Being a Good Driver

[Kaitzilla]

I'm obsessed with being a good driver because I don't want to die, don't want to be crippled, don't want sky-high insurance, etc. etc.

Yet every day someone on the road tries to crash into me.

This thread is for everyone to talk about --- driving I guess.


Top tips in my opinion!
1) Try to quickly match speeds with all the other cars.
2) Don't do things other drivers are not expecting. Being honked at constantly means you are breaking this one.
3) If you can't see the road in front of you very well, slow down.
4) Maintain situational awareness.
Staring ahead 180 degrees, driver-sideview mirror on left side of eye, rear-view mirror on right side of eye.
At all times I know about 3/4's of what is around my car.
Don't be like my cousin who removed the (annoying) rear view mirror and has had lots of accidents
5) When changing lanes, always check the blind spot.
6) When applying the brake, check the rear-view mirror real quick.


This thread is for talking about parking strategies, what to do if the brake stops working, what to do if the accelerator gets stuck, arguments about who has the right of way on U-turns, car crash videos, etc.

 

[lymond]

Always keep your headlights on regardless of the time of day. A little trick I've used for years is to train yourself into the habit of reaching for the lights and the ignition at the same time, both when you turn the car on and off.

Look left>right>left (or vice versa) at intersections before turning.

 

[Kaitzilla]

Other drivers are quite easy to classify based on what they are driving.

Minivans - Low Threat, tend to be full of kids and soccer moms, cut them off with ease.
Cars - Average threat. Only worry if it is a little old lady/guy weaving all over the place and no one has the guts to pass them.
SUV - High threat. Tend to be driven by jerks. They have 8 cylinders compared to your 4 and are bigger.
Pickup Truck - Very high threat! Tend to be driven by maniacs and working men. When they crash into you, they bend their bumper while your car gets totaled.

School Bus - Beyond high threat. They have a stop sign they can deploy whenever they stop. If they are flashing their yellows lights, slow down because the stop sign can fly out any time.
Keep in mind they attract stupid children!
Like, they stop, don't deploy the stop sign because there are too many cars, and the kids run out into the road anyway to get run over.

Emergency Vehicles - The highest threat possible.
These cops, ambulances, and fire trucks run red lights and drive like crazy-taxi.
Many rules of the road have to be violated to get out of their way.

All I can say is with ambulances, unless it is a separated highway, you have to pull over and let them pass.
If you hear them coming, plan how to get out of their way RIGHT NOW.

 

[Kaitzilla]

The best way to survive a crash is to wear a seatbelt.
Sure, you could be upside down and burst into flames and the seatbelt is what kills you, but 90% of the time it saves your life.

Here is one of the few car crashes I'm comfortable showing.

With 1300 horsepower, the car is amazing but the guy did not upgrade the brakes after vastly upgrading the engine.
Eventually with enough heat, the brakes fail.

If you are crashing, don't have your arms locked straight out on the steering wheel like the driver.
They will fold backwards on impact and now you have two spaghetti arms.

A lapbelt is not nearly as good as a seatbelt that goes across your chest.
Note the passenger's face hits the steel dashboard and manages to mark it with his teeth!

The modern seatbelt has a much nicer broken collarbone and broken pelvis bone at even greater speeds and you don't have to go face first through the car's front window.


Other notes:

Try to have your head back on the headrest if you are about to get rear-ended.
Whiplash feels like your neck is broken for --- well, the rest of your life really. Call it 30 years.

Never, ever put your feet on the dashboard.
A crash will snap you in half like that congressman Madison Cawthorn.

Don't sit on your foot while crashing or you will die for some reason.
I haven't found out why yet.


Strategies for brake failing:
Don't turn off the car. You will lose power steering.
Don't put the car into park like the driver in the video. It just eats through the tooth and keeps going.
Put the car into neutral and apply the emergency brake. (This is right guys?)
The driver in the video had no emergency brake, so he was going to crash no matter I think.

 

[Bamspeedy]

Drive defensively-Always give plenty of space between you and the guy in front of you (pretend the guy in front of you might stop at any time).

Was driving to Chicago. 7AM there was some road construction, so the lanes did a slight 10 degree turn at one point. Concrete barriers were in part of what used to be the right lane if you didn't follow the shift in lanes.

18 wheeler in front of me, dont know if the driver dozed off, was texting or what, but didn't follow the shift. Hit the barriers and most of truck was in the new 'shoulder' of the road where the barriers were, tore an axel (two connected wheels) right off the truck and ended up in the right lane (blocking my lane). I was first vehicle behind this truck. Safely and calmly came to a stop without needing to slam on brakes or steer to avoid hitting the axel, etc. One time I wished I had a dashcam.

Tailgaters are idiots, to put it mildly. I really hate the ones who tailgate on left turns. Just because there was space in traffic for me to make that turn, doesn't mean there was room for you too!

 

[IglooDame]

Drive offensively. Sure most folks drive defensively, but getting other drivers worried about what you might do makes them stop dorking with their phones and pay attention to the road.

Kidding aside, hang up and drive. This "oh it's okay I'm on hands-free" is BS. The problem is not your hand up by your ear - try driving just holding your ear, it's pretty easy (unless you drive a stick shift, natch). The problem is your brain focusing on the conversation instead of the driving stuff. The cars behind you can tell when you're on the phone; you drift in the lane, and (especially when not on interstates) speed up, slow down, and occasionally tap the brakes for dumb reasons like hills, curves, and oncoming traffic where you'd ordinarily be rock-steady.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I've noticed that a lot of people don't use their turn signals. I feel like I've been noticing it more the last few years, but maybe that's just me having a poor memory. As a pedestrian in a city, I look for indications of whether a car is turning while I'm crossing an intersection, and I've had to learn to read the cars' "body language" because so many people don't use their signals. What gives? Is it an issue of 'sensory overload', where the drivers are just doing and paying attention to too many things at once? Are they actually reluctant to let people around them know their intentions? If driving is viewed as competitive, or even combative, and you're expecting people to f with you, I could imagine the instinct is to not give away your intentions.

Also, when it comes to pedestrians, I can see that some drivers just don't realize there are people around. A while ago, I almost got hit by some dork who was turning right while looking left. As he was driving away, I noticed he had California plates and it occurred to me that there are probably a lot of places in this country where vehicles and pedestrians only coexist in parking lots. It's possible it didn't even occur to him to look around for people while driving a surface road.

Other drivers are quite easy to classify based on what they are driving.

I don't have any links at my fingertips, but I think there have been multiple studies of drivers' behavior and the value of the cars they were driving: iirc, people driving more expensive cars are more likely to cut off other drivers, and less likely to yield to a person trying to cross the street, among other things.

 

[tjs282]

All I can say is with ambulances, unless it is a separated highway, you have to pull over and let them pass.
If you hear them coming, plan how to get out of their way RIGHT NOW.

Here in Germany, ambulances with blue lights flashing and siren wailing are allowed/expected to do pretty much whatever it takes — blow through red lights, drive down the wrong side of the road if necessary — to get to the ER as quickly as possible. So even if it's not an actual legal requirement (it might be, not sure) to pull over/stop to give them right-of-way, it is certainly the done thing, and 99% of German drivers will respect that (the general feeling seems to be "What if it was my family-member in there?").

(Paramedics are only legally allowed to run their lights+siren when they have a patient aboard; not sure if/ how closely that's monitored, though!)

If caught in heavy stop-and-go traffic on an Autobahn, it is a legal requirement on all drivers to drive along one side of their lane or the other (which side depends on what the drivers ahead and in the adjacent lanes have already done), in order to form a "Rettungsgasse" ("rescue-alley") wide enough to allow emergency vehicles an additional access-route if needed. Anyone who blocks the Rettungsgasse (e.g. because they weren't paying attention to the traffic ahead of them, and/or driving too close to the car in front to be able to pull to one side before stopping), can theoretically be prosecuted.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Another thing I've been thinking about lately is whether and how much taking environmental effects of driving into account should be considered part of being a good driver. That is, knowing when you have other alternatives to driving, and using them as much as you can. Something I've observed, for example, is that 90% of the cars I see on the road have just 1 person inside. I don't know what the answer to that is. I think self-driving vehicles could help with that, but I don't know how far we are from seeing self-driving vehicles being commonplace. There's also an issue with EVs, having something to do with the distribution of charging stations. I heard a radio program about that recently. iirc, one issue is that heavy-duty charging stations that can recharge a car in 20 minutes are more expensive to own and operate, and don't return the owner's investment until and unless they get used a lot (I guess just having one of these chargers sitting there, going unused, costs the owner a bundle). So you're in kind of a "chicken-and-egg" situation; drivers don't want EVs if these heavy-duty charging stations aren't abundant, but owners of places like grocery stores and movie theaters don't want to install a set of those chargers unless they're going to be used a lot.

 

[Arwon]

I don't think there's actually much to it other than observing and reacting.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

i do all the things in OP already. i haven't been in an accident since I was a teenager (where brakes failed me in the rain). i still regret that on my record even though it happened when i was less than half current age. i had a lot of distance, but didn't respect the conditions sufficiently. a hard way to learn that lesson, but fortunately everyone walked away from it w/o serious injury (the speed involved wasn't too high).

i have had a few close calls since then, though. some people break concentration and do wild things.

maybe the most annoying one that's super common is tailgating. not only does this tend to create unnecessary amounts of traffic slowdowns, it also increases accident risk and limits the options available to other responsible/more aware drivers. tailgating was a factor in all but one of my close calls...some *** will try to move into your spot as you're switching lanes, then someone else switches lanes and you have nowhere to go. or if you suddenly brake because something falls off a vehicle up ahead or w/e, it's a guaranteed rear-end and probable push into said object if you simply brake, which would normally be a safe response. now as a responsible driver i am at more risk and need to do something more difficult because other people can't manage basic good process you're taught from the start.

worse, while no human has the reaction time to tailgate safely, period, this is frequently done by people who are less attentive than average on top of it. so it's not like they'll see an issue happening in front of the person they're tailgating and at least try to stop in anticipation. one of the worst common driving practices, by a large margin. only allowed by excessive carelessness or extreme hubris.

I've noticed that a lot of people don't use their turn signals.

this is also common, and while less dangerous and traffic-inducing than tailgating, it's still unnecessarily dangerous. a good habit is that if you're turning the wheel more significantly than correcting a straight line in a lane, you should probably be signaling in that direction automatically too.

The cars behind you can tell when you're on the phone; you drift in the lane, and (especially when not on interstates) speed up, slow down, and occasionally tap the brakes for dumb reasons like hills, curves, and oncoming traffic where you'd ordinarily be rock-steady.

if this is true for phone, it's also true with other people in vehicle in most cases. and maybe that tracks.

however, there is also the issue of basic awareness, in general. this varies massively from person to person. i have ridden as a passenger with someone and even as a passenger, note car locations out of habit. one in non-turn lane for oncoming traffic, one behind, one to left, none to right. all cars in example stopped. light turns green, and we sit for a few seconds before moving. i ask the driver why, and she told me she needed to check/didn't want to get hit in the intersection. it's moments like that where i realize that my idea of what you account for when driving is not everyone else's idea. it isn't just that i'd noted all the vehicle locations constantly and knew there was no chance of that before the light turned green...if i were driving i would be extremely uncomfortable if i didn't know that consistently, whether my own car is moving or not. if she isn't keeping up with that with only 3 vehicles at an intersection while sitting still, can she really manage with several times the vehicles nearby while moving? from what i can tell a lot of people can't, even if they try.

all the more reason to be vigilant.

 

[Remorseless1]

I have no idea why driver's license are a requirement. Most people I share the road with act like they've never been in a vehicle in their lives.

 

[Kaitzilla]

I've noticed that a lot of people don't use their turn signals. I feel like I've been noticing it more the last few years, but maybe that's just me having a poor memory. As a pedestrian in a city, I look for indications of whether a car is turning while I'm crossing an intersection, and I've had to learn to read the cars' "body language" because so many people don't use their signals. What gives? Is it an issue of 'sensory overload', where the drivers are just doing and paying attention to too many things at once? Are they actually reluctant to let people around them know their intentions? If driving is viewed as competitive, or even combative, and you're expecting people to f with you, I could imagine the instinct is to not give away your intentions.

Also, when it comes to pedestrians, I can see that some drivers just don't realize there are people around. A while ago, I almost got hit by some dork who was turning right while looking left. As he was driving away, I noticed he had California plates and it occurred to me that there are probably a lot of places in this country where vehicles and pedestrians only coexist in parking lots. It's possible it didn't even occur to him to look around for people while driving a surface road.


I don't have any links at my fingertips, but I think there have been multiple studies of drivers' behavior and the value of the cars they were driving: iirc, people driving more expensive cars are more likely to cut off other drivers, and less likely to yield to a person trying to cross the street, among other things.

Yes, turn signals!

I can't believe I forgot that.

It is the absolute easiest way to avoid crashes.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I've noticed that a lot of people don't use their turn signals. I feel like I've been noticing it more the last few years, but maybe that's just me having a poor memory. As a pedestrian in a city, I look for indications of whether a car is turning while I'm crossing an intersection, and I've had to learn to read the cars' "body language" because so many people don't use their signals. What gives? Is it an issue of 'sensory overload', where the drivers are just doing and paying attention to too many things at once? Are they actually reluctant to let people around them know their intentions? If driving is viewed as competitive, or even combative, and you're expecting people to f with you, I could imagine the instinct is to not give away your intentions.

It's THE most infuriating thing because it takes no effort at all, and it makes you and everyone around you safer.

 

[Hygro]

Being a good driver is huge point of pride for me, such that one of the reasons I chose ride share as a job for 4 years was to develop me as a driver. You learn a lot when you drive all day, with ratings, tips, and random interactions on the line, as well as a high chance of accident both from total driving and driving into fatigue to make your budget succeed.

Check your blind spots and drive in a way that creates accurate expectations for the other drivers.

 

[IglooDame]

And anticipate people (drivers, pedestrians, whatever) being stupid, because most assuredly they eventually will be if you wait long enough.

 

[JollyRoger]

If I'm Bud Foxin' a Hewlett Packard stock tip or up to similar nafarity, I make sure the partition is up in my limo so the chauffeur isn't distracted

 

[Terxpahseyton]

This is X amount of mils or kilometers per hours allowed. And I am late.

You are driving a quarter below it.

I will burn you, your family, your kin, your grand daughter... I will burn them all. And still., only once I piss on your grave, I will find satisfaction

Spoiler :

A joke. But the most serious joke I ever made. Believe that. I HATE YOU: Playfully. Love you man. Truly do......

 

[Kaitzilla]

My highway was closed down today in one direction.

I saw a shattered motorcycle in the middle of the highway going the other direction and feared the worst.
--Yup, news said someone died.

Sigh, donorcycles.
I think my uncle lost 3 different friends to them.


Motorcycles and bicycles really fit into blind spots.

There is exotic technology out there to fix the problem, but I don't think it has made it into any car yet.

I would also point out that it is also extremely dangerous to drive on the passenger side of a semi.

Almost killed my sister when the 18 wheeler changed lanes into her.

Pass them up quickly.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Something I've observed, for example, is that 90% of the cars I see on the road have just 1 person inside. I don't know what the answer to that is. I think self-driving vehicles could help with that, but I don't know how far we are from seeing self-driving vehicles being commonplace.

If self driving cars become the norm, you will see a lot of cars with zero people inside them.

"Alexia, drive me to the office."

"Alexia, after I have left the vehicle, drive to a legal parking space."

.....

"Alexia, drive to the office and wait."