A Heirarchy of Driver Types

To clarify-- there are categories of drivers, from worst to best. I wish to occupy, or at least bring much more public attention, to the highest level.


1. The lowest-- people who repeatedly cause accidents and kill others with cars, through either toxication, mental illness, or conscious disregard for theirs and others' lives. In those little typed words, "kill others," are the most tragic family tragedies, the ones that we fear are around the corner for each of us. Notice here that our American society somewhat enables this, with only a slow change available. Thank you to anyone effecting this change.


2. The low-- people who are involved in multiple accidents, who drive beyond their abilities, who create dangerous situations for others. These drivers may've been involved in accidents that have hospitalized us. Their psychology is varied; many of their thoughts are what would be considered normal, in our society. The idea of an "accident" is being rethought, and those who are wise realize there is intention here.


3. The normal-- we who make many mistakes while driving. Yes, this is normalized, scofflaw behavior-- although it can and should be transcended. Those in this group may never have had an accident, and thus consider themselves good drivers, while they tailgate, do not signal, speed for a yellow light, and of course go 75 miles per hour on Long Island, New York. They have "never had an accident," their default. They keep their families safe, although they may scare them. Professional race-car drivers may be in this group.


4. Good drivers


To these, the laws they learned mean something. They signal, yield, give space to, and generally operate a vehicle not only to not have accidents, but to blend in and not cause stress to other drivers. They know they are good, and instinctively use many of the suggestions for great driving-- active looking, keeping space, anticipating.


At the same time and because of laws that many think are too constraining for a "good driver," this group speeds and uses cellphones-- scofflaw behavior.


5. Superior drivers

They' re conditioned to drive longer distances, make others around them better by creating safe situations, train others thereby helping to change our culture, perhaps are media spokespersons too. They know things beyond what are taught in classes. Many of them are not from the United States-- we should realize that Europeans, for example, are better trained and have this as a normal level.

This level of driving also involves better senses, especially vision. As we Americans become more healthy, we point to using this athleticism in driving. I have written of how to get to future safe speed limits, perhaps 150 miles per hour in the year 2070 on Interstates, with of course technologic advances, but also with more driver ability.

Now me? You be the judge. Come drive with me.

knowing it was green

I knew the light was green without looking-- the driver ahead of me reacted normally, began to move the car forward.

A lot went through my mind-- should I look? I saw the percentages flash-- 99.9999 percent sure that light was really green, that the person ahead of me was normal, that I was just in an everyday, stand-in-a-line place.

I realized that this could be applied to many driving situations, and wondered how many others use this method of inference rather than observation to sense their driver surroundings.

And, from the depths of mind, I remembered that there was a point in my driving education, in my twenties, when I realized I could be somewhat safe with a "tunnel vision" approach, using peripheral to approximate what was happening around me, and inference to save energy from looking. But I decided not to.

You need, as many say, to keep looking around. The payoff is huge.

Peripheral

I've been getting away from the nuts and bolts of what to do behind the wheel. Other posts are still of significant topics-- our driving culture needs to have a sea change anyway-- but my belief is, it will always be the controlling driver that is Safety One.

I was driving Mercedita (my wife's nickname for the car) the other day. The Beast (my nickname) is a 1982 Mercedes 240D, a wonderfully designed machine. It is said to be slow. Actually, to coexist in modern traffic it demands a style of driving that is quite exciting.

Anyway, I was in the slow lane of 3-lane Sunrise Highway, returning home from work, taking it easy. A car appeared to the right; she had a short merge lane. She was not looking at me, but at her path ahead. I waved her to go, thinking I would slow down. In my other car I might have just nosed in front, showing her to go in back. But The Beast is slower.

My wave was a standard, friendly signal between drivers around here. We have a number of them. I did so without thinking about it much-- but what did go through my mind, briefly, is that I shouldn't wave because she wasn't looking.

However, she seemed to have seen it from the left edge of her vision-- she behaved as if she did, accelerating forward. And it taught me another important lesson-- good habits pay dividends.

Le Mans, McQueen

Ever see the movie "Le Mans" with Steve McQueen? As a driver, you should. It is humbling and exciting. This is balls-to-the-wall, LeMans.

24 hours, road track speeds that were up to 250 mph, all-weather and obviously through the night. The Porsche 917 was one of the beasts that changed the track at the famous Mulsanne Straight, and it is what McQueen drives in the movie.

His second crash is dramatic. The sky-blue car, in the rain,  is rounding a sharp curve, accelerating onto a long straight. McQueen glances right at a Ferrari that has just crashed and is on fire. This glance is shown as his face is close-up. When he looks back at the road, he is overtaking a much slower Porsche 911.

He brakes, swerves, loses traction, spins, hits the rail, goes airborne, slides what must be more than a football field, hits the rail again, breaks the car apart, and it slides to a stop. In his full helmet, all we see is McQueen's eye language quietly saying "Damn"! 

The point is made that he took his eyes off the road. The Virginia Institute of Transportation Safety studies and writes of this idea as Eye Glance Analysis. It is crucial to keep one's eyes, in tenths of a second, where they are most needed.

following an ambulance...

It's a mystery to me how many popular websites concerning driver safety are basically negative. For example, one can easily find sites devoted to someone taking pictures from their car of mistakes made by other drivers. Or, even at the bestseller level, a site may have entries related to awful acts of driving, or horrendous decisions made by individuals or government-- and to actually advertise for readers to send in these types of news.

I'm sure the sites have a basic mantra-- here is the mistake; don't do this. It couldn't possibly be-- here is the mistake; let's all be like this. But just as indoctrination works, the sites are unwittingly contributing to the numbing-down, dumbing-down of bad driving and horrible, life-threatening decision-making on our roads.

They are following an ambulance-- the great ambulance of our driving culture. And there have to be voices to suggest that this level is wrong, lacking-- that what we need to write and read are solutions, mainly at the driver-car interface.

Surfin' The Road

I got out of the water today after four hours-- big shore break, lots of sidewash. Caught maybe fifteen rides in close. Each was different-- the East Coast waves, some say, are more unpredictable.

Two hours later, my body still feels the motion. This time included the drive home in Correcaminos. As soon as I was leaving the beach parking lot, it showed to me-- the slow curve out felt like a wave, the merge too, then the U-turn near the Fire island Lighthouse.

It required more concentration but was also somehow more relaxing.

Virginia Tech Transportation Institute

Please see

http://www.vtti.vt.edu/whats-new.html#driving-tips

for information on real-world experiments in safety of cellphone use.