you’re not practicing anything new. Most people never really put their cars to the test. They’re driving at slow speeds, expecting everyone else to obey the law, with no adverse weather, on paved roads. Such a person is totally unequipped for a mud-pit demolition derby, no matter how many years of daily commuting they’ve done.
But obviously all three of the elements you cite come into play to some degree.
Learning benefits from feedback, but the feedback loop for driving is actually pretty poor…most people don’t have more than one or two accidents if any, which doesn’t really create much opportunity for auto-correction (heh). So while most people learn a high degree of caution when taking driver’s ed, my guess is that some of them are responsive to the lack of accidents (feedback) and their driving deteriorates to whatever level they’re able to get away with.
Ha! I took too long to submit that after I typed it.
Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect. Most people will never be in a situation where excellent driving skills are necessary. Driving in a mediocre way produces mediocre drivers.
Also, part of the picture is your skill at reacting quickly to an unexpected situation. Most of us get very little practice at, for instance, jerking the wheel in the right direction a tenth of a second after a car swerves right at us.
I forget where I originally read it, but a quote I like is:
“The modern automobile is the most complex piece of machinery ever placed into the hands of inexpert operators.”
as for the OP’s question, I have to agree it’s some of 2 and 3. Especially 3, I dare say a whole lot of collisions can be traced back to inattentiveness on at least one of the participants. for many people, driving is such a mundane and rote activity that they forget to pay attention to things they should be.
That new drivers are often terrible drivers argues that people do get better. But each person reaches a plateau better than which he’s not going to get.
The variance I see in driving skill has little do do with age - up into it gets to be an issue, that is.
As for being really good I’d say #2 - but given the density and complexity of traffic where I drive, people have remarkably few accidents.
there’s something to be said for that. I’ve often thought that if the automobile was to be invented today, it would be very difficult for the average person to be allowed to own one.
People are really good at driving. There are 200-million drivers in the USA, driving an average of 12,000 miles a year, and in any given year, only 5% are involved in the ten million accidents. The other 95% drive accident free all year, even though about 10% of them have less than two years driving experience.
I agree with most that is it a mix of 2 and 3. I think that it is also a matter of how much enjoyment a person takes from driving.
I like driving, at least in Alaska. At first it was driving fast, then going fast around corners and it has morphed over time to how smooth I can drive fast. I think that I pay more attention to drivers around me to make my way through traffic which means I don’t get involved in accidents. Of course this is in Alaska and our rush hour traffic is nowhere as near soulkilling as it is in the Lower 48.
Compare that to my writing against most of the Dope and I’m not as gooder as most of the people here.
I just posted this in a thread about Confirmation Bias…weird to be posting the same thing in 2 different threads. In any case Confirmation bias is a huge issue in driving, Combine it with a near total lack of feedback and you have the average driver. Unskilled and unaware of it. The list of things the average driver is bad at or ignorant of is long.
Feedback and the lack of, take a look at drivers turning left, take a look at yourself turning left, how many drivers out there are crossing the yellow line while making a left turn? How long is it going to take for you to figure out how to turn left and actually stay in your own lane? 5 years? 45 years? Why is that guy turning left from the right lane (in a dual left turn set up) half way in the left hand turn lane while going through the turn? why is he ALL the way in the left hand turn lane while going through the turn?
people suck, the education part sucks, and the test sucks, I don’t know how you would expect drivers to be anything other than terrible given what they have to work with and the fact that we have a road test so easy I am convinced you could train a chimp to pass it given a big enough pile of bananas to work with.
