Tweet
Prelude
I try to drive with the philosophy that I can only control what I do and where my car goes. Nothing I say or do will affect other drivers. I can’t magically make them better drivers, I can’t force them to obey the law. So I try to take care of what I do, and if someone else does something my only aim is to preserve my life and the integrity of my car. (See Rules 1, 2, 4, 6, 7 and 8)
I am not a very good driver. I am too old now to have good reflexes and to keep my concentration at a level where I can be good. I can compensate for these things. I only drive for short times. I make sure I am well rested when I drive. I allow more space around my car so I allow for my longer reflexes. I make sure I follow the rules of the road, so if I have that accident it will be the other drivers fault, and they will have to pay for my repairs.
TL;DR
- Don’t be a jerk.
- Don’t be in a hurry.
- Obey the law.
- Pay Attention.
- Read Rule 10
Also if you think you see one of your ideas in these rules, that’s because they are a good thing to do. I’ve been doing this stuff for years. I like that you have come up with these ideas independently – it validates me.
Rule 1: Assume every other driver is a maniac who’s sole purpose in life is to try to kill you and make it look like an accident.
I’ve seen many people say this, and I know it to be true from personal experience. It sounds insane, and it is. There are people out there on drugs, drunk or just not paying attention who drive like lunatics. The worst part of this is, they look just like every other driver on the road. Then they do their lunatic thing. If you aren’t watching, it will catch you by surprise. Your car will be upside down on the road, and you will be thinking, “How did that happen?”
Here’s an example. You’re on a trip. You have been following a car for miles, and the driver has been following the road rules, indicating before changing lanes, doing everything right. You have been keeping a constant speed and you are (what you think) a good distance behind.
Everything’s right? Bzt, nothing is right. No warning, the other driver jams on his brakes and you smash into the back of his car. The accident is totally your fault as you were following too close. Why did he brake so sharply?
It turns out that this driver had been driving for 18 hours straight. He was awake, and was driving normally until he got a hallucination. He thought that his car was on a very steep downgrade and that it was going faster and faster. He had looked at his dashboard and the speedometer showed he was doing the speed limit, but his hallucination told him the car was going faster. He put his foot on the brake, and despite the speedometer showing his car was slowing, it still felt to him that it was going faster. So he jammed on the brake and the car behind smashed into him.
How do I know so much about this? I have had that hallucination after driving 18 hours straight. I was lucky, there was no one behind me. I was really lucky, I had another driver with me who had been asleep. He woke up when I stopped and he took over driving while I slept.
Summary: Treat every other driver on the road as if they were about to do something mad, insane, illogical or just plain crazy.
Rule 2: You are not a policeman.
You do not have the authority to pull over other drivers, give them tickets (or warnings). You do not have any authority to do anything to other drivers except avoid them when they go batshit crazy in front of you.
So why do you insist on blowing your horn, shouting abuse and pulling in front of them to “teach them a lesson”? None of that will improve their driving. Nor will it change their attitude.
The only thing that will change their driving, or their attitude would be a real policeman giving them a ticket, and most times even that doesn’t help. They blame the policeman for “revenue raising”. It’s never their fault.
Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against blowing my horn at a crazy driver who is trying to reverse into my car in the parking station. A long blow to say “I’m driving here!” is often necessary. The same if they cut you off in traffic.
But the rage honks I see on youTube videos, or the yelling and punching and baseball bats in road rage is just futile (See Rule 4). Nothing changes bad drivers except someone in real authority saying, “You are disqualified from driving for 12 months.” Sometimes not even that works. They just keep driving. They show no shame when they are caught. The only thing that stops them is jail.
You are not going to stop that sort of driver with a shouting match. You are going to end up with lots of bruises or perhaps broken bones.
Summary: If someone tries to run you off the road and then when you honk at them they show you their IQ (with one finger), you are best pulling to the side of the road and waiting until they disappear over the horizon or they have a fatal crash. As long as you aren’t involved in the fatal crash, that’s a win right there.
Rule 3: Do not try to induce someone else to break the law.
How many times have you been on a main road, the traffic is moving along, you are about to catch a green light and the car in front of you stops and waves someone past a Give Way sign. You miss the green light (and the one after that) as a long line of cars from the side street takes advantage of the stopped car.
I know why they do this. It’s the same reason that people hold doors for other people, or step back at a doorway and say, “You first”. The difference on the road is that A) they are inducing the other cars to break the law and B) they are inconveniencing a much larger number of cars behind them.
Once I was the only car at a Give Way sign and another driver tried to wave me through. I knew that if I went and had an accident that driver would be found blameless while I would be at fault. So I shook my head and pointed at the sign. The other driver waved again. I shook my head No again. The other driver waved again. Repeat, repeat. I put my car in Park, opened my door, got out and stood there waving them on. They had a mini-fit, jammed their foot down and drove off in a complete rage.
Summary: Obey the law. Allow other drivers to obey the law.
Rule 4: Road rage is pointless.
Imagine this scenario – Another driver cuts you off. You retaliate, going around them and cutting them off. They honk at you. You rage honk at them. They scream at you. You show them your finger (a good indication of IQ). What is the best ending to this rage filled encounter? The worst? I hear you say “They need to be taught a lesson” or “I have to stand up for my rights”.
So the two of you scream at each other and then drive off. Or your cars are totalled and one or both of you are seriously injured or dead. Where in that is the lesson? Where is the justice?
Nothing in a road rage situation is good. No part of it ends well. Even if a policeman intervenes and arrests the other driver you have still wasted a large part of your day. Taught an idiot a lesson? There is another one (or three) in the next line of traffic. You could be teaching lessons for the rest of your life and never reach the end of them.
Think of this. It’s not the driver who cut you off who is delaying your trip to work this morning. It’s the ten thousand other drivers all trying to get to work at the same time on a road designed for one thousand drivers. Rage at the road designers. Rage at the politicians who only allocated 1% of their budget to roads and 50% to tax cuts for their rich friends. One (or even ten) drivers cutting you off are only going to delay your trip by a minute or two.
Summary: Don’t rage. It’s futile.
Rule 5: Exceeding speed limits is counter-productive. (AKA there is no race)
Years ago I was a salesman on the road. I had an exceedingly large area to cover and not much time to do it. The roads were mostly deserted. My average speed was 90 MPH everywhere. I had a radar detector and I knew where the police were hiding to catch the speeders. I was never caught. I never had an accident. We are talking approximately 40 years ago now.
Now, the roads are full. If I attempted to do those sort of speeds I would crash into someone within a few hours. I do the same speed as all the other cars on the road and have been accident free for years. When I set off on a trip, I do a little planning before I leave. I look at my appointment at the other end, and then work out my travel time at that time of day. I add 15 minutes to allow for small problems and leave at that time. I do not leave on an hours trip 30 minutes before I’m due to get there. It only takes a few minutes of planning and a small amount of effort to leave on time.
If you race to get there on time you may not get there, ever. If you race to get there you may not gain much in the traffic. If you race to get there you may get speeding tickets.
Summary: You used to be able to speed. Not now. Match the other traffic around you.
Rule 6: Do not rage at the traffic jam.
Years ago I used to drive for half an hour to get to work and an hour to get home. The extra half hour was a stop start traffic jam from half way home. One day I was tired. I was hot. I was bored. I got the stopped car at the end of the jam and I felt like my head was about to explode. “Why?”, I thought. “Why me?”
Then I realised. It didn’t matter what I did. It didn’t matter how I howled. It didn’t matter how I raged. The trip home was going to take the same time whatever I did. If instead of raging I laid back and enjoyed myself, it would seem much quicker. So I put on some music. I lent back in my seat. I relaxed. The trip home was over in a blink, and I felt better. I felt relaxed. I felt happy.
Summary: Do not rage at the traffic jam. You will be happier, live longer – and you will be a nicer person.
Rule 7: You need to get to your destination – alive.
Every time I get in my car, my main objective is to return home without being injured or killed. I think about this every time, and it concentrates my attention. After you have been driving for a few years, it is easy to stop concentrating. You can go into autopilot mode and completely miss a hazard, drive into it. I have driven straight through a red light on autopilot. Now when I approach that light, I look at it carefully and prepare myself for a red light.
Summary: Pay attention. (In the words of the 20th century philosophers Devo) Shape it up. Get Straight. Go forward. Move Ahead.
Rule 8: Tailgating is not a problem.
What? How foolish I hear you say! I just got tailgated today and I was terrified. I thought I was going to die.
You’re not doing it right. At the beginning of this I said that I can only control what I do. I control my car and nothing else. (See Rule 2).
When someone starts creeping up on me, or drives up full speed and brakes heavily a few inches from my rear bumper I just get out of their way. I change lanes, pull to the side of the road or even turn off the road I’m on.
Then there is the (rare) case where I can’t move over. Perhaps there are double lines in the middle of the road or there is traffic in the other lane. So here is the scenario. I’m doing the speed limit in my lane and some lunatic starts tailgating me. He’s too close for the speed we are doing, so what is the solution?
I can only be responsible for my own actions. I cannot change his speed, or the distance that he chooses to drive behind me. I can change my own speed. I DO NOT jam on my brakes and try to make him rear end me. That is crazy. I take my foot off the accelerator and allow the car to slow down. All the way to a stop if necessary. As soon as the other driver backs off, I’m back up to the speed limit. As soon as the other driver passes me (after he passes me) I’m back up to my speed.
At no time do I try to punish him for his ways. As soon as I can move over, I do. If he passes me I don’t speed up while he is passing. Only after he is gone do I go back to my original speed. Only once this got me a slight bit of road rage. The idiot other driver leant out of his window and shouted at me as he accelerated past. I waved (all of my fingers) and smiled and he drove off.
Summary: Drive to survive. Let tailgaters go somewhere else.
Rule 9: Driving needs your full attention.
I watch other cars closely. I pay attention. I watch my gauges – is the engine hot or cold? - are there any warning lights on? - am I too far over the speed limit? - what’s that other car doing? - what’s that truck doing? Is that pedestrian going to step into the road in front of me?
Once I was living in a quiet dead end street. I worked from home, and would sometimes go to a customers place to work. I left home with some parts in my hand and dropped one as I opened the car door. Stopping to pick that up delayed me for 5 seconds. I reversed out and started down the road. The owner of the house one past my neighbour had his truck parked on the footpath (sidewalk). I started accelerating and was in the only position on the road where I could see past the truck and see two very young children running down the drive. I braked heavily and missed them when they popped out in front of me. I would have killed them both if (a) I had not been watching and (b) was 5 seconds further down the road.
I would have hated killing those children. It would have affected the rest of my life.
Summary: Pay attention.
Rule 10: Beware of your visual cortex.
Optical Illusions and in particular Your brain tricks you.
If you watch those two videos carefully you will see that our visual cortex fills in blanks from our experience, expectations and predictions of the future. The older you are the more experience you have and the more chance you will have a strong expectation of what you will see.
Then we have the following:-
Marcus E. Raichle “Two views of brain function” in “Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol.14 No.4”
Quoth Marcus E. Raichle
Putting those two bits of information together, if we drive along a road and we just glance along the crossroad we will only see an exceeding small part of it. Out visual cortex will fill in the missing bits based on our experience and expectations. How many post accident interviews have we heard where the driver said “It just came out of nowhere. I never saw that truck”? Now we know why.
It will be too late when you are standing next to your wrecked car talking to the policeman to say “My visual cortex only passed 100 bits/sec to my conscious brain, that’s why I didn’t see the truck.” That policeman will start the drug tests and recommend a good psychiatrist.
There is also your peripheral vision. As you get older your peripheral vision becomes worse. Even if you are a young person, you can lack in that department. You won’t know about it without a special test as our visual cortex fills in the missing bits.
So, what to do. We can’t really say that an analogue system like our eyes and visual cortex reacts like a computer. If a computer only got 100 bits/sec it would be extremely restricted. Except our eyes show us a rich view full of colour, movement and intricate detail. This is because we have a visual cortex that processes real data and the more real data we give it the more accurate are the guesses it makes.
So instead of looking at the crossroad for .5 of a second, look at it for two or three seconds. Instead of flicking your head to one side then the other, then jamming your foot on the accelerator, look one way for 2 seconds, look the other way for another 2 seconds, then look back in the first direction. Then you are giving your brain more time to see what is there and more time to process the data. You stand a chance of seeing that really big truck and you won’t have to stand on the side of the road telling the police about your visual cortex.
Summary: Really look. Don’t just flick your eyes to the side, put 2 – 5 seconds into each glance.
Rule 11: Defensive Drivers ‘r’ us.
Most defensive driving courses tell you one important thing. Look further ahead.
If you do this one thing, you will automatically become a better driver. If you look three, four or even five cars ahead of the one in front of you, you can anticipate the line of traffic ahead of you stopping. Or the line you are in. Then you can change lanes ages before it becomes a panic swerve into the other lane to save rear ending that idiot in front of you. You know, the one who stopped when all the drivers in front of him stopped.
Here’s a fun fact. The faster you are driving, the further ahead you need to look. There is a reason I hate all those SUVs and 4WDs on the road – they block my view ahead, to the side and behind me. They are a blight on our highways.
Plan ahead. Think like your GPS. Mine says “In 500 metres turn left”, “In 200 metres turn left”, “Turn left. Then at the next intersection turn right.”
When I’m going the way I always go, I know that I’m going turn at an intersection miles before I get there. I can plan to be in the correct lane a long time before I get there. Then all the idiots around me you know, the ones in that lane I need to change to, have plenty of time to let me in when I indicate.
That’s another thing. If you change lanes or turn without using that thing on the side of your steering column, no one around you is going to have the faintest idea what you are going to do next. This can cause them to bang into you a lot. If you don’t want them to bang into you, then indicate.
Summary: Do a real defensive driving course. Include the part on the skid pan with bald tyres where you learn how to drive out of a skid.
Miscellaneous
How to adjust your mirrors.
Clean all the windows in your car. The insides as well. The plasticisers in your interior evaporate in the heat and then deposit on the inside of the windows. They form a sort of foggy haze on the glass making visibility at night really bad.
Give way to all vehicles bigger than yours. Might is right.
Always look at the cross street when you have a green light. There are many people out there who think red lights are optional.
When you are stopped at a corner waiting for traffic facing you to clear so you can turn, always leave your steering straight ahead. So in the one in a million chance you get rear ended, you won’t be pushed into that other traffic.
When you are on an on ramp (getting onto a freeway) don’t stop half way along the ramp. Those ramps are so you can get up to the same speed as everyone else and merge at the end of the ramp. If you are too scared to do that you aren’t a good enough driver to be on a freeway (Motorway).
Orange traffic lights mean “stop”. They don’t mean go faster. They don’t mean stopping is optional. They don’t mean you can still go if you are late. There are two (2) excuses for going through an orange light. 1. It changes to orange when you are about 2 metres from the stop line. It is impossible to stop in time. (Don’t think this means you can go through from about 20 metres if you are breaking the speed limit – that way leads to two tickets). 2. There was someone tailgating you and you were afraid you would cause an accident if you stopped that quickly.
Don’t stop on roundabouts. (Rotaries). All entries to roundabouts have a “Give Way” (Yield”) sign on them. If you stop, someone behind will become acquainted with your rear end. Similarly, don’t pull onto a roundabout if there is someone else already on it. Wait. It won’t kill you to wait. It probably won’t kill to go, but it might cost you a lot of money.
When you turn a corner you are supposed to stay in your lane. So if you are turning left into a dual lane road you should end up in the leftmost lane. If you are turning right, the rightmost lane. The exception is when you have dual turning lanes. Then you follow the lines on the road. I have watched 4 out of 5 cars doing it wrong here.
If you see a learner driver on the road, cut them some slack. Don’t get behind and tailgate and honk because they are going slow. Wait, and then pass them when you can. Let them change lanes in front of you. Don’t honk if they are slow to start at the lights. Remember you had to learn once.
Mobile phones. No. Just no. Don’t have a mobile phone near you when you are driving. Put it in the glove box or on the back seat or in the boot (trunk). Ask your local police how many fatal crashes have a half typed in text on a mobile on the floor boards. (See rule 9). Turn off your mobile if you can’t help yourself. Don’t lie to the police when you are caught. If they saw you they are going to give you a ticket for it.
Modifying your car. There are automotive engineers who go to University and study for years. They study materials, physics, mathematics, ETC. After years of training and some years of experience they are allowed to design a car. They can draw on over 100 years of engineering experience to create a car that is a careful compromise between performance and safety. Their work is then tested before it ever gets to production. Then they sell the car to the public and along comes a teenager who learnt how to change spark plugs at school. He decides to chop the springs, change the shock absorbers and lower the car. This changes the geometry of the suspension and makes the car perform like a dog trying to have sex with a tennis ball. Do you want that car on the road?
The Dunning-Kruger effect. Everyone thinks they are a better driver than everyone else. Of course this is not possible, but some days it seems true. Unless you are a professional driver with specialist training (and I don’t mean a taxi driver here) it is extremely unlikely that you are a good driver. Racing drivers, stunt drivers and advanced police and ambulance drivers are likely much better than you. Otherwise, not so much. Learn your shortcomings and drive appropriately. Don’t drive around picking on everyone else, concentrate on your driving, and concentrate on avoiding accidents no matter what the other insane people on the road are doing.
In my country the driver is responsible for his passengers. You have to make sure they wear their seat belts, not allow them to extend any body part out of the car, not smoke if there is a child in the car and I’m sure there is other stuff I don’t know about. BTW did I say that it’s up to you to learn your countries road rules? You have to obey all the rules in your country and ignorance is not an excuse. Anyway, the simple answer to a passenger misbehaving is that you refuse to drive if they aren’t buckled in. Be polite, but the car doesn’t move until they don the belt.
Bonus Story
Once upon a time I was in town very late. It was about 2:30 AM which really was very early not late. I decided to go the back way home, which meant I went to the edge of the city and used a deserted road to get about half way home. This road was surrounded by empty fields. As I left town I saw the police patrolling a car park. They were on the other side of the car park pointed in the opposite direction.
So I decided to go very fast. The speed limit on this road was 60 KPH (35 MPH) and I was doing 120 KPH (70 MPH). I was approaching a “T” junction where I knew I could not speed as this next street was surrounded by houses. So I was braking heavily so I could make the right angled bend and the whirly red and blue lights came on behind me. I stopped and got out of my car with my driver’s licence in my hand.
There were two policemen, and they really wanted to give me a ticket for something. First was a breathalyser test which came up 0.00. When they saw this result, they looked at each other in a way that made me think they didn’t have anything else.
P = Policeman
P: How fast were you going down this street, Sir?
Me: I don’t know.
P: Come on, you must have some idea.
Me: I was watching the road, not the speedometer.
P: We had to do 140 KPH to catch you, surely you can make an estimate.
Me: Isn’t the speed limit here 60 KPH?
P: (Sarcastic laughter) Are you sure you don’t know how fast you were going?
Me: I was watching the road.
P: Where are you going this late at night?
Me: Home.
P: OK, just slow down.
Me: OK.
I know how I got out of that – they couldn’t get close enough to get a reading on my speed. When I was not drunk, they had nothing they could book me for. They wanted me to incriminate myself, and I would not do that. Notice how I didn’t actually lie to them at any time. As well, I kept my eyes down, my body language submissive and my tone of voice low and respectful. At no time did I challenge them or get aggressive in any way.
) The loaner I'm driving right now is about the same. A friend's van is off by a much higher margin -- if she's doing 50, it'll read around 56.
Comment