Worst driver: Arab/Taxi, Asian/Women, Soccer Mom/Minivan?

The BBQ Pit
1

I live and drive in the DC metro area, specifically around Dulles International Airport. We have a diverse population in this area to say the least. Which, in of itself, is nice. The variety of people you meet on any given day is fun and exciting…unless you meet them driving. Three, true, examples of my commute home yesterday. A mere 29 miles…

  1. Im merging onto the beltway. I speed up to match traffic flow. An Arabic taxi driver in a SUV is trying to exit the beltway. He should slow down to exit since the ramp is only 25mph. The perfect scenario would have me merge in front of him, while he slows down and exits behind me. Simple, elegant, easy. But oh no…not this guy. I come up the ramp, but my blinker on, he puts his on. so far so good. I speed up…this freakin idiot SPEEDS up!!

I kid you not; for a good 200yrds we are going 60mph with this knuckle trying to get in front of me to exit!! Nobody is behind me, and nobody is behind him!! As the merge lane nears the end I have to break and get in behind him. This guy then jerks into the merge lane to exit and has to slam on his breaks, smoke everywhere, because hes going to damn fast to exit! The num-nuts almost flipped!

  1. After that I have to move over four lanes to take the left toll road exit. No problems there. As I approach the toll booths, I move over to the left to take the fast toll…CLEARLY freakin marked, by large blinking signs, and large non-blinking signs. A mini-van is in front of me and we both approach the booth around 40 mph…yea thats faster then we should be going, but thats the traffic speed at this booth.

As we approach to within 200feet of the booth, the mini-van jerks to the right causing three cars to all slam on the brakes! One of them swerves into my lane, which makes me swerve onto the shoulder. As I try to make eye contact with the mini-van driver (in hopes of killing her by sight) I see her freaking laughing on her damn CELL phone, as she pulls into the cash only lane.

  1. Okay, so now at this point I am truly, and whole heartedly, hating every single driver on the road with me. I mean everyone! If you drove in No.VA last night around 6pm…I hated you.

I slowly cool down as the miles pass and I get closer to home. As I turn onto the long road down to my house, im back in a good mood. Ah, how young and foolish I was then.

The road down to my house is a busy single lane road. Lots of construction on the road, and a few developments. Im happily driving down the road when the car in front of me begins to hit the brakes. I think nothing of it, since a right turn into a development is coming As we got close to the turn, the car slows down, more and more. About 30feet from the right turn, the car stops…just a dead freakin stop. I hit my brakes and pray the cars behind me arent traveling to close.

Before I can even begin to honk or yell, the car moves again, and moves into the right turn lane. As I pass by (and again attempt to kill with sight) I see a nice Asian woman behind the wheel. She doesnt look over, doesnt wave, nothing. Just moves down the lane, and turns into the development!!
So I just wanted to take a minute, share those stories with you fine people, and give a hearty FUCK YOU to all three of those drivers. Could any of them be more stereotypical?? And all on the same night?? How in the living HELL do these people get a drivers license??! I mean you have to pass a driving test, both written and practical! How, God how, did these people pass?? Who administers these things? Stevie Wonder??

2

I wonder if you can get an American drivers license with possession of a foreign license? I have noticed some truly egregious driving in some heavily Latino neighborhoods here in Chicago. This isn’t a racial thing, it’s a “they have no driving rules in Mexico” thing. I have Mexican cousins and they’re horrible drivers too - possibly because they got their licenses through bribery, which was apparently the only way to do it. (My cousin and my aunt brought the DMV people wine and cheese. The DMV people said it wasn’t enough, so they went out, got more wine and cheese, and my cousin was given a drivers license. It took her two whole weeks to get in a car accident.) Last time I took a cab ride in Mexico, I thought I was going to die…we’re talking going through stop signs at full speed, ignoring traffic lights completely, etc.

3

This probably won’t go over too well, but you were partly at fault in at least two of these scenarios.

Cars merging onto a highway need to yeild right of way to drivers who are already there. Somewhere in this stretch you could have slowed and let him exit in front of you.

At a more reasonable speed, you avoid the close call.

It sounds like you had to jam on the brakes unnecessarily. Stopping completely in a roadway is a bad idea, but this woman gave indications she was lost and/or confused by slowing down as you describe.

I generally don’t favor one ethnic group or sex when it comes to singling out bad drivers, but at the moment would-be cowboys in giant tailgating pickup trucks come first to mind.

4

I have a friend in Miami who likes to say that everyone there obeys the traffic laws…of the country they learned to drive in. The same certainly appears to be true in DC. We used to live off Georgia Avenue near Randolph, and the ethnic mix there is so diverse it’s just amazing, and not only were the drivers crazy – folks who learned to drive elsewhere combined with road ragers and maniacs – but the pedestrians were fucking nuts, too. My favorites were the ones with several small children who would jaywalk across Georgia Avenue, all four lanes full of heavy traffic, with a signal and a nice marked crosswalk with a separate pedestrian control not 20 feet away.

I’ve come to the conclusion that when you get enough people and cars on the road in a certain area, everyone just goes nuts. In a multitude of different ways.

5

Amen, These people really piss me off to no end. Part of my commute takes me accross H street, NE. The number of people who jaywalk when the light is turning green both angers me and terrifies me. I could understand jaywalking if there were no intersections with crosswalks for miles around, but these are city blocks. The crosswalk is maybe 25 to 30 feet away at the most. Walking out into oncoming traffic when the light is green will get you killed.

6

And I forgot to add, the jaywalkers with the small children would always RUN.

That’s right, teach your children to RUN out in front of heavy traffic going 45 mph on a green light. Then wonder why several pedestrians a year are killed in that area.

7

My dad joked that Japanese cab drivers are the worst on the road. Completely crazy. He said that when we lived in Japan my mom drove two of them off the road! :eek:

8

Yeah, first of all. . .traffic entering the highway merges. Maybe the guy should have figured out that since he had to slow for the exit, he should have got behind you, but he was still in the right.

Regardless, I’ve developed a massive array of stereotypes based on vehicles/gender/race and I defy ANYONE who would be willing to commute with me for a week to tell me that my stereotypes are based on “personal reinforcement” and not actual observation.

And for people who actually DRIVE for a living, you’d think that cabbies wouldn’t have their heads totally buried up their asses.

9

The worst ones I’ve ever had were Russian taxi drivers. I clearly remember one in Vegas and one in San Diego. Speeding, unsafe lane changes, blasting music, messing with phones, and more. Absolutely terrifying.

10

Depends on the state, would be my guess.

Here in Maryland, a foreigner like me who wants a local drivers’ license has to sit the standard written test and take a driving test. Not only that, we also have to attend a half-day seminar on the evils of drinking and driving.

Funny thing is, the quality of the driving here in Baltimore suggests that most of the locals either never took a license exam, or they are driving hammered.

11

Actually, come to think of it, and as a motorcyclist with over 100,000 miles of riding in the L.A. area, I’d have to say that the worst drivers are in Mercedes Benzes.

12

I had a Russian taxi driver once tell me and a friend, “you’ve never tee-asted poo-see until you’ve tee-asted moscow poo-see.”

13

I take it you were not in Moscow at the time.

14

DC area drivers are absolutely awful. What’s worse is that the decent drivers end up doing awful stuff just to get around/stay clear of the truly awful drivers. For instance, nobody uses their turn signals, since that just prompts other drivers to scoot up into the space you were going to occupy.

Another thing is that every other driver seems to be a high dollar lawyer/manager/hotshot who thinks letting someone merge in front of you is a sign of weakness; it’s tantamount to losing a case or a big contract. “I’m a boss, you all should all be doing what I want!”

Mix those folks with folks from other countries where either a.) nobody obeys traffic laws or pays attention to the road or has a first-world sense of time or b.) they didn’t drive at all, plus throw in a few tourists in for good measure and you’ve got a big ol’ clusterfuck.

Having said that, it’s still not the worst place I’ve driven. That would be Boston. Everybody going 80 right on each other’s bumpers on terrible roads. I’m a daredevil, Dukes-of-Hazzard kind of driver (sometimes), but I just couldn’t stomach that.

15

I totally agree with you on this. People take it as a personal affront if you need to change lanes in front of them.

Last week, I did a merge – regular old, gotta-get-onto-95 merge – before I even changed lanes, I had matched the speed of traffic, and pulled onto a guy’s bumper with a pick-up truck about 75 feet behind me. He was travelling at the same speed as the car in front of me.

Well, shee-it, I guess I just took his right to the entire 75 feet behind that other car because he accellerated to my bumper, flashed his lights at me, then sped up and passed us both.

Believe me, I’ve cut people off before. This wasn’t it. Wasn’t CLOSE to it. They’re just angry out there, folks. And territorial.

tdn that was in Baltimore.

16

Speaking of Boston…

On my commute last night (1:00 a.m., Storrow Drive, westbound, heavy rain) I saw a car that had hit the curb, then a light pole, and flipped over. I stopped; the driver was out of the car and said she was okay, someone was already calling the police. Nothing else I could do, so I left.

17

May I just take this opportunity to say how much I hate generalizations like those in the OP? You want to vent about bad drivers in general, be my guest. Even if you want to vent about automobile types, whether mini-vans (because you can’t see around them, and they can’t see anything else), or BMWs (because of that smug sense of self-entitlement), then okay. Cellphone use while driving? Right with you, brother. And if you wanted to make the case that foreign born drivers need to take a driver’s test for a permanent license, hey, I can support you on that.

But generalizing and sterotyping based upon ethnicity or because someone is a soccer mom pisses me off. For example, I could ask why some people drive too fucking fast on the road when they could easily avoid that by just leaving a few minutes earlier? Is it because they are Wicked Fucking Important, or just that they think that they are? See how easily one can stereotype?

Yeah, okay, that’s one generalization I can live with. Every damn day. :slight_smile:

18

Just this afternoon, about a half hour ago, I encountered a person in one of the HUGEST vans I’ve ever seen that was not a commercial vehicle. HUGE, I tell you. For a minute I thought it had no driver at all, until I saw the tiny little lady peeping over the steering wheel, just barely visible from the eyes up, trying to maneuver this humongous piece of metal through traffic. From what I could see, she was either Latina or Asian.

Driving home in the dusk and the pouring rain yesterday, I had a largish vehicle practically on my bumper for about ten miles. When we finally got to an intersection where we would part ways, I could see that it was a taxi, with a Spanish company name. I don’t recall what it was, but it should have been whatever is Spanish for Asshole.

19

:rolleyes: ::sigh:: :rolleyes:

20

Stereotypers are the worst drivers. I was riding with one once, and he was telling me all about what all the Blacks think, and we came within three inches of slamming into a big rig!

:slight_smile: