bad driver signifiers

1) left arm dangling casually out of the car window, hanging straight down

2) drives in the dark without lights on for more than 5 seconds before realizing

3) always slams on the brake just before changing lanes on a highway

4) keeps hitting same fire hydrant

5) when you change into another lane, speeds up so it can seem as though you cut him or her off and then they can honk at you (the other day i had someone honk at me for merging ahead of them when they were 6-7 car lengths behind me)

6) quebec plates

7. periodic veering into another lane on a straight road

8. slowing down for a stop sign or light when one is only half-way there. (A dude did this several times in a row yesterday. It turned out he had a burger and fries on his lap and was eating.)

9. making a left-turn from a non-left turn lane without even signalling

When I change lanes I don't slam on the brakes, but I do slow down a little to give myself some space for looking over my shoulder before I go.

10) ten commandments decal on the back window

11. dudes who look over their shoulder when changing lanes!!!!!

;)

12. the driver is a cat

13. "keep honking i'm reloading"

14. minivan or suv with tv's on in back

xx-post http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_zZHT_alTccg/SK8X_SoO26I/AAAAAAAAA28/5czr_CHprJg/s400/toonces.jpg

Mass plates.

tv in back MAKES ME SO MAD.

15. "unless you're a hemorrhoid GET OFF OF MY ASS!"

10. Tries to pass on right by speeding along side the left lane looking for an opening, only to reach the vehicle ahead of them in the right lane & get pissed off that their plan was foiled & subsequently takes it out on steady left lane flow by threatening to poke into a too small opening until they end up eventually just merging left behind everybody else, much further back than they would have been if they'd kept their original position to begin with.

11. semi-driver does not see you in blind spot & starts to merge into your lane, nearly wiping you off the face of the earth.

xp ENBB - otm

ian: I wait for the day when some right wing nut sees porn playing on those things and they get banned.

18. neon blue shag steering wheel cover.

19. steering with knees while smoking drug pipe

the tv in the back is depressing because it makes me realize that a large portion of an entire generation will spend long road trips with their families watching pixar movies instead of talking, reading, or playing games.

20. Ppl who say "I drive better stoned". No, you really don't.

ehhh

21. In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned.

i'm guessing that it would be technically feasible to build a microtransmitter that would broadcast p0rn or whatever to car tvs.

22. Detroit lean

23. Bumper stickers
24. Too cool for turn signal

xp jordan explain that ehh pls

25. http://www.modchipman.com/images/imagecache/132-150-1736.jpg

26. car is a taxi

i would argue that it's possible to actually drive "better" while stoned, where better means more cautiously, more aware of surroundings etc - also that believing this doesn't make you a bad regular driver

more slowly, more interested in surroundings

I once pulled up behind a pickup truck with a TV in the front of the cab playing a porn movie. Then when the pickup truck turned I could see it was an older couple, maybe in their sixties. This was a few years ago.

27. pretty much any variety of pissing Calvin

more slowly, more interested in surroundings

― steamed hams (harbl), Saturday, September 26, 2009 8:33 PM (15 seconds ago) Bookmark

lol

28. terrorist hunting permit 9-11-01

Aren't the pissing Calvins dying off?

There are a lot of correlations being made between bumper stickers and driver quality in this thread!

29. driving exactly the speed limit

Yeah, instead of below the speed limit.

what's wrong with driving exactly the speed limit?

On some streets it's just posted too high! Like, there will be too many pedestrians and bikers, and too many blind spots, and people will go faster than the speed limit just because they're used to that being reasonably safe.

Aren't the pissing Calvins dying off?

Having recently traveled in northern MI, I can confirm that they are not as ubiquitous as they once were, but are still thriving. Calvin pissing on Obama-related imagery seems to have given the trend an upswing.

many xposts re: more slowly, more interested in surroundings. how about maddeningly slow? I drove behind a car not long ago in my neighborhood that was driving ridiculously slow, braking on a straight stretch of road for no reason...figured it was a cellphone talker or little old granny, and resigned to being stuck behind them til we got to the four lane cross. Pulled to a red light behind the car and I noticed that I could smell what I thought was a skunk. Weird. We don't get skunks in the city. Then...plumes of smoke out the window of the car. Dude was smoking a spliff while he was driving!! LOL.

Yeah, I've driven behind a couple of people who drove slow for unexplainable reasons.

xp - where I live speed limits are regularly posted based on there being a lot of pedestrians, cyclists, etc. such that if you're driving down those streets late at night, the speed limits are retardedly slow.

Xp j ok I think i'm gonna let it go, I exhausted my capacity for dealing w/ those attitudes in the drunk drving vs. texting thread

yeah he was too interested in his surroundings! don't smoke and drive

xps

30) why go about changing lanes in a normal manner when you can coolly, charismatically swerve over really quickly with an abrupt jerk?

rage-prone

there are no worse drivers imo than the ones who act out their unfounded anger behind the wheel. speeding up to whiz around someone they think is too slow, speeding along in the lane where people are supposed to merge onto the highway with no regard for the people trying to merge, overall general IMPATIENCE. it's a scourge and also a likely indicator of a bad personality imo.

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Wednesday, September 24, 2025 1:22 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

100%

I would say that this is endemic in the Baltimore/Washington area, but let’s be real - it’s everywhere

when i was back in NE Ohio I noticed a strong uptick in the expressed rage of other people on the road. it was scary! i had heard it was extra bad and was like whatever, but then i saw it with my own eyes and people are NOT WELL in NEOH.

Oakland has an epidemic of (mostly) dudes passing a line of cars on the right (in the bike lane), and then just blowing through the red light... and they know they'll get away with it as there is no traffic enforcement to speak of

everyone thinks their city is the worst for bad drivers, i don't know that L.A. is but the drivers that are bad here are legitimately psychotic. having lived several years in a part of the city with wider, speeding-prone surface streets and freeways with a bit less bumper to bumper traffic, i can say that area is much worse than our current area closer to downtown. sometimes there would be ragers behind the wheel freaking out over something that happened a few miles previous, sometimes just your garden variety narcissistic assholes w/main character syndrome who feel entitled to get everywhere faster than everyone else, sometimes kids with drivers licenses where the ink is barely dry driving mclarens.

dithering/incapable/very slow are pretty bad imo, very dangerous traits but somehow handwaved away often in discussions of people who probably just shouldn't be driving

dithering/incapable/very slow

this is probably me, tbh. But I generally right a scooter or motorcycle and always feel dangerous in a car, like I'm going to smash into something I can't see

ride, not right^^^

Like dmac’s coded terms for the elderly

The world's smallest increment of time is the time between when the traffic light turns from red to amber, and the driver beyond you honks their horn to tell you to get a move on

One of my favorite memories, from a year ago, is driving with my dad to have breakfast. We were having a conversation about those honkers, and their impatience, and how we don’t understand the compulsion to lean on the horn when the driver in front of you hasn’t had the chance to register the change from red to green…

…and then dad, who is driving, DOES THIS EXACT THING

Boston drivers are so bad that they expect you to also be a dick behind the wheel. Normally, when you are making a left-hand turn at the traffic light, you wait for oncoming traffic to clear first. The total dick move is to blast out of the gate when the light turns green ahead of those oncoming vehicles. In Boston, the oncoming car expects you to do that, and when you don't, they honk their horn and yell at you.

rage-prone

there are no worse drivers imo than the ones who act out their unfounded anger behind the wheel. speeding up to whiz around someone they think is too slow, speeding along in the lane where people are supposed to merge onto the highway with no regard for the people trying to merge, overall general IMPATIENCE. it's a scourge and also a likely indicator of a bad personality imo.

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Wednesday, September 24, 2025 1:22 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

100%

I would say that this is endemic in the Baltimore/Washington area, but let’s be real - it’s everywhere

I will say that never have I seen people driving around you into the opposing lane to blow through a red light in the Baltimore/Washington area like I did in just a couple days in Minneapolis.

^^^ this happens all the time in Philly.

Thread currently drifting into this territory:

https://mediaproxy.tvtropes.org/width/1200/https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/statler_waldorf_1.jpg

Xp - this is extremely common in SF & Oakland

using different feet for braking/accelerating

― henry s, Wednesday, September 24, 2025 6:41 AM (seven hours ago

Ok … actualmente… I don’t understand why people wouldn’t do this if they are driving an automatic. If you only have 2 pedals, … like wtf are you doing with your other foot?

Letting it sit until you get a bad knee. I ended up that way.

Saw a left foot out driver's side window just recently! Can't imagine why that would be a good idea or even comfortable.

― kkvgz, Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Especially since my job is basically driving intellectually disabled people around.

Dithering/incapable/slow is not just the domain of the elderly - unpredictability (fast or slow) is bad across the board. The closest routine calls for me are left turns with two lanes. Inevitably the person turning to the interior lane forgets/doesn't care that there's a second lane and by god they were planning to immediately turn right into that McDonald's regardless of anything else.

now that I'm back to commuting 25 miles each direction on the highway I'm encountering a lot of people who seem scared to do highway speeds again - the speed limit is 75, if you're scared to do 65 you really need to be in the far right lane (or using surface roads). (plus the usual left lane campers varying between 70-75, creating a chain reaction of people braking and changing lanes unnecessarily)

ultimate bad driver signifier - never missing a turn. Willingness to turn right from a left lane, left from a right lane or simply stopping in the middle of the street and waiting to turn. I guess it doesn't occur to people that just going another block and turning around is possible?

using one foot to drive, even in an automatic, is good practice because it builds in never pressing both pedals at once

this is fairly basic stuff, no?

like id hope the protests are faux naif tbh

Wow definitely not an issue up my way

Xp to Milo

75! …. I remember when ours went (back) up to 65! Is this 75 business an example of Texas social darwinism?

Darragh otm re driving with one foot

Xp dmac - not faux naive … it sounds like a limb independence problem… for the people who can’t be trusted to coordinate their feet idk

Nb … I haven’t driven an automatic since the last century except for the occasional cargo van rental

You’re all really good, cool drivers.

We’ve got stretches of 80 and 85 speed limits out in the middle of nowhere

The highest posted speed limit near me is 65 but I get up to 75 on the highway fairly often. When you consider that I've only been driving for about a year, after 30+ years away from it, that's probably not ideal.

When I started driving the speed limit was 55 except in the middle of nowhere highways

I can’t drive
FIFTY FAAAAAAAAAAHV

there is a lot of 70-80 mph on utah interstates. i think in idaho, nevada and wyoming too. colorado is a little lower iirc.

70 on most of the highways here, once you leave the more congested urban and suburban areas

I've encountered two drivers in the past week on a two-lane one-way street turning left from the right lane, as they would on an ordinary two-way street (in North America.)

Give 'em credit, I saw what they were about to do when they turned on their left blinker just as I was siding up with them on their left at the light. And give 'em credit, they waited until I proceeded through the intersection, rather than turning in front of me.

But goddamm. This is what you get when the biggest city in your state is about the size of a Houston or Chicago suburb. Guess they can go back to Deeson County and brag to their friends how they got to drive on one of those one-way streets in Capital City.

When I started driving the speed limit was 55

a lot of that was due to the 70's Oil Crisis - and internal combustion engines are generally more efficient around that limit, because wind/road resistance and shit like that

Or at least they were in 1976

Based on the MPG readout on my car, peak efficiency seems to be right at 80mph. (Mazda CX-5 turbo, 6 speed auto)

We have a lot of five way intersections in Seattle, which is terrible and an invitation to bad driving because people lose track of where they are in the lineup when there are pedestrians and bikes plus four lines of cars to monitor. But sometimes you get drivers who aggressively jump the line and then honk at / flip off the person whose turn it actually is, like they've convinced themselves the other person is somehow at fault.

But goddamm. This is what you get when the biggest city in your state is about the size of a Houston or Chicago suburb. Guess they can go back to Deeson County and brag to their friends how they got to drive on one of those one-way streets in Capital City.

at least three things about this paragraph confused me

Does nobody in Ireland know that you are supposed to indicate left when you are coming off a roundabout? I feel like this is a thing people used to know when I started driving, and now everyone has forgotten it.

i can do better than that

ive seen em start to indicate _right_ to demonstrate their readiness to exit

i think roundabouts differing hugely in their intended lane usage and being so poorly marked means you just start to behave like a pedestrian on them, what are we doing here shall i go are you going ill go oh oops thanks

There are some motorway exit roundabouts out my way where the traffic moves fast, and the odd time when people indicate correctly, and they really DO mean that they're continuing on the roundabout, they're really not coming off it at the exit where nearly every car comes off it, I've seen it almost end in disaster because the person coming onto the roundabout just assumes that the person indicating right doesn't mean it and barges on in front of them anyway.

ive seen em start to indicate _right_ to demonstrate their readiness to exit

I saw this just this morning for the first time. Crazy behaviour.

specifically at the kildare village trio of hell, yes, there are problematic behaviours on show

ime a lot of drivers just don’t use their indicators at all - roundabout or not. hand’s on their mobile phone presumably

Caltrans (Joan Didion wrote a whole essay about this agency) recently introduced roundabouts here … people are getting used to them better than I had thought

Considering many California drivers freak out about driving… in rain. Like I can understand our speed limits being lower tbh lol