Defensive Driving and following "the rules"...

[Mental_Mouse]

Let alone the areas where the roads are shared by everything from trucks through motorbikes to animal-drawn wagons.

[MadonnaC]

In Britain, the 2 seconds was advertized as "only a fool breaks the two second rule", as it takes 2 seconds to say this

[It's me]

I just follow the rule of thumb of driving like everyone else is an idiot and anticipate someone's going to do something incredibly stupid.

Yup. A related rule: if you see a car with its turn signal on the only thing you can be sure of is that the bulb is working.

[LadyofArc]

Sounds like my first driving instructor. Some of the rules he gave me:

My instructor gave me very similar advice and this was repeated when I did a defensive driving course myself. The swerve and avoid (to use the Canada's Worst Driver name for it) has actually saved my life on one occasion when a truck decided to pull out in front of me with zero warning.

Look up the show "Don't Drive Here!" hosted by the same person that hosts Canada's Worst Driver.

I remember on the second (read: really good) season of The Amazing Race Australia that one of the roadblocks involved someone having to pass an Indian driving test. For reasons that were never made quite clear, the guy with one hand (he was born that way if memory serves me right, the show didn't go into huge detail about it like the US show does) wound up doing said challenge, got into a minor car accident and still passed.