Interested in a little game.....(rest in details)

You are the only person I know who drives for a living. So, do you think people drive better or worse than they did 10 years ago?

Are you up to it?
It does mean talking to a real live person, can be anyone anywhere, standing in line at the bank and you know the person in front of you drives for a living, you could be walking through a parking lot and notice the transport driver about to get out or in his truck, you will run into someone who drives for a living before long , you might even need a cab ask that driver?

@Dutchess_III I think you know my answer, what got me thinking is , I ask this question to people I come across all the time,the lady at the coffee shop, the teller at the bank, the clerk at the clothing store, and most times these people say they think peoples driving is the same or even better than that of 10 years ago.
Now I ask this question to drivers that make their living at it, and spend most of their days on the highway ALL of the ones I talk to say it’s worse much worse then say 10 years ago.
That is why I would like to hear from people in all corners and state their opinion ,then ask someone who drives for a living theirs.

Seems that they’re driving faster and with much less regard for others than they used to. However, it also seems people don’t tailgate as much as they used to.

I don’t know anyone who drives for a living :(

This is just a couple of examples, I had a lady with a car full of kids pass me casually on a double solid going into a blind corner , and I was going the speed limit I really hit the brakes this idiot just got in front of me as a full speed transport came around the corner.

Another going the speed limit on a 2 lane road, this SUV came screaming down beside me, with on coming traffic right there, he made 3 cars dive off onto the shoulder of the road,the best part of this story the centre car was a fully marked cop car. :)

I have seen cars come to almost a complete stop in the slow lane on a divided highway and look at an exit, that gets exciting trying not to kill anyone.

I was behind this guy at a stop light,the light turned green,and instead of going he pulled out a map and unfolded it over the steering wheel, never moving (AT A STOP LIGHT).

@anniereborn you don’t have to know the person who drives for a living, in your travels as I pointed out,you will come across one who does ask them. :)

I know a lot of people who drive truck or who used to drive for a living – I work as a cashier in the only store on the only highway in a rural area between two cities. I am so on this. Will get back to you. Question – does their opinion still count if they drove a long time ago and no longer drive, or if they drove or have been currently driving for less than 10 years? A lot of these guys are pretty young.

@wildpotato sure ask any or all of them and see what their answer is, and what is your answer as well?

Do you think peoples’ driving is the same, better, or worse then say 10 years ago? This answer only pertains to the US. In the big scope of driving, I’d say that it has gotten worse. Road rage and cell phone use are the contributing factors. Each has their own sub-categories.

Ask someone, anyone who drives for a living that question, and see how they answer. 15 years ago, I drove all over the US as a hotel inspector, so maybe that qualifies. Now, it is just around town with a couple of 11-hour one-way trips per year. The interstates feel safer driving-wise than within a 10 mile radius.

And oddly, I had a conversation with a taxi driver three months ago regarding this. It started out as a question on how many taxi drivers carry a gun. It evolved into road safety. He said that he has seen a change, at least in our area, where it has worsened over the years.

So @SQUEEKY2, as our resident driving expert, what recommendations do you have to address the problem? Or maybe this should be another question to ask. I have a few recommendations.

@Pied_Pfeffer not just the USA I would like to hear it from everyone, but as your driving was only in the US sure I want to hear your opinion from your corner as well, I think cell phone is one of the main contributing factors in peoples poor driving habits of today.
As for recommendations I would like some kind of device installed in todays vehicles that make cell phones inoperable from the drivers eat, while the vehicle is in motion.

I have a friend that has been a driver for Muni for a long, long time and he says drivers are far worse and way more rude.

I apologize @SQUEEKY2. I meant that my answer only pertained to experience in the US.

@Hypocrisy_Central and what is your opinion of todays drivers compared to ten years ago??

Wait… you’re saying that people who drive for a living get worse at driving, while the others do not? That doesn’t sound like something you would say.

Or are you saying that only people who drive for a living are able to assess their own and others’ driving skills?

If the latter, that sounds like the “damn kids today” / “things just ain’t as good as they used to be” argument we all hear from older people. They are just romanticizing the past.

Well, training has not improved, and a human’s general attitude towards risk and social road behaviour has not changed either.
On the other hand, cars have gotten safer, smarter, have increased quality in terms of driving stability, springs, handling, electronics and all that jazz, so that likely lowers inhibitions, driving is less involved because you do not have to compensate for the car’s own driving quality problems, which lowers the training-while-driving-effect.
So overall I would say that it likely has become worse.
Not in terms of pure skill, but execution in conjunction with the machine.
It must be said however that truck drivers kill a lot more prostitutes than regular drivers.

@dappled_leaves your actually confused??
I mean people that drive for a living are exposed to a lot more than the average driver, think someone who drives say 15,000miles a years sees the same things a driver who puts on 100,000miles a year does?
And those examples I pointed out a few posts up,I see that type of thing all the freaking time^^ do you?
And I am not pointing out young or old drivers, the women who passed with the car load of kids looked fairly young, the guy who unfolded the map looked well into his sixties.

@SQUEEKY2 [...what is your opinion of todays drivers compared to ten years ago?
My personal experience of today’s drivers stacked against drivers of 10 years ago, today’s drivers are slightly worse, but neither then or now were they better drivers.

Very nice answer @ragingloli and I think oh so true.THANKS.

I like the pro-active request, and I know who I’ll be asking, but it will take a few days before I see them.

I moved to Seattle in the early seventies. At the time, the city was (depending on the poll) at the top of the list of most courteous drivers in the country. Now, it’s in the top 5 worst traffic cities in the country. My observations:

Since the seventies, population growth has dramatically exceeded everyone’s predictions. The sheer volume of vehicles creates stress, frustration, and a feeling of helplessness that are expressed as selfishness, rudeness, and rage.

Multiple electronic devices that create distraction; back then, there were only radios.

I think a lot of societal problems in general are caused by over-population.

My observations: people drive both better and worse. Worse because of attitude and gadgetry, better because the level of defensive driving has gone up because of those same factors. That also includes drivers of big rigs.

My friend is a delivery driver for plumbing supplies across the six New England states. He drives a large commercial vehicle, but not a semi.
His observation: he designated a 20 year span for better comparison, says everybody drives worse. He emphasized “everybody”, and says he really misses the days when the semi drivers could be counted on for road courtesy, now they seem to be “no better than teenagers about caring about other vehicles on the road.”
He’s been driving professionally for 35 years, and has covered routes in the western states, some southern states, and New England (for the past 20 years)

Thank you for your answers @canidmajor and @bossob .

I think driving has gotten worse given the teeming mass of humanity bobbling around every-single-second-of-the-day-and-night- More people ups the ante of more bad / inattentive drivers inspite of the newer technology,
Cars are also flimsier than they were 30, 40, 50 something years ago. You could have had a head on collision with a train and not even dented my mothers 1960 Plymouth when I was a kid. haha

Oh and @bossob I personally think most if not all societal problems are cause by over population but that is another discussion for another time.

@Coloma
Yeah, I will have to call BS on that one.

Thanks for the answer @Coloma .

My daughter was on a two lane several years ago. The speed limit is 65. She came upon an entrance to a turnpike. She casually watched the car in front of her turn off to take the toll road. When she looked ahead again there was some idiot stopped in her lane, backing up because he missed his exit. She hit him.
I didn’t know about those lawyers who only do car wrecks and don’t get paid unless they win. That would have been so open and shut.

@Dutchess_III see? and we truckers witness that sort of stuff all the freaking time, and people wonder why we get a little jaded.

@ragingloli Well..that’s okay, call it however you see it, I was being half humorous but it IS also a numbers game. More people = more people that don’t drive well and more people on the road in general. When I was a teen in the 70’s there was virtually nobody on the road after about 10 p.m. The streets/highways/freeways were almost deserted, now days there are people out and about all the time. Numbers do factor in IMO.

* Historical tidbit I read the other night. In 1895 there were only 2 cars in a certain CO. town and they managed to run into each other. haha See, bad drivers will always find each other.

@Coloma
I was referencing the claim of cars being more safe back then.

@ragingloli Oh..well, they didn’t handle as well but they were built like Sherman Tanks. You had better driver survival space. haha

I had a teenage girl come careening off a freeway exit, miss the stoplight and plow into me and 3 other cars about 7 years ago. I saw it coming and there was nothing to do but sit there and say ” Oh shit!”
Nobody was hurt but she ricocheted off the car next to me, creamed my right front end, bounced off a truck in front of me and spun around in the opposite direction. Crazy!

@Coloma
Cars today are deliberately designed to disintegrate on collision, even more in the case of LeMans and F1 cars.
To make the car absorb the impact energy, instead of chanelling it all into you.
Not to mention front, passenger and side airbags.
In a frontal collision you are much more likely to survive in a modern car, than in one of those old clunkers.

@ragingloli Well, I’m not a car expert that’s for sure. True, airbags, good point. But old cars were pretty sturdy in many ways, solid bumpers, longer, bigger engine compartments, but you make some good points.

@Coloma
Have a look at this crash at 225km/h (140mph)
the driver literally walked away from this.

@ragingloli and @Coloma I get where your both coming from on this, and @ragingloli your correct about modern vehicles designed this way, but problem is with lesser crashes the car sustains massive expensive damage, where vehicles of yester year weathered it a lot better.
And in intense collisions probably offer more safety that way by absorbing the impact.

@Coloma wrote, ’...old cars were pretty sturdy…’ Yup, try stretching out on the hood/windshield of one of today’s cars to watch a drive-in movie! ~ I sure miss those big back seats!

I wonder about the crash safety of some of the mini-cars that are showing up on the road these days. Just what we don’t need: half-size cars that would allow doubling the number of drivers on the road in the same space. Stop the world and let me off!

Well, there is the IIHS crash test of a ‘59 Belair vs an ‘09 Malibu to show how old compares to new.

@bossob Here is a Smart Car crash test ; they’re tougher than you’d think. Here is another small car test where they drove cars head-on into concrete barrier at 70MPH.

@ragingloli But race cars have roll cages. My friend is a pro driver, has an Audi, has driven formula cars and races Mazda B-specs too. Infact, he is going to Daytona in Sept. Roll cages in race cars don’t count. haha

@jerv At least for myself there wasn’t an argument about serious crashes, I stated that modern vehicles in lesser crashes sustained more expensive damage where the cars of yester year could weather a lesser crash better.

@SQUEEKY2 Kind of a wash, really. While an older car can take little parking lot taps better, once speeds rise much above a brisk walk, the combination of property damage and injury tend to erase the savings pretty quick.

I tend to drive older cars myself, and while I appreciate my bumper not having that easy to crack yet expensive to replace plastic shell, having had a few dings at various speeds in both modern and old-school cars I have to say that, aside from taillights (for whatever reason) the cost is about the same unless you’re one of those people who replaces everything that isn’t showroom perfect.

Personally, I haven’t been in any situation where I damaged a new car that I feel an older one wouldn’t have suffered permanent damage like a bent frame or irreparable suspension tweakage. I can think of a few where having the body be a structural member rather than mere sheetmetal has helped prevent damage though.

Our chauffeur…
She drives me crazy, ooh, ooh
Like no one else, ooh, ooh
She drives me crazy & I can’t help myself…bownow nownow

Haha

@ucme Is just not capable of ever backing down, not even one eensy weensy little bit, so we shall just have to work with his handicap. Tourettes is an awful condition. heh!

← has Tourette Syndrome

@Coloma I know you meant that jokingly, but just to correct a commonly held misperception: Tourette Syndrome does not generally lead to obsessive behavior such as internet trolling, say. It’s more physical and individual and personal, not really about changing the external world so much as…putting oneself in order. Sort of. It doesn’t even have that much of a psychological component, really – I’m stretching there. Ticcing is kind of like scratching an itch – neurological in nature. I would ascribe @ucme‘s need for attention to psychology rather than neurology – specifically, narcissism.

@wildpotato My apologies, not knowing of course. I meant that remark probably as a stereotype of the condition, like the person that randomly blurts out inappropriate verbage.
Agree on the rest of your sharing.

@Coloma No worries!

He is beginning to piss me off, if we just don’t fall all over his distorted sense of humour we are just bitter mean people, but I haven’t seen one answer on any question from him that was the least bit helpful, and yet members still give him great answer votes,that I do not get.

@SQUEEKY2 [… but I haven’t seen one answer on any question from him that was the least bit helpful, and yet members still give him great answer votes,that I do not get.
You don’t? ~~ That is one of the things I noticed first and can count on like taxes and death; even if the comment or answer was asinine to the umpteenth degree, if it said what a reader wanted to say to malign the person to whom the quip was directed the ”high five, support lurve” falls like rain.

He is the best.

The best of what?

@SQUEEKY2 I disagree, he does have helpful stuff to say on occasion. Probably more than I realize, actually, since my eyes tend to slide past to the next response when I see his little guy-up-the-other-guy’s-ass icon (or is it a guy taking a big step? Hard to tell). But at any rate, he’s not a complete blowhard, as far as I’ve seen. And I seem to recall that he used to participate in a more meaningful way back in the old heyday of Fluther.

Come on people have none of you had the chance to ask anyone who drives for a living this question yet?

Yes. I did. Waaaay up there. ^^^

I know you did I was addressing the other posters, @canidmajor .

Ah, I see. The phrase ”...none of you…” was misleading.