None of us are getting any younger. If we’re lucky and don’t die first, one day, we’ll all be old, too. This is unavoidable if you don’t die first. What is avoidable is becoming an old Clover. A driver who isn’t defined by his age but rather his lack of consideration for other drivers.
Here’s an example:
I rolled up behind a truck that was stuck behind a Clover driving – if you want to use that word – a Subaru, very slowly. As slow as 29 MPH on a road with a 55 MPH speed limit, on a warm sunny fall day, with almost no other traffic around. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the Clover would not move off onto the shoulder to let the truck (and me) get by. The Clover kept on moseying along, sometimes going a little faster and then randomly slowing down again. Eventually, I was able to get past the Clover – but that’s just the point. The thing that defines “Clover.” (As an aside, the term is EPautos inside baseball for the kind of driver we’re discussing; it was a handle used by a person who used to leave comments on the site defending the kind of “driving” we’re talking about.)
Some people mistakenly think I am intolerant of people who don’t drive as fast as I like to drive. This is a smear of a piece with saying a person who doesn’t like what the state of Israel is doing in Gaza is “anti-Semitic.” Being (or not being) a Clover is not defined by how slow (or fast) you drive. I sometimes drive slow, too – as when I am driving my old truck with a load in the bed. But I am not a Clover because I make every effort to not impede the progress of other drivers who are wanting to drive faster than I am driving. I do this by – first of all – paying attention not just to what’s ahead of me but also what’s behind me. I look in my rearview mirror. If I see another vehicle coming up behind me I recognize that driver is wanting to drive faster than I am driving.
Even if I am driving the speed limit – or faster than that. 
Any Clovers who are reading this probably just crashed out. Nonetheless, that’s the thing. A Clover is someone who doesn’t keep track of what’s behind him – and so doesn’t see what’s coming up behind him. Or – worse – he sees but doesn’t care. He makes no effort to facilitate the other driver’s travels by easing off to the right/onto the shoulder to let the driver coming up behind him get past him.
This is almost always easy to do. I know because I do it regularly, when I am driving my old truck with a load in the bed at or below the speed limit. It is even easier if you do not wait until the car coming up behind you has caught up to you. If you anticipate his coming and signal – as by easing over to the right as much as you can and perhaps even rolling down your window and waving him around – so that it doesn’t get to the point that you’ve got a tail. Clovers never do this and so they often grow tails six or even a dozen cars long. Even then, they make no effort to get out of the way and that’s why they are Clovers.
They also use the left lane – the passing lane – to just cruise along. They never got the message about stay right except to pass. They’ll match the pace of the car next to them in the right lane and thereby prevent anyone from passing. Often, if you try to pass them, they will speed up to prevent you from doing that.
Back to where this article started. We all get old, if we live long enough. Vision may dim, reflexes may diminish. As it turned out, the Clover I eventually manages to pass was an old lady. I do not fault her for that because there is no fault in it. I hope one day to be an old man. It is preferable to the alternative. But being old is not an excuse. If an old man (or woman) wandering around the grocery store obliviously parks their shopping cart, blocking the aisle to the passage of others trying to shop while they stare at the shelf lost in thought, everyone agrees they are being inconsiderate and ought to make an effort to move their cart out of the way.
How is it any different on the road?
The answer is, it isn’t. And if the oldster is so addled that they are unable to recognize that they are blocking the aisle – or the progress of traffic – then it is time to let someone else drive.
This – obviously – applies to the not-old, too. There’s never an excuse for being a Clover – no matter how old (or young) you are.
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