Clovers (bad drivers) are like Baskin Robbins ice cream. They come in lots of different flavors. One of my least favorite is the Slows Down/Speeds Up (for no apparent good reason) Clover. It’s weirdly fascinating, in the way a train wreck is fascinating. What’s so difficult about maintaining a steady speed – especially in a straight line?
Apparently, there is something immensely difficult about it. Just as there is apparently something immensely difficult about keeping a vehicle within its lane.
These are basic competences that were once expected of drivers. Very little is expected of them in our time. Almost literally, an ape could get a driver’s license, if you could get him to hold still long enough for the facial recognition photo. That raises a question about why they even bother with these licenses. The answer, of course, is that they’re just IDs now. People – young people especially – refer to them as just that.
Driving – competently – is becoming something like competently writing a paragraph in that both are dying arts. Who needs to be competent when there is “assistance” for everything?
It makes one think of mildly retarded chinchillas staring back at you, with vacant glassy eyes.
. . .
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My dad was a smooth steady driver. The erratic speed morons drove him nuts, this was in the ‘70s so nothing new to us here in WA. I swear this place is ground zero for airhead drivers.
4 decades ago I had a boss that would stab the accelerator then back off.
Stab
Lift
Stab
Lift
Stab
Lift
On and on.
It made you seasick but, that’s the way he drove.
My grandfather did this. I threw up dinner in the back of the Bonneville, setting off my grandmother to complain about his driving for the whole trip back to Cape Coral from Tampa.
A two-lane mountain highway leading to the nearby market town is posted with a 55-mph speed limit. Its curves are engineered to be negotiated at this speed.
But a certain species of driver brakes before every curve, unnecessarily slowing to 40 or 45 mph before each one.
Early in my driving career, I learned through experience that unless yellow diamond caution signs advise lower speeds on tightly-radiused curves, one can safely negotiate curves at the posted speed limit. If it were not so, state highway departments would be liable.
How is it possible that some drive for decades, yet never realize that they do not need to brake before every curve?
In the 1970s right turn on red was legalized everywhere. Some drivers refused to do so for years, and some geriatrics still won’t.
My mom taught me this when I started driving – also city traffic lights (analog controls!) timed for the 30 MPH posted speed. She learned to drive in 1930, me in 1971. What also helped was smart people designed the downhill curves with banked roadbeds so very little lateral G when cruising around the curves. I’ve seen this in some of Eric’s videos. Road into our small town, 45 MPH. “Sparkey don’t need to brake, just drive!” Sure enough, start down at 45 and no brakes, exit at the bottom about 50.
Fast forward to modern times now moron drivers and DEI highway departments. Hwy 97 north over Blewett Pass, just past the top the first curve is NOT banked, a 60 MPH highway. In anything taller than a small sedan it’s unnerving as the lateral G kicks in.
Particularly annoying when one is trying to use the cruise control. They make it impossible to use it as they are getting too close at times. What is so hard about just paying attention to your driving.
I think many erratic drivers are on their devices or screen. Inability to do two things at once.
I also think many are under the influence—and not just booze.