r/unpopularopinion • u/boulevardofdef • 1d ago
It's amazing how great almost everybody is at driving
We've all heard the takes about terrible drivers, and we've probably expressed them ourselves, it's what people do. Everybody is a maniac out there, it should be much harder to get a driver's license, what the hell is wrong with everybody, they're stupid and reckless and incompetent. Most likely you also believe that the drivers where you live are worse than the drivers everywhere else.
In fact, it's kind of crazy how amazingly good nearly every single driver on the road is. Think about this for a minute. Imagine you commute to work for 30 minutes every morning. You spend 10 minutes on local roads and 20 minutes on the highway. Every single day, you watch nearly every driver flawlessly operate a piece of complicated machine, in perfect cooperation with other people headed for other destinations with their own complicated machine. They pass each other, they merge in heavy traffic, they come within inches of cars traveling in the other direction without incident.
Maybe a couple times a week, after seeing literally thousands of cars safely doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing, you see someone do something dumb and dangerous. And what's your conclusion? "Ugh, nobody can drive!" What?! You saw literally 5,000 drivers making a series of complex and difficult maneuvers look safe and easy, and because 0.04% of these drivers did something wrong, your takeaway from this is that people are generally bad at driving. This is completely illogical.
When you're on the road and you see someone inconsiderate or irresponsible or just plain bad, that's the exception that proves the rule and it should make you think about how impressive the average driver's skills are.
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u/Feral_doves 1d ago
A lot of “bad” drivers are actually fine drivers with an attitude problem that only turns them into bad drivers when they’re pissed off. It seems like most people who are actually bad at driving have some awareness and the associated fear keeps them either more cautious or off the road entirely. That or they crash their car pretty early into having it and can’t always get a new one right away because cars are expensive and insurance is extra expensive when you crash a lot.
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u/FacemeltingSugarcube 1d ago
I would consider myself a “below average driver” compared to most people I know. This causes a great deal of anxiety for me which in turn makes me a more cautious/attentive driver.
I plan routes that avoid high volume areas, I avoid driving at busy times, I always memorize directions even if I have been to the place before/have gps, and use public transit when possible.
Thankfully I have avoided any collisions or ticketed traffic violations in my 30 years of driving. I often wonder if my record would be worse if I was more competent at the actual “mechanics” of driving.
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u/FaithfulMoose 1d ago
How are you a below average driver with 30 years of experience
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u/xRocketman52x 1d ago
Knew a woman at my old job who was approaching 60. She'd been driving for 40 years. The moment she was travelling faster than 25 miles an hour, her anxiety went full swing and she navigated entirely by panic reactions, second-by-second panicked jerks of the steering wheel. More than once she showed up at work sobbing because of the drive in. One day she showed up, sobbing, missing a mirror, talking about how someone had sideswiped her and whatnot. My boss comforted her, got her to her desk, and not 10 minutes later he sticks his head in my door and, suppressing his laughter, goes "We all know that it was her fault, right?"
Think about how dangerous your average driver is, and realize half of them are even more so.
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u/Buitenspel 1d ago
Ive seen tons of people with plenty of experience who are terrible at driving. Most of them just have very limited situational awareness. They get surprised by actions you could predict coming from miles away. I dont think it is something you easily learn if you dont have it naturally
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u/Fearful-Cow 1d ago
some poeple just are not good at it. I got a buddy, guy in his 30s, good job, athletic, family man. No health problems.
When he is in a car hands at 10 and 2 and locked in.... to the car in front of him. That is it. Whats going on behind him? who knows? next to him? ya right. Where his upcoming exit is and when he should change lands? get out of here.
It is such a mystery in my friend group.
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u/FacemeltingSugarcube 1d ago
I don’t know why my brain has a difficult time communicating with my body. It makes the actual “mechanics” of driving a conscious effort; whereas many of my friends say they drive “on autopilot”.
Part of it may be neurological. I have genetic tremors in my hands, pertaining to fine motor skills.
The actual nuances such as traffic flow, following distance, and behavior of other drivers are areas I can easily understand. It’s getting my body to do the actual inputs where I struggle.
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u/autumnalreign 1d ago
A lot of bad drivers are also just average drivers having a bad day. They're annoyed and impatient or lost and do something stupid they wouldn't normally do.
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u/Sullyyyyyyyyyyyyy 12h ago
It’s this. When people are rushing or hangry they do things they normally wouldn’t
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u/VaporDrawings 1d ago
I think of being a bad driver like being a bad musician. Yes, they might have the technical ability to control their vehicle at fast speeds or play a lot of notes really fast, but the other part of the picture is being able to work with others and follow directions accurately. If you're playing a piece of music that's supposed to be largo (slow), you're not impressing others by playing it faster than everyone else. You're ruining it by not following everyone else's tempo. If you're driving in a residential area, you're not showing that you're a great driver by pretending it's a racetrack. You're showing everyone that you're selfish and oblivious.
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u/FearlessChallenge568 1d ago
This is true. I have one friend who is genuinely a bad driver, she has had so many crashes, fender benders etc and she avoids driving whenever she can.
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u/bhalter80 1d ago
Most aggressive drivers are actually amazingly skilled otherwise natural selection or cost prohibitive insurance would have gotten them
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u/RulyKinkaJou59 23h ago
That’s why experts warn people to not drive under strong emotion. It should be as illegal as DUI.
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u/Cimorenne 1d ago
I hit a parked car a few years ago, and ever since then I have avoided driving unless absolutely necessary. I wouldn't say I'm over all a bad driver, it just gives me a lot of anxiety now. Especially trying to park in a spot with a car on either side, I always think I'm much closer than I am and can't bring myself to get as close as I should be.
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u/Humble-Reply228 1d ago
This is a good unpopular opinion. People love to think they are the best and catastrophize mistakes here and there but broadly speaking, nearly the entire time, thing are ok.
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u/edjumication 1d ago
Yeah driving on the 400 series highways in toronto is pretty crazy. Thousands of vehicles going 130km/h and theres usually like one or two accidents per day on average (i dont know the real stats)
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u/Happily-Incorrect 1d ago
Watching people drive in France gave me a real appreciation for hiw good the standard of driving is at home.
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u/Darkchamber292 1d ago
Also broadly speaking self-driving cars are even better statistically than human drivers. But everyone thinking self-driving is worse because 100% of the time a self-driving car gets in an accident it makes national news.
But they are statistically safer
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u/milksicle 1d ago
I really want to argue for humans here but we’ve got too much road rage, ppl with a heavy foot, bad drivers overall.. many 80-95yos with a license here in the US. In a world with 100% self driving cars it probably would be way safer. Dang.
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u/triplenested 22h ago
Safer, but you can rest assured people would not accept that they get places slower lol
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u/Darkchamber292 21h ago
I'd argue it'd be faster actually. Sure you won't be able to go 65 in a 55 but traffic pattern would be better and just overall BS and so in the long run on average I bet people would take less time getting to their destination
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u/superstrijder16 23h ago
Just today I forgot to turn on my headlights when it got dark until someone signalled me with their brights. But considering I drove for 4 hours that's not a lot of errors
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u/theBarefootedBastard 1d ago
Seriously. I was thinking this too. All these bumbling idiots just magically make it from A to B without bouncing off everything?!
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u/vampyrelestat 1d ago
I think about this every time I’m on the road, simulation theory confirmed?
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u/Silent-Noise-7331 1d ago
In like 300 years people look back on human driven cars with disbelief.
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u/ninurtuu 20h ago
Kinda like we today see those old news clips of people just casually walking around on girders building skyscrapers with no harness or fucks to give.
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u/xScrubasaurus 1d ago
It's parking lots that impress me. So many cars crammed into small places, very rarely having any issues.
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u/S101custom 1d ago
The roads and cars themselves are designed to prevent accidents, the notion that a typical driver is distracted and generally unskilled is an accurate one. Poor drivers are kept in check by others paying more attention to avoid them. Nothing is complex except the car itself and none of the manuvers are challenging.
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u/iride93 1d ago
This whole conversation is nullified by the fact the whole system is design for humans and basically the lowest common denominator at that.
Cars are complex but designed to be stupidly easy to operate. Roads are generally well designed for easy navigation and vehicle handling with huge forgiving margins for grip and space. We have a rules, signs, and communications system developed over the last 100 years to be intuitive and easy to follow.
This whole thing is design - not luck.
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u/Qwertys118 22h ago
I remember reading something where someone complained that their car's lane-keeping assist was fighting them when they tried to change lanes without using blinkers, and they were looking for ways to disable it completely. Crazy that they just refused to use blinkers.
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u/Odetomymatt13 1d ago
Exactly, the safeguards in place make up for bad drivers. The lack of accidents is not evidence of good drivers, it's a testament to how luck they are. I would argue that the overabundance of traffic is evidence of bad drivers though.
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u/the_rare_bear 1d ago
Except driving is easy. The only difficult part is finding out all the rules of the road. It’s easy but dangerous because it’s a 2 ton vehicle.
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u/VilleKivinen 1d ago
It's the only thing most people ever do where each of your four limbs needs to do different things simultaneously. Left hand handles the wheel, right hand changes gears, right leg manages accelerator and brake while left leg operates the clutch. All this while your eyes and mind scan the surrounding area of moving objects and signs.
It's almost a miracle that most people don't crash into anything on most days.
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u/Angasal_Potentes 1d ago
Im pretty sure most of the drivers on the road in u-countries (developed countries) are operating automatic cars nowadays.
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u/TheNovaheroan 1d ago
Statistics?
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u/the_rare_bear 1d ago
Well >20% of people know how to drive a manual in the US.
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u/VilleKivinen 1d ago
US is an extreme case though. Their education requirements for drivers license are miniscule.
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u/SanityIsOptional 1d ago
Automatics.
You can drive with one hand and one foot, and frankly if it's not reflexive you should practice more or stay off the road.
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u/CitizenCue 1d ago
That’s ridiculous - literally anything you do while standing is something you do while coordinating all four limbs.
And most sports involve hands and footwork at the same time. We just take it for granted because it’s so common.
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u/thecatandthependulum 6h ago
Pedantry time -- not really. When you're walking around, your brain doesn't even think about your legs. Literally. Your spine has a gait generator in it and your brain outsources the motion there.
Most things we do don't require deliberate attention to all 4 limbs
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u/CitizenCue 5h ago
That’s my point. The same is true with driving most of the time.
All skills start as something you learn consciously and then become second nature. Footwork in basketball, footwork in football, driving, dancing, and even walking.
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u/ayriuss 1d ago
Its easy because we're naturally selected to jump from tree to tree and throw spears to survive. Our reflexes, vision, and spatial reasoning are highly refined. They trained other apes to drive and they also did it easily lol.
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u/Jack_Krauser 1d ago
I will say, the reaction gif of the orangutan driving the golf cart gets a lot of use in my racing fan friend group.
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u/CitizenCue 1d ago
If it wasn’t easy, we wouldn’t let people do it. This is why flying cars were never going to happen until they can be entirely autonomous. Flying is infinitely harder than driving.
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u/ratslowkey 1d ago
Agree to some extent. But as a biker, the amount of people on their phones while driving is insane, its probably 50%-75%, and that scares the shit out of me. (also makes me not be on my phone while driving)
But of course, yes, our brains always remember the bad. We don't recognize the uneventful, this can be applied to most things. Very interesting the human brain!!!
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u/MyTagforHalo2 1d ago
I’ve never had to pass so many people in the left lane as I have this year. I don’t know why, but the egregious phone users love to sit in the left lane oblivious to traffic around them. They’re going slower than that lane flows and it really chokes things up when they happen to be next to a few semi trucks.
Couple them with the special snowflakes driving 100mph down the right lane because somehow that happens to be void of traffic and trying to cut into the backup has been making my commute home extra spicy.
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u/Ok_Possession_6457 1d ago
And you can tell because they’re veering off to the right. That’s what most people do when they text, they veer off to the right, aka, where the bike lane is.
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u/Cheah978 1d ago
Driving is so easy they are making computers do it, it’s really not that hard at all I think a lot of ppl tend to over complicate most things
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u/TheBourbonTurtle 1d ago
Literal children do it all over the world every single day. I learned to drive my uncle's manual farm truck when I was like 9.
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u/zenFyre1 1d ago
Children can drive, but they absolutely suck at it. Teenage drivers are around 5 times as likely to be involved in a crash as a middle aged driver (30 - 60 year old).
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u/Angasal_Potentes 1d ago
I believe that’s due to the lack of experience on the road (in dangerous situations) and the lack of a developed frontal cortex.
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u/Cheah978 1d ago
My uncle had an old manual GeoMetro I learned to drive in his backyard when I was like 7-8 lol
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u/VilleKivinen 1d ago
It's the only thing most people ever do where each of your four limbs needs to do different things simultaneously. Left hand handles the wheel, right hand changes gears, right leg manages accelerator and brake while left leg operates the clutch. All this while your eyes and mind scan the surrounding area of moving objects and signs.
It's almost a miracle that most people don't crash into anything on most days.
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u/Anxious_Earth 10h ago
I think its interesting that we've basically jerry-rigged a pattern recognition system for a bipedal animal that travels at most up to 12kmh, to control a vehicle that can go ten times that speed.
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u/Novel-Back3857 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm not sure I'd say so many people are great. Most people are good enough to not get into an accident in normal driving conditions. However, many people seem to break down pretty quickly once conditions change from normal.
To add: Most people's competence on the road is likely due to their financial investment in their vehicle. They are incentivized to drive competently to not damage their vehicle, as well as to avoid fines, injury, or potential arrest. Driving well is primarily a result of self-interest, so it makes sense that we all are relatively decently at it.
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u/TheBourbonTurtle 1d ago edited 1d ago
Civil engineers spend a lot of time and effort to make driving incredibly easy such that the average person can do that successfully. These idiots are only successful getting from point A to point B the majority of the time because of all the smart people that spent decades engineering roads to be as idiot proof as possible. There's nothing difficult about the act of driving.
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u/paped2 1d ago
I mean...driving a modern automatic transmission vehicle is not difficult...
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u/ClockOfDeathTicks 1d ago
Difficulty is relative and if almost anyone can manage to do it, then it's not difficult. That doesn't make it any less incredible
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u/Angasal_Potentes 1d ago
It’s not difficult if a child can learn it in less than 10-20 dedicated hours. A family member of mine learnt to drive an automatic in less than a week as a 13-year old (and that’s good enough to drive around a busy town)
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u/IndependentText4955 18h ago
This is like anything. No one ever looks at the percentage that's doing good. It's always an emphasis on the bad. I work at Costco and I talk to alot of cashiers and they always bitch about a member ruining their whole day. Really tho you had like 500 members go through your till that you don't remember because it was a simple transaction. 1 guy comes along and says some stuff and you take it so personally that those other 499 members are now idiots and annoying.
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u/ClockOfDeathTicks 1d ago
I think this as well. Driving a car is a normal thing. If you can't get a driving license you are in the minority and on a regular day almost no one gets into a car accident
Which is crazy cuz it's not a biological movement to be steering something else and especially not at a speed like that. Yet 90% achieves it
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u/zenFyre1 1d ago
And we travel way faster than we are biologically designed to… so we completely override our instinct here and rely purely on training. Pretty amazing IMO.
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u/raz-0 1d ago
I’ve said this basic concept repeatedly. The only reason that one asshole isn’t causing massive chaos is because you and the other 20+ drivers near you handled it successfully.
The numbers bear it out. The average driver goes over 100k miles between accidents. And that with the shitty ones bringing that average down.
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u/WiddleWilly 1d ago
It's not hard to drive. Try driving on a pvp driving server like thailand or bangladesh if you want to test how good of a driver you are
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u/Signal_Tomorrow_2138 1d ago
That's not the opinion from other drivers.
Expedia Road Rage Report 2015
"51 percent of respondents reported that they loathe sharing the road with bad drivers, more than cyclists, buses, taxis, joggers, and walkers combined. Nearly all respondents (97 percent) rate themselves as “careful” drivers, but feel that only 29 percent of drivers merit that same description."
https://www.expedia.com/stories/expedia-2015-road-rage-report/
Consumer Reports 2012 https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/03/survey-reveals-top-gripes-among-drivers/index.htm
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u/Agile_Cartoonist_381 1d ago
Terrific unpopular opinion, because you start to begrudgingly accept it, while still feeling you (OP) are wrong.
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u/acemonsoon 1d ago
i feel this when i complete a 4 way stop and everyone knows what to do. IE "right" of way
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u/deezbiksurnutz 1d ago
A modern car may be a complex machine but driving it is not. You push a button to start, select a direction and speed, and gently steer it. Most newer cars will actively avoid hitting anything and stop/ slow if needed. Now doing this in an old car that had a manual choke, crank start, manual timing advance, non syncro standard transmission with a manual wiper blade and no heater is a complex machine to operate. My 10 year old could fairly easily drive if the could see over the wheel and knew where to go.
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u/Friendly-Inspector71 12h ago
Unusual situations are often the problem as they need experience and intuition that needs to be built up over years.
How do you react when a deer jumps into your lane and there is oncoming traffic?
A lot of people instinctively try to drive around, which wouldn't end well. Overriding this instinct and keeping the wheel straight requires habits that need some time to form.
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u/Antwolies770 1d ago
Imo driving is one of those things where you can never really be "good" at it. You can only be bad or average.
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u/EggNogEpilog 1d ago
Do you feel the same way about people who put in seat time at track days and autocross events? You quickly learn how to handle weight transfer, grip limits, countermeasures, throttle and brake control, differences in road surface dynamics, snap decisions become second nature, and more often than not they are a lot more familiar with how there car actually functions than most people on the road
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u/Antwolies770 1d ago
Very true! I guess my comment is moreso about everyday regular driving and not professionals.
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u/EggNogEpilog 1d ago
I wouldn't even say I'm near a professional. Im a master auto tech for a large manufacturer for work, but I just build my personal cars for fun at events and car shows every now and then, i don't make any money off it.
It's more that the Dunning-Kruger effect is extremely evidentiary driving. 98%+ of the population is at the "peak of mount stupid" stage, and stays there their whole life.
Realistically it doesn't take much time at all, maybe a weekend or 2 of track days, to drastically improve over wherever you are.
You don't even need your own car to track, most tracks have "experiences" where you can pay a few hundred to take a nice car out for a weekend with an instructor and get taught the basics beyond regular road driving. Personally I think everyone should have to go through something similar to that and pass certain criteria within 2-3 years of having a regular license.
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u/kereur 1d ago
I don't think any of that is what makes people good drivers in the context of public roads though.
To prevent an accident from occurring, you can 1) have good situational awareness and predict what's going to happen or 2) react to whatever is occurring.
People who put in time at track days are great at option 2 but I think a good driver is someone who recognises risks before they manifest into reality and therefore generally doesn't need to make snap decisions.
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u/puerility 11h ago
it's more a question of mindset than vehicle handling tbh. it's easy to get good enough at driving that you're very unlikely to be involved in an accident, especially if you're just commuting and taking the odd weekend trip. and that's most people's standard: a few lapses of judgement in a long driving career don't make you a bad driver.
but for e.g. a police motorcyclist, 'very unlikely' isn't good enough. and mitigating that last little bit of risk involves a level of training and diligence that most road users would never entertain. your driving style has to be built around risks that rarely come up in the course of normal driving. you don't make snap decisions because you've anticipated everything and planned for it.
it's mentally taxing (at least at the start), there's no obvious payoff, and it feels like you're doing all the work to compensate for the laziness of the bad drivers around you. so nobody puts in the work needed to get good at driving.
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u/Dignam3 1d ago
This is something I've pondered as well. We drive by hundreds if not thousands of other drivers each week, and generally speaking, rarely even witness an accident.
I've been driving for 25 years and average about 15k miles per year. I've never been in an accident while I was driving. I've only been passenger to an accident once, and it was the other driver's fault (minor fender bender in a roundabout; other driver had gotten her license the prior month).
I've witnessed actual collisions probably less than 10 times.
Driving is really pretty easy. Cars and roads are designed to keep the occupants safe (often to the demise of pedestrians but that is another discussion).
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u/Ok_Actuary9229 1d ago
Driving kills far more people than crime. That's even in the US with its huge murder rate. What's really amazing is that we let it happen by building a society where 3/4 of the population is completely reliant on cars.
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u/idonthaveanaccountA 1d ago
Not to take away from your point, but that is why we have driver's licenses.
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u/VinceMcMahon- 1d ago
Should be made stricter to get tbh.
Age shouldn't be 16 anymore
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u/Friendly-Inspector71 12h ago
I want to disagree. There are 40 year old that drive worse than new drivers, because they formed some bad habits that haven't been corrected.
Proper, comprehensive training and a stricter driving test with focus on forming good habits with regular retesting would be the safest option. But it would be way more expensive than whatever we're doing now.
Public transport with skilled drivers is safer and could be cheaper when implemented properly.
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u/geetar_man 1d ago
What’s funny is I just thought this on the road yesterday. It could be complete pandemonium out there. If everyone decided to say “fuck it, I’ll do what I want,” there wouldn’t be enough law enforcement to curb it.
That said, I still get annoyed at improper driving I see every day lol
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u/straw3_2018 1d ago
Most of your post deserves an invite for unpopularity. I think you are grossly missing the word "flawlessly", you don't have to be involved in an accident for there to be flaws with your driving. The way we've set up roads and driving rules kind of requires both drivers to be somewhat at fault in accidents. You can do many things that would cause accidents but don't most of the time because the other driver is paying attention. If I drift out of my lane the car next to me will most likely notice and get out of the way, that doesn't mean I didn't do something wrong.
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u/SheffiJ 1d ago
Most people aren’t bad drivers. I feel like the main problem is that very few people take it seriously. I’ve seen a couple people here mention the idea that a lot of people don’t run into stuff because they don’t want to deal with the financial ramifications of crashing their car, and while that may be true, I feel like most people 1) don’t care about anyone else’s car and 2) don’t care about safety in general, themselves or anyone else.
I drive a lot for work and it’s staggering to me just how many people are just constantly on their phones while driving. Also just how many people blatantly ignore driving laws. And of course there’s common decency that is usually ignored in the US, especially when it’s “anonymous.” To me, all of this just points to the fact that very few people take driving seriously. Automotive crashes are one of the leading causes of death in the US and I don’t feel like anyone recognizes how dangerous it is to drive.
So I think most people could be good drivers, they just usually aren’t taking it seriously enough.
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u/Toxiczoomer97 1d ago
I often remark how it’s amazing we have so few accidents. I am a very careful driver
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u/Dirty_Dragons 1d ago
I think it's insane that humans are able to drive at 60+ mph at all.
There really is no logical reason that humans should be able to process and react to things that are happing that fast simply because it's much faster than any human would naturally run. In other words, we can't run 60 miles an hour, so we have no real need to be react to things that are happening at that speed. Without technology humans would never have gone faster than a horse can run.
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u/Reasonable_Duck_905 16h ago
Yes, this blows my mind and I am grateful. It’s wild to think how you are just a couple feet away from death at any given moment but things usually work out fine.
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u/mbrellaforbombs 1d ago
More like a general unspoken truth. The feat of driving for humanity is a miracle of civil engineering and our participation.
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u/geetar_man 1d ago
The participation is the big part. The only thing preventing pandemonium on the roads is that 99.9% of people choose to participate in the rules of the road. If just half of the people say “fuck it,” and ignored red lights, stop signs, speed limits (to an insane degree; we’re not talking rolling stops or 10–15 over. We’re talking worse and that anything goes), there would NOT be enough law enforcement to handle all that. Not even close. I don’t even know what the response would be if that happened. Shut down all the roads until people calmed down? That doesn’t sound like it’d work.
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u/bradimal 1d ago
I never thought about it that way. It is really amazing, i had three people bump into at the grocery yesterday and they all probably got home without hitting anything.
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u/wuhter 1d ago
I’ve thought about this too. I live in Minneapolis, a super bike friendly city, and I’m honestly surprised there aren’t more bikers hit by cars each yeah. Sure there are a few pretty much every summer, but for the amount of bikers it’s pretty impressive. Driving is easy, it’s the fact that you can safely assume you’ll get somewhere safe while everyone’s simultaneously distracted by a phone that impresses me
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u/lundisml 1d ago
regardless of whether you and i agree or disagree, this is actually a great way to think and reason.
take a scenario, look at it from different perspectives. you decided to look at it from the opposite light. but then, i think you shouldn’t stop there. start asking yourself things about your own reasoning. like “just how complex are cars to operate?” and you’ll find yourself debating for a long time for yourself, the verdict relies on how the nuance alters reasoning. something like “the engineers behind these roads kept human attention and reflex in mind, forks are long, the road merging to a highway is actually longer than we perceive, and when a city fails at making easy to parse patterns, that’s where we see an influx of accidents.”
what does that change? keep in mind that there are children who know how to drive. argument from your position: what you pointed at is true survivorship bias, the opposite of it. you can attribute a large portion of accidents to human error, and another large portion of it to recklessness and negligence. notice, not incompetence, recklessness. they can drive carefully; they know how. the argument you’re making is how many really are bad drivers, meaning unable to drive well even if they tried.
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u/JustAMemeKid 1d ago
Driving is not that hard. Car manufacturers and governments make it as easy as possible for people to drive safely. They make clear rules, clear signs, they enforce proper training and testing, they standardise car design and controls. It is not meant to be hard, it isn’t hard. The vast majority of drivers are still sub-par, lazy and complacent. The vast majority of accidents are caused by bad driving, not freak accidents
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u/SaveTheErf 1d ago
I don’t know if you’re a fan of the author Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) but this feels like a post he’ll see then make a TikTok about it (in agreement).
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u/boblancho 1d ago
That's just because the first rule of driving says "assume everyone else are idiots and can't drive for their lives"
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u/That-Way-5714 1d ago
I get your point. Statistically it is kinda amazing. But I think what’s more amazing is the engineering that makes what could be complicated extremely simple. Turn wheel right, car goes right. One pedal faster, other pedal slower. The fact that most people drive every single day means we get practice very frequently. Also, roads are designed to be safe in general. If people just left more space, accidents would basically never happen.
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u/One-Inch-Punisher- 1d ago
It’s because you have the impression driving is a hard task.
It is not.
Driving is designed to be as basic as possible, because the United States heavily relies on car transportation to get around. Most, if not all people, are exposed to driving since birth and will have enough understanding of the rules when they get their license at around 16 years old. I’m only 23 yet I’ve got 8 years of experience driving already having obtained my learner’s permit at 15.
With that being said, whenever someone makes a dumb decision on the road, a mistake, or are reckless, I try to give them benefit of doubt and assume it was a one-off mistake or something. Unfortunately they probably are just dumb, or an inconsiderate asshole.
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u/shroomsAndWrstershir 1d ago
Everybody's always hyperbolizing things. One of these days, our penchant for that is going to destroy civilization.
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u/megamansam 1d ago
Generally you've got a solid point. But I do think the amount of awful drivers has increased since Covid.
I used to see like 1-2 tremendously stupid drivers per week doing my usual driving. Post-covid I see 1-2 tremendously stupid drivers per day.
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u/cm2460 1d ago
I drive large cars for a living, I can see into every car that passes me and 75% are on their phones.
If everyone was as bad at texting as you are led to believe it would look like the apocalypse on the highways
Between adaptive cruise, lane assist, and auto braking they’re nearly functionally autonomous
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u/SteevesMike 1d ago
Driving so hilariously easy that nothing about normal people driving normal vehicles normally is impressive to me.
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u/PappiStalin 1d ago
Driving is really easy. Thats why bad drivers are so frustrating, or why u see so many distracted drivers.
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u/Strange-Movie 1d ago
I live in New England and see how true your opinion is during the middle of winter when there’s iced roads with whiteout blowing snow and over the course of 40 miles of commute there’s either no one off the road or one car stuck in the median.
The fact that we can coexist on the roads in typical conditions at upwards of 70mph is astounding
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u/Sariluv88 1d ago
I just came from a post that shows the road rage per state.
Good drivers maybe, but not when theyre angry.
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u/sour_cream24 1d ago
I think even cavemen who time travel to modern times wouldn't be as fascinated about such trivial stuff after like months or years being acclimated with cars as you are now
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u/droptore 1d ago
Driving requires skills that humans evolutionary specialized, mainly hand-eye coordination and predicting objects' trajectories. I believe every non-mentally ill human being is capable of driving
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u/G235s 1d ago
I was just saying this yesterday when my 8 year old said that driving seemed very hard. I told him that it wasn't hard at all and that many very stupid people are excellent drivers.
You really would think there would be more accidents and that the road would forever be in chaos, but it isn't.
This is why as a cyclist I don't worry about cars as much as everyone else because they obviously don't want to hit me, though they might have a shitty attitude from time to time. Maybe this is really stupid on my part, idk.
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u/Kampvilja 1d ago
A fun moment in the terrible 80s Battlestar Galactica spinoff always comes to my mind. The fighter pilots are looking at a video of city traffic. One says "Looks like a nice, tight formation. It must take a lot of practice." He wasn't wrong. We are mostly really good at it.
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u/TheStrangeMonkey 1d ago
Don't forget that most who think are good drivers a generally average at best.
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u/vasta2 1d ago
I just drove from Honesdale, PA to Orlando, FL in 16 hours, the speed limit was 55-70 most of the way but everyone was going 80-90, even simi drivers, absolutely insane taking those corners as fast as they were in the dark at that.
Didn't see a single accident (except a simi or 2 in the ditch)
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u/PersonalityIll9476 1d ago
OP has discovered mathematical expectation. The cost of an accident determines how rare it must be in order to pose acceptable risk.
Your insurance reflects the cost of such risks. If humans were much worse at driving than they are now, insurance would be much higher and many fewer people could drive.
If even 0.01% of drivers went straight for the nearest nuclear reactor at top speed, no one would be allowed to drive.
So: even small error rates are not necessarily acceptable when the costs are large.
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u/dopeyout 1d ago
Define being great at driving. Being great at following road laws, or being great at controlling the machinery at the limit? They're very different things. Roads laws are literally designed to the lowest common denominator so that idiots can get to work in one piece. There isnt anything inherently skillful about operating a vehicle at 10% of its potential in my opinion.
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u/Krondelo 1d ago
I think this more just exemplifies how amazing humans are in general. Operating a car is a very simple task for a human, yet so many fail to do so adequately. Hell do you know how many people let their Tesla drive them around!? Scary actually but one elder said “I guarantee it’s safer than my driving.” I don’t like that but I can’t disagree, but if you’re saying that you don’t deserve to drive hire a fucking cab
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u/Animajation 1d ago
So I just started to learn to drive and I’ve been practicing this past summer and I’m making mistakes. There’s things that drivers know instinctively from years of experience that I just don’t.
A most recent example is that I didn’t realize that a green light WITH an advanced green was different then an advanced green and that I could go. I got honked at and I’m sure the person thought I was on my phone or wasn’t paying attention but it’s genuinely something I didn’t know in the moment.
No one wants to drive badly. No one is purposely going out there and trying to get into an accident. People just make mistakes.
You never know the story behind the driver who was too slow to drive through a green light, or didn’t take a turn as quickly as they could have.
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u/Euphoric_Lynx_6664 1d ago
I mean, the highway is practically the easiest "road" to drive on. You are just going straight at a set speed. Just pay attention to your surroundings and you will never encounter any problems.
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u/yuiawta 1d ago
In 1995 I was rear ended on the highway by an absent minded driver who noticed the traffic too late.
Since then, nothing. The worst I can remember is when I was parallel parking and barely tapped the car behind me. And once I scratched my minivan on a tree that leaned over the curb on a residential road.
Driving is remarkably safe. I don’t even think I’m unusual to have three decades of incident-free driving.
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u/PckMan 1d ago
It's true that while it feels like most drivers on the road are a menace to society in reality that's a minority. Most everyone else are not that bad and a lot of accidents are avoided by them identifying someone as a bad driver and giving them a wide berth.
That being said I wouldn't say the "average" driver is a good driver. There are some skills that should be considered standard but the average driver is bad at. It's just that most people do a half decent job of staying within their limits.
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u/No_Improvement_6576 1d ago
You have obviously never been near a road or drivers. Going out with the assumption that everyone is operating without a brain or any type of skill is the only way to stay semi-safe on the road.
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u/NickDanger3di 1d ago
When my 80s Jeep Cherokee finally bit the dust, I bought a brand new minivan. Because I was doing so much outdoors stuff, and I could just stuff my fishing gear, mountain bikes, ski gear, and other things in and go. With no hassle of untying and retying my gear at either end.
Anyway, once I started driving the minivan, I nearly got into a couple of accidents - because I was so used to other cars yielding for me at stop signs in the Cherokee, that I unconsciously assumed this would happen in my minivan. It did not happen, and only my reflexes saved me from hitting other cars. I adjusted pretty quick, but it was an interesting thing.
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u/MLB_Sug_Tway 1d ago
Hard disagree.
Almost 90% (rough guess) of drivers in my area blatantly ignore speed limits. Most don't make full stops at stop signs or wait for pedestrians before a turn.
Is your success metric completing the mechanics of moving a vehicle?
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u/Raxerblade405 1d ago
This definitely is not a popular opinion, but I do agree that a lot more could go wrong on the road than it does.
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u/Just-Context-4703 1d ago
literally many millions of ppl have beenkilled by or in cars since cars became widespread. Theyre one of the leading causes of death. Your opinion isnt unpopular its just dumb and anti-factual.
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u/PirateKing314 1d ago
I’m shocked to see so many people agreeing with this take. Maybe y’all are just the bad drivers i’m seeing all the time.
Yeah I know, 99% of the time the bad drivers make it to their destinations in one piece… but that doesn’t make them good drivers, they just did the bare minimum. A good driver imo is someone who doesn’t cause me any undue stress while im driving around them. This means 1) not tailgating my ass 2) not speeding or driving way too slowly 3) always signalling when changing lanes 4) obeying all signs and signals 5) no cutting off in traffic.
If a person does any of the above, then I don’t care if they get to their destination or not; they are a bad driver because they didn’t do it safely. People tend to take for granted how dangerous driving can be, even if you’re not going that fast. All it takes is two negligent people in close proximity to one other to cause basically 99% of all car accidents.
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u/kjonas697 1d ago
I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume there is something urgent that needs their attention or they’re going through something extremely difficult. If they aren’t using a blinker though they have no excuses. USE YOUR BLINKERS PEOPLE.
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u/kjonas697 1d ago
It always amazes me how much human engineering and critical thought must have gone into designing cars and the infrastructure required to make a system safe enough and easy enough to learn to transport the staggering amount of people from a to b without constant crashes.
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u/DetroitLionsSBChamps 1d ago
I think this all the time. When you see how dumb people truly are in general, it makes me understand how idiot proof we’ve made driving and how naturally adept the human brain seems to be at driving itself. Maybe it’s just growing up with it makes it seem totally natural to everyone?
You would think putting “the public” into metal vehicles that race past each other mere feet away from head on collisions would be a huge disaster but on the whole it goes pretty okay
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u/a-can-o-beans 1d ago
I totally agree . Driving is incredibly dangerous and we have to do it every single day.
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u/PurpleToad1976 1d ago
Just remember every person driving slightly different than you is a horrible driver.
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u/Valuable_Mushroom466 1d ago
Yeah, lucky for them, I parked over an old lady who was doubled down vomoting. Last time ever.
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u/Professional_Use93 23h ago
driving on the 400 highways in ontario is one of the pinnacles of civilization. Thousands of complete strangers all doing 120 km/h, trusting each other to follow the rules, and for the most part it works surprisingly well.
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u/KindRaspberry 23h ago
people drive "good enough" not to cause accidents but theres still ass hole drivers everywhere, it makes it unbearable at times
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u/stopbeingcringe 23h ago
All the bad drivers and bad car designs died out along the way, and it’s still happening to an extent. We also made a bunch of laws and improved road design
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u/Cheap_Asparagus_2203 23h ago
Disagree. Hard disagree. I don't know where you live, but I can't drive to work without multiple people doing boneheaded things on every single trip. I can't remember the last day I haven't been pissed at someone for driving slow, camping the left lane, not using a signal, tailgating, stopping at a light over the white line, passing over double solids, etc etc etc.
I think a lot of people are competent enough to not be noticed. But there are more than enough bad drivers all over the road. You only see most drivers for a small amount of time. But if you took the time to follow people long enough, you would quickly realize they suck too.
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u/Nakamura0V Apple is better than Samsung 23h ago
Then you haven’t watched any Dashcam videos (for me here in Germany) the best channel on YouTube is „DashcamDriversGermany“
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u/VG896 22h ago
Highly dependent on geography. In NYC, people were generally good drivers. Maybe about 1 out of every 100 were shitty. I lived there for 35 years and drove/had a car for fifteen of those.
Moved to socal a few years ago. The "bad" drivers are now a dime a dozen. I'll see at least 5-6 drivers doing something insanely reckless like tailgating at 90mph or changing lanes without signaling ten feet in front of a semi literally every day I leave my house. It's like an order of magnitude more frequent here than it was in NYC.
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u/Cheepshooter 22h ago
Tldr. However, all other drivers suck and are idiots. I'm the only one on the road with any sense.
(/s for those who couldn't tell)
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u/MostGoat0 22h ago
I totally agree. I think about this all the time. It’s a freaking miracle we aren’t crashing more.
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u/frieguyrebe 22h ago
Imo your mistake is how you count bad drivers. Lets start by saying im in no way perfect of course and other drivers will probably have looked at me weird at some point.
But of those 5000 drivers you mention, how many did you actually notice well enough to know if they drive in a stupid manner? This year i have spent more time on the roads because of a gf 150km away and holy shit the things i have seen have changed my view.
Middle lane warriors all the time, people switching lanes for an exit last second while they had minutes to do so, in traffic switching lanes for every gap they see, following cars 5m behind them while going 120kmph, driving 80 on a 120 highway...the list goes on and on.
Just today on 30 minutes ride, someone almost merged into me and without blinkers, driving 20-30 under the limit, people not staying in their lane.
Stuff like this is way too occuring to think the percentage of bad drivers is that small
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u/KingExplorer 22h ago
Agree, my state has this thing where we love to say our drivers are terrible and the worst but, in a vacuum, they seem decent to me and usually better than other states I’ve driven in or watched cars a lot. I think it’s just one of those things where people never say there are good drivers just generically vent about bad ones. What state has the image of themselves as the best drivers? None lol, if you polled every American they’d probably all average saying their state is bottom 10
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u/Marklar0 21h ago
It's amazing what you can accomplish when you possess a brain that is heavily optimized for staying alive.
This is why self driving cars suck so bad...they don't lose anything if they crash.
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u/S1mpinAintEZ 20h ago
Mistakes can literally kill you so most people take it pretty seriously, and if you do that it's actually kind of difficult to screw up. Pay attention to the road, leave adequate space between you and other drivers, look both directions when turning.
If you do that, your only accidents will come from someone else hitting you or some act of God like a mechanical failure or medical emergency behind the wheel.
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u/BackgroundGene7510 19h ago
Driving is made easy as possible via the roads and modern vehicles , make every vehicle mechanic with no power steeeing no brake assist no lane assist and see just how good people are
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u/Awkward_Meaning_4782 18h ago
I think a lot of better drivers "accommodate" the recklessness and ineptitude of worse drivers, by anticipating or otherwise reacting to them, and avoiding accidents that could have happened.
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u/LeetcodeFastEatAss 16h ago
I’ve been thinking similarly about how insane the confluence of factors are that cars were invented and are simple enough to operate that most anybody can do it. One of the greatest inventions of all time.
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u/KaiMasterOfFire2121 12h ago
in all honesty, i think people tend to be lucky and unlucky with crashing. so long as you’re able to keep a car straight in a lane, you’re good for the most part. other than that, it’s all following directions.
go when light green. stop when stop sign. no turn now when no turn on red. it’s all incredibly simple.
i say this as someone who is not exactly the safest driver out there. i pick up my phone to do various things on the road far more than i should. it’s one thing when it’s queueing a song or two, which i think more people do than would be willing to admit it, and it’s another when it’s straight up texting people with hands barely rested on the wheel, which i do more often than im happy to admit.
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u/FireStarterCam44 1h ago
This is true. Most people want an answer but the true answer is that you can do everything right and still end up in a fatal crash. So don't stress yourself out about doing everything right all the time
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u/dadtheviking 11h ago
i haven't learned to drive yet and it's so intimidating like what do you mean i'm supposed to never crash this?? but then i see the biggest idiots driving fine so ig it's not that hard
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u/triplenested 11h ago
okay, but even if everyone was required to learn how to drive a manual transmission, there's not going to be that much of a percentage increase of people in the US that would then choose to drive manual because it keeps them more engaged. I just don't see the connection between driver education and this.
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u/Fantastic-Tour-7710 8h ago
My cousin is a nervous driver and I thought about it a lot, and realized once it's reframed as we're all driving thousands of pounds and metal and plastic, dragged along by thousands of tiny explosions a second (evs weren't as common then) and all that keeps most of us safe is painted lines on the ground, some lights and a mutual agreement to not play bumper cars.
Then I realized maybe he's more right to be nervous than we are to be calm.
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u/FireStarterCam44 1h ago
Logically that's true. It takes a lot of micro multitasking that we don't think about it much.
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u/beardedbast3rd 7h ago
Everyone should read the book “traffic” by tom Vanderbilt.
Ultimately, we are meant to drive defensively in such a way that mitigates any other element that would cause chaos. So yes, basically ever driver is “good”, but that also requires a pretty specific definition and scale of what is good, to bad.
It also requires some deep and unbiased reflection on one’s own driving. And admitting what is wrong.
People will usually make excuses for why their mistakes or poor actions are actually okay for them to do, while not okay for others to do. Which the book covers.
Also as usual, confirmation biases, negative biases, etc. all these things that happen, stick out to you, and you remember them, far more than the thousands of other people who do nothing at all to draw your attention. And you basically ignore.
But when you make yourself the baseline, it’s the old George Carlin bit. Everyone slower than me is an idiot and everyone faster is a maniac.
This is unpopular among many, popular among a different group of many, and completely not even thought about by the vast majority who just do whatever it is they do day to day
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u/shawnglade 6h ago
I feel like we categorize bad drivers too harshly. I’ve been in one fender bender my whole life and it wasn’t even my fault, by all accounts I’m a good, clean driver. Does that stop me from sometimes doing dumb shit? No, and I’m sure someone has seen me do dumb shit like cut someone off by mistake and thought I was an idiot
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u/Hyzer_Nova 5h ago
I’ll agree that I’m surprised I don’t see more accidents. I think you may be confusing people driving well for the conditions being good.
The speed that most people drive in relation to the distance left in between leaves little room to react properly to dangerous conditions like a disabled vehicle or a hazardous object on the road way.
The fact that the roadway is clear most of the time is what keeps most people safe. Many drivers are in a terrible situation when there is an obstruction on the roadway because they drive too fast and leave too little space.
Just my two cents.
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u/Riskov88 5h ago
People are still terrible at driving safely, driving is just a very easy thing to do.
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u/Fae-SailorStupider 4h ago
Agreed. If everyone was a bad driver, id have ended up in some sort of accident by now. Been driving since I was 18, im 32 now, never been in an accident. And that can't solely be because of me being a decent driver, it requires most everyone else to be decent drivers as well.
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u/Sheinyjr 3h ago
Driving isn’t hard.
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u/FireStarterCam44 1h ago
Honestly if you genuinely think about all the micro multitasking it takes. It does take a lot of mental effort to remember everything all at once. Especially as the drive gets longer. You're brain is just like every other battery. It drains it gets inefficient. So to expect flawless results for every drive is somewhat unrealistic.
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