What is it that flags us that a person hasn't seen you and is about to run the stop sign, or that the person in front of you is getting ready to change lanes before they use their blinker?

Years and years of driving experience,and by no means am I bragging.
Remember I have said this a few times I expect everyone in front of me to do something stupid and they have never let me down yet.
I can tell when someone pulls up to an intersection if they are going to stop or not.
Hey you think they are stupid around your SUV try a transport truck it just seems to make the average driver extra stupid,they have to get in front of us even if it means risking everyones lives to do it.

Another one that comes to mind is in college my boyfriend and I were going somewhere. The lane narrowed from 4 lanes to 2 lanes and somehow I just knew that he didn’t realize it. I just knew it, and I was right. I pointed it out to him, and he got surprised and said, “It did? How do you know.”
I just said, “The dividing lines went from white to yellow.” for one out of a million other clues, like the sign a ways back!
That was the first he’d heard that the line color actually had a meaning.

I don’t think she would have seen me no matter what I was driving.

What gets me @Dutchess_III is people actually defend their distractions, really you can’t put them aside for just a short while and focus on driving peoples lives can depend ,NO do depend on it.

You know when people read this they will roll their eyes and think yeah,yeah @SQUEEKY2 you are the best and we are not, I don’t think that at all I would just like people to think about driving above all else while behind the wheel.
Is that to much to ask??

Defensive Driving (and defensive living!) as well as proper following distance. ALWAYS assume the worst when driving (Watch out for the other guy!). Always be prepared for anything.

And I am @kritiper. It’s not quite the same thing, though, as knowing that the other person doesn’t realize something, or is going to do something stupid. You just know it.

I sympathize with you @SQUEEKY2. When people tell their car wreck stories they almost always start with “I looked up and….” What the hell were you looking down for in the first place??

Of course, it helps if you notice the other driver is slowing slightly and is looking around a lot. And if the other driver is a woman or has his wife in the car and she’s yakking his ear off…

Just kidding! Women can be very good drivers!

I call it defensive driving!!! I can tell by looking at the back of their head what they are thinking about doing. That deer in the headlight look is also a dayum good sign that they’re getting ready to be stupid!!!

She is busy texting with her phone in her lap, while she rolls through the RED light (4 seconds after my light turns green) while taking a right on “whatever” ! I dodge her by going behind her, she has cut across three lanes of traffic, she almost “T-bones” the guy behind me. Oh well; I honk my my horn and interrupt her, she she flips me the bird and return texting !

Defensive Driving!

How is it that we “know”? When most people are going to turn or change lanes, I think they often start to slow down and/or slightly drift towards to the side of the lane in the direction they’re going to go before they hit the blinker, if they hit a blinker—not enough to cross the lane line or be dangerous, but enough to project their intentions. When someone’s about to run a stop sign or stop light? I think it’s probably that the person isn’t decelerating the way they would if they aware of the intersection or their lack of a right-of-way.

A slight slow-down, a slight drift, and a lack of deceleration.These are kind of boring explanations, but I think it’s probably something like that for most of these kinds of things—simply the fact that there’s a lot of unintentional “body” language in driving, and the more you drive, the more familiar you become with it.

Exactly @Soubresaut I have been driving transports for over 28years now,and have seen ALOT! and you just sorta know when someone is about to do something stupid, but some do get unnoticed and shock you back to reality .

If you knew she didn’t see you you should have honked if it was dangerous for you to stop, or slowed or stopped if that was a choice. Our horn is there to avoid accidents and wake up a driver who is doing the wrong thing.

I’m assuming you saw that she didn’t look left and right or she was inching forward. With changing lanes either you notice the car moving a little to the edge of the lanes or you see the car getting close to the car in front of it, or if a car had been dodging in and out of traffic to go faster, you can easily predict the next whole in traffic they will take. You can predict it whether the car is behind you or in front of you.

People who consistently drive slowly tend to be very bad at predicting this. They don’t do it themselves, instead they allow traffic to constantly overtake them, and they don’t need to be as alert to traffic. People who drive fast are extremely aware of where all the traffic is around them, because they just passed the traffic, or they are checking mirrors for the next lane change. Not that I’m promoting driving fast, and of course I’m making a lot of generalizations.

Another thing that gets me is the lack of care people have for maintaining the lights on their vehicles, I see some pretty high end cars and trucks with lights not working,such as headlights,brake lights, turn signals, and people just don’t care.
Get in the habit of checking them to make sure they are working, and above all else USE them.

I don’t think an accident at a half a mph would have been particularly “dangerous” @JLeslie.

My ex could never read other drivers the way I could. He was always surprised when they changed lanes a few seconds after I said, “This guy is getting ready to move into the right lane.”
“How did you know??!”
“I’m a witch.”
“Well, I know THAT! I meant how did you know he was going to change lanes??”

Lol. Yeah, I’m a witch too. I get it, really I do. :) I’m good at predicting a lot of things and I don’t think I’m psychic, just aware.

Developed driving instinct.

^Simple nice way to put it.^^

Why do some people not seem to develop it?

^ Years of learned bad driving behavior and others are just inexperience. Some people are too comfortable with their own driving skills and ignore the fact that other people are not as skilled and can easily cause them to be in an accident.

A good example. My daughter was on her way to visit her grandma during thanksgiving. So it was bumper to bumper. She saw the cars in front were starting to brake and she quickly steered her car to the side of the road. Just then an idiot in the lane next to her thought this would be the time to cut into her lane since she was moving out and slammed the car that she would’ve hit and hit the side of her car. Nothing she could’ve don’t to prevent the idiot to the side of her. This person obviously wasn’t paying attention to all the cars suddenly braking in that lane. The car also got hit by the car behind him as well as that driver wasn’t expecting that car to jump in like that. Luckily my daughter didn’t get hurt but she would’ve been smashed in by the car behind her. But she was pretty shaken up. She thought she was in the clear. Has that car not jumped in, all the cars would’ve been injured free.

And this may be an example of also impatient drivers. Some fools just feel the road is all theirs and it’s everyone else’s job to avoid hitting them.

I agree. I had one friend who was a HORRIBLE driver. She scared the everloving pjesus out of me. But, she was so confident that she was a good driver because, as she often said, she had never been in a wreck.
She finally got in a wreck, one that was easily avoided, too! But she just wasn’t ready for what the other driver did.

And I think some people just…. don’t learn.

Once I was riding with my ex, before he was my ex. We were at a stop light ,in the right hand lane. Just beyond the stop light the road took a wide, sweeping curve to the right. Sure as hell, as we proceeded through on the green, the truck to the left carried the wide sweeping turn a bit far and started to move into our lane…into us.
My ex got on the horn, cussing.
I said, “Well, it’s not like you could’t see it coming!”
He said, “You saw it coming?”
I said, “Yeah! Because of the curve!”
He said, “How did you know?”
I said, “Experience.”
That pissed him off because he was several years older than me, ergo had more experience than I did and HE wasn’t ready for it!

I would say that 95% of the average drivers think they are the best there is and really don’t need to learn any more on the subject,and that scares the shit out of me.
We all make mistakes from time to time just the good drivers learn from them and don’t repeat them the way most drivers do.

Yes ^^^. I once posted a question on another forum that asked, “Have you ever been told you’re a good driver?” Not one person said yes, others have told them they’re a good driver, but they all asserted that they were, indeed, good drivers.

Sometimes believing you are a good driver can give you a false sense of security and you relax your guard. You delay hitting your brakes or keeping a safe distance, or you don’t look left when making a right because there is never a car that races past the red light.
I only know one really careful driver. My brother. He can parallel park any car in the tightest spots and he doesn’t need cruise control to keep his car exactly at the speed limit. He can drive a sharp curve and take it exactly at the right speed where you don’t swing over and he is great at avoiding dangerous drivers and even in bumper to bumper I have never been in the car where he had to slam on the brakes. Only one time was he ever rear ended. Only don’t give him a standard to drive. He sucks at that. LOL

I’ve been told I’m a good driver more than once. The thing is, at any moment I can do something not so good on the road. It only takes a second to be distracted and something terrible can happen.

I have one friend who says she closes her eyes when she is a passenger with most people, including her husband, because she is so anxious in the car with them. She says with me she doesn’t feel that way. I’m pretty sure it has to do with me simply keeping a reasonable distance from the car in front of me, and when I start to slow when she sees cars breaking. I am not exaggerated when I do these things, it’s not like I have people cutting in front of me constantly. Sometimes when I’m a passenger the driver doesn’t start slowing fast enough, and I don’t know if he sees what’s going on in front of him (almost always a him, but my grandma was the sane way) and then I become a back seat driver. When my husband drives I feel like this sometimes.

Of all things, when my anxious friend’s sister was visiting recently they got into an accident. Her sister was driving, and it was either a stop sign or red light, I don’t remember. It was her sister’s fault, she crashed with another car.

I think some of it has to do with me predicting the other cars that people like my friend feel ok in my car, I don’t think she’s ever completely at ease. I also don’t mind when people back seat drive in my car. If they think I’m about to screw up, I’m glad they pointed it out. I don’t want to crash, why would I mind?

As I get older I definitely feel my driving is not as good as it used to be. Mostly, I attribute it to having more stress and more on my mind. It is distracting to be thinking about other things on the road. I can only imagine for new moms, or people with very significant like stressors, no way they are fully focused while driving all the time I think. We all need to look out for each other on the road.

The one thing that I don’t do when I notice somebody getting ready to be stupid is to get stupid with them & try to show them that I was there first!!! When I see that somebody is getting ready to change lanes into my lane, I slow down & let them go for it. My life is MORE important than being right!!! Yes, my vehicle can be replaced by the insurance company; but, once dead, I can’t come back!!! Part of my idea of defensive driving is to defend ME first. I’m at the age where just about all I have left is TIME & they are obviously in a bigger hurry than I am; so, I protect the time I have left & STOP worrying about whether they pull in front or behind me!!!

@Pandora That’s absolutely right. People who think they’re good drivers get complacent. That’s what happened to my girlfriend.

@LadyMarissa as a rule, I always leave plenty of room in front of me for people to change lanes easily. I do that in town and on the highway. I, personally, think that is one of the most important things a person can do on the road.