Don't understand why you say that -- having fear of the consequences of acting stupid in a car seems to make people a much better driver by default.
I have never gotten a ticket or been an accident in my 10 years of driving so far and some of that is just luck but I'd say a lot of it is just being afraid of dying in a car and being cautious
I sometimes liken it to Blue Angels flying in close formation. You get three lanes on Highway and every lane is full but moving at speed, yet you are less than 3 feet from the other cars in some lanes. Then there is the the 50mph two-way back roads. Sometimes the center line there rumbles so you are aware you may be riding on it.
I believe that driving is a normalized activity. Given our current level of generally imposed safety limits, if cars (as they currently exist) were invented today, we'd never be allowed to drive them.
In EU there is 2-3 seconds rule, you keep your distance in seconds, not meters. You search for an object that car in front of you will pass and you count to 2-3s. If you pass that object under 2s you are too close
I was taught 4 seconds. It takes on average 1 second for you to start reacting to anything, so 2 seconds leaves you with 1 second to actually dodge whatever is there, which in my opinion is just not enough.
Lol it seems like so many of you never took math or physics. There's no set time number. If you're going 25 then 1 second probably is enough if you have good reflexes. Going 50 you need like 3 or so then 80 you'll need a few more.
Seems like a good rule of thumb, but i was taught in the US to keep 1 car length distance behind the person in front of you per 10mph of speed you're doing
Well, that's what you are supposed to do. I've never really seen it happening in L.A., but people are remarkably skilled at driving way too fast and tailgating the entire time.
I think that is universal because I learned the same rule to earn my drivers license in Montana. The rule has been proven useful in several situations.
OP means the contra flow on undivided highways. I guess in the EU, those have lower speed limits, but in the US, especially places like Texas, you can easily and legally cruise at 70 mph on an undivided farm-to-market (FM) highway.
I'm a trucker, you'd be surprised just how many people don't seem to care that they're passing a 40 ton metal missile just a few feet away. We can see you watching Netflix while doing your makeup, Deborah
So weird, I learnt to drive pretty late in life and its the most terrifying thing. How do you just trust that the car isn't going to veer off sideways into you, its very stressful overall
It's not the lines that keep us safe, they just make it easy for people to know what they need to do in order to keep themselves safe. And it works. Lots of people die in traffic accidents each year, most because one of the drivers was being an idiot. But so many millions more people drive every day every year. The fact that the ratio to the number of people who drive to the number of people who die driving is so low is actually a massive testament to how well the system we have in place works.
Honestly the highways today remind me of the descriptions of the six lane roads in the book Fahrenheit 451. Lol they were just an idea then, but oh how it came true! My brother is a paramedic and tells me horror stories, it's a wonder vehicles are even a thing…
That seems like an easy prediction though. All you needed was a more efficient and size friendly means of projecting an image. Low and behold we got LEDs.
"There were car gods there: a powerful, serious-faced contingent, with blood on their black gloves and on their chrome teeth: recipients of human sacrifice on a scale undreamed-of since the Aztecs."
the problem is that America is big. Like, really big. there are countries that fit in some of our states. he'll, there are multiple countries that can fit in just one state!
Rail is not feasible for most of the country as a regular transportation option.
I was 12 miles *as the crow flies* from DC. there was *zero* public transportation.
This is why I never wanted to start driving, but living in a rural area of America, it's a necessity. I'm hoping I'll have to drive a lot less once I move
I just got my first car a month ago. I'm 52. I never wanted to drive but this last two years made me very aware I have to have this option. Highways are nowhere near my future. I barely handle 45 let alone the crazy speeds done on the highway by others. I'll go ahead and take that extra 30 mins to hour to avoid it.
My wife does her makeup while driving to work. It drives me insane. Not because of the foundation powder all over everything, but because I get worried. She thinks I just bitch about the powder but I always tell her "I don't care about the powder, it's not safe and if something happens to you I don't think I could handle it." She still does it 😑
I think a lot of this has to do with how comfortable cars have become. Pillowy suspension, insulated from noise, the elements, wind, in big cushy chairs that hug every curve of your body, cruise control, sound systems, etc.
If we were strapped to a chair with the cruel, unforgiving asphalt peeling past just a foot beneath us, feeling the shockwave of the envelope of air blasting us every car that passes us in the oncoming lane, we'd realize how close we are to death at any moment.
Of course, the beauty of engineering with crumple zones, air bags, exhaustive testing and decades of experience for engineers means we are safer than we would otherwise be, but it still needs to be treated with respect and caution.
A frightening majority of people do not comprehend physics. I do, and I've also seen what heavy machinery can do to a body in a split second right in front of me. (Miraculously they were fine, the human body can sometimes be strangely elastic).
I instead was traumatized twice by partially being blamed for talking to someone at the end of a shift maybe a little further out than I should have (we weren't in the middle? So.) my fault, not the driver who didn't look before/while backing up and didn't see the person I was talking with.
That driver was back on the forklift like a few nights later. I couldn't stare at wheel wells for months. Plus guilt because I wasn't the one that was hit, but was blamed for it.
I've also been in a couple small wrecks (my fault) and one big wreck (NOT my fault). I've noted to my roommate multiple times that she drives in a manner that I would expect of someone not having been in any accident. This is not a compliment, I've seen people do something stupid like, driving into incoming traffic that was visibly approaching at speed, turning in just as I was about to pass by them. An extra split second in either direction, I might have reacted in time. Or they might have not turned so quickly and nothing would have happened. Some people might think I drive like a grandma. I drive like a survivor, in my opinion.
Imagine how I feel as a construction worker on the highway. Blatant disregard for our guys on a daily basis, everyone is in too much of a rush because they left late. Speeding to your destination only saves minutes at most. Slow down and save lives. We would also like to go home to our families.
It terrifies me that people think only being a few feet away is acceptable. I hate it when leaving a proper gap is seen as an invitation to slide in front of me without indicating.
Even if Ai driving is 100% safe, it still safer than some of the idiots on the road. At least the AI is getting smarter. And Drivers are getting dumber. :)
Nothing will de-normalize this for you like traveling to a country where they drive on the opposite side of the road. I went to Scotland, my buddy picked us up, and the ladies sat in the back to catch up. So needless to say, I'm riding shotgun in a VW Polo, sitting in my normal "drivers seat", with no pedals of steering wheel, oh and driving on the opposite side of the road.
My right calf had a cramp from pushing the imaginary brake pedal, and I was as close to a full blown panic attack as I've ever been.
Not getting a license won't save them from all the people that have one but shouldn't as long as driving is practically a requirement to get most places.
My phobia agrees with you. I do not drive nor own a car. I'm 32 years old. I walk or ride bike every where. I do take rides but it's from two people only that's it. It's hard but I'm getting better.
I think about this all the time. We get in a chunk of metal hurling through the open space at 75 mph a mere 6 feet from another ton hunk of metal coming at us at 75 mph with trust that they will stay in their lane because we have some paint on the ground telling them to stay over there.
Unfortunately this doesn't always work, I was tboned back in November by some silly prat driving a van, he shot out of a yield road on the right of a cross roads and struck my front drivers side wheel arch, that shunted me into a car waiting in the left yield road. My car was a write off, only had it for 7 months by that point -_- ended up off work with concussion for 3.5 weeks.
That's not a thing in Europe. You can only drive at highway speeds on highways, which are roads where a physical barrier is required between lanes of trafic going in opposite directions
Oh come on. All good to be pedantic but I think you know what is intended here. There are many many miles of higher speed roads in Europe that are only separated by paint. Maybe they're not called "highways" but you know what OP means.
I say just be predictable. Fast or slow, holding your lane or bobbing and weaving, I can feel safer if you keep doing what you're doing and I'll act appropriately.
Don't know where I heard it but for every 10mph you should be one car length away from the car in front of you. I try to do this.
Just a month ago headed to GA a car in front of me slammed into the back of the car in front of him going over 80mph. Because I was a handful of car lengths back I was able to slow and switch lanes.
One time I was riding passenger in a car while I was on acid and I realized the whole system of control for these heavy pieces of metal rocketing at 100 km an hour is painted lines and colored light bulbs
Eating a lunch that could give you lethal dysentery or ecoli poisoning is weirdly normalized. Walking on a sidewalk where if you were to fall backwards you could fracture your C1-C2 vertebra leading to internal decapitation is weirdly normalized. Riding in a train car packed to the brim with the most aggressive and deadly predator the world has seen is weirdly normalized. Sitting on your couch watching TV when you could blow a brainstem aneurysm and die in moments is weirdly normalized. Life is risk. Death will happen.
If you're scared to drive then don't do it. Someone who is scared of driving and drives is a menace for others
Don't understand why you say that -- having fear of the consequences of acting stupid in a car seems to make people a much better driver by default.
I have never gotten a ticket or been an accident in my 10 years of driving so far and some of that is just luck but I'd say a lot of it is just being afraid of dying in a car and being cautious
I sometimes liken it to Blue Angels flying in close formation. You get three lanes on Highway and every lane is full but moving at speed, yet you are less than 3 feet from the other cars in some lanes. Then there is the the 50mph two-way back roads. Sometimes the center line there rumbles so you are aware you may be riding on it.
I believe that driving is a normalized activity. Given our current level of generally imposed safety limits, if cars (as they currently exist) were invented today, we'd never be allowed to drive them.
Its amazing people are willing to trust the other drivers on the road!
In EU there is 2-3 seconds rule, you keep your distance in seconds, not meters. You search for an object that car in front of you will pass and you count to 2-3s. If you pass that object under 2s you are too close
I was taught 4 seconds. It takes on average 1 second for you to start reacting to anything, so 2 seconds leaves you with 1 second to actually dodge whatever is there, which in my opinion is just not enough.
Lol it seems like so many of you never took math or physics. There's no set time number. If you're going 25 then 1 second probably is enough if you have good reflexes. Going 50 you need like 3 or so then 80 you'll need a few more.
It seems like you never took either math or physics. Timing the distance in seconds means that the actual distance adapts to the speeds.
I was taught that in the US as well.
Seems like a good rule of thumb, but i was taught in the US to keep 1 car length distance behind the person in front of you per 10mph of speed you're doing
Good to know!
Well, that's what you are supposed to do. I've never really seen it happening in L.A., but people are remarkably skilled at driving way too fast and tailgating the entire time.
If you put that much distance between you and the car in front of you, someone is going to merge into that space.
So then you slow down to create distance between you and the car that merged. I'm not risking my life to be petty.
Yes, you should always have enough room for someone to merge in front of you safely.
Good for them. Then you slow down and open up more space. I've been driving like that for years. You'd be surprised, most people respect the space
I think that is universal because I learned the same rule to earn my drivers license in Montana. The rule has been proven useful in several situations.
OP means the contra flow on undivided highways. I guess in the EU, those have lower speed limits, but in the US, especially places like Texas, you can easily and legally cruise at 70 mph on an undivided farm-to-market (FM) highway.
OP is talking about the cars going in the opposite direction — it'd be hard to maintain 2s from them at all times
I don't think we have actual highways without a big divider between the sides?
Fastest road without divder i can remeber is 100kmh.
There are plenty of roads in texas with 70mph speed limits with only a double yellow in between. So everyone drives 75mph (120kmh).
99 Grand Parkway around Houston was a surprise for me that stretches of it go down to 2 lanes with no barrier.
And in Texas, they'll put traffic lights on roads like that! Insanity!
I was taught to give one full car-length distance per 10 mph. So 60mph = 6 cars distance
I'm a trucker, you'd be surprised just how many people don't seem to care that they're passing a 40 ton metal missile just a few feet away. We can see you watching Netflix while doing your makeup, Deborah
Only thing keeping you alive everyday is the mutual agreement between you and strangers, to stay on your side of a painted line on the the road
So weird, I learnt to drive pretty late in life and its the most terrifying thing. How do you just trust that the car isn't going to veer off sideways into you, its very stressful overall
Only because we started out moving slowly and worked our way up, if cars were invented today every street would have barriers
Giant. Metal. Death. Machines. And people go as far as texting, eating, doin their freaking makeup! While operating one. F*ckin hell.
Right?! One loose tire, a bad bump, some idiot texting, an icy road and boom dead or messed for life. Roads are scary
What's worse is we expect little painted lines to keep us safe.
Humanity is wild.
It's not the lines that keep us safe, they just make it easy for people to know what they need to do in order to keep themselves safe. And it works. Lots of people die in traffic accidents each year, most because one of the drivers was being an idiot. But so many millions more people drive every day every year. The fact that the ratio to the number of people who drive to the number of people who die driving is so low is actually a massive testament to how well the system we have in place works.
Honestly the highways today remind me of the descriptions of the six lane roads in the book Fahrenheit 451. Lol they were just an idea then, but oh how it came true! My brother is a paramedic and tells me horror stories, it's a wonder vehicles are even a thing…
The electric billboards along the highways are there as well.
That seems like an easy prediction though. All you needed was a more efficient and size friendly means of projecting an image. Low and behold we got LEDs.
(I think it's just "lo"; "lo and behold")
I'm most scared of the 17 year old kid that just broke up with his girlfriend.
"There were car gods there: a powerful, serious-faced contingent, with blood on their black gloves and on their chrome teeth: recipients of human sacrifice on a scale undreamed-of since the Aztecs."
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods
i make sacrifices daily, dont worry car god
This just bumped the book higher up my wish list
I wish Americans had high speed rail gods instead 🥲
the problem is that America is big. Like, really big. there are countries that fit in some of our states. he'll, there are multiple countries that can fit in just one state!
Rail is not feasible for most of the country as a regular transportation option.
I was 12 miles *as the crow flies* from DC. there was *zero* public transportation.
That book completely changed how I see the world.
Is it fiction? I just looked it up at my library and it seems to be. What was life changing? I might read it.
It's very good and worth a read
What did you like about it?
Pages and words.
They were very good
Drive in Ireland. Couple inches.
This is why I never wanted to start driving, but living in a rural area of America, it's a necessity. I'm hoping I'll have to drive a lot less once I move
The US backroads are wide expanses of pavement compared to English country roads. Try driving "55" down a hedge lined curving driveway.
Bold of you to assume rural US backroads are paved. In my state our dirt roads are lined with sharp falls off the side of a mountain.
Go Amish! It's really not that bad, and sooooo much better for the environment!
I just got my first car a month ago. I'm 52. I never wanted to drive but this last two years made me very aware I have to have this option. Highways are nowhere near my future. I barely handle 45 let alone the crazy speeds done on the highway by others. I'll go ahead and take that extra 30 mins to hour to avoid it.
Giant Metal Death Machines - there must be a Metal band with that name!
Too many people carelessly operating bulldozer
My wife does her makeup while driving to work. It drives me insane. Not because of the foundation powder all over everything, but because I get worried. She thinks I just bitch about the powder but I always tell her "I don't care about the powder, it's not safe and if something happens to you I don't think I could handle it." She still does it 😑
Yep, I don't drive because of this. I let my husband drive. I don't trust people and I trust his driving. Lol!
And they run on explodo juice.
Used to be lead poisoned explodo juice!
Doesn't taste nearly as good anymore.
Yea and worse mpg
Try mixing it 25/75 with diesel
Mine instead runs on a high voltage battery that contains enough power to run an American home for at least three days!
And if it ever catches fire it could take up to a week to put it out!
Your car runs on angry pixies that taste like pain.
I prefer the term dinosaur sauce
I think a lot of this has to do with how comfortable cars have become. Pillowy suspension, insulated from noise, the elements, wind, in big cushy chairs that hug every curve of your body, cruise control, sound systems, etc.
If we were strapped to a chair with the cruel, unforgiving asphalt peeling past just a foot beneath us, feeling the shockwave of the envelope of air blasting us every car that passes us in the oncoming lane, we'd realize how close we are to death at any moment.
Of course, the beauty of engineering with crumple zones, air bags, exhaustive testing and decades of experience for engineers means we are safer than we would otherwise be, but it still needs to be treated with respect and caution.
Speeding and tailgating in wet conditions. It's actually insane.
A frightening majority of people do not comprehend physics. I do, and I've also seen what heavy machinery can do to a body in a split second right in front of me. (Miraculously they were fine, the human body can sometimes be strangely elastic).
I instead was traumatized twice by partially being blamed for talking to someone at the end of a shift maybe a little further out than I should have (we weren't in the middle? So.) my fault, not the driver who didn't look before/while backing up and didn't see the person I was talking with.
That driver was back on the forklift like a few nights later. I couldn't stare at wheel wells for months. Plus guilt because I wasn't the one that was hit, but was blamed for it.
I've also been in a couple small wrecks (my fault) and one big wreck (NOT my fault). I've noted to my roommate multiple times that she drives in a manner that I would expect of someone not having been in any accident. This is not a compliment, I've seen people do something stupid like, driving into incoming traffic that was visibly approaching at speed, turning in just as I was about to pass by them. An extra split second in either direction, I might have reacted in time. Or they might have not turned so quickly and nothing would have happened. Some people might think I drive like a grandma. I drive like a survivor, in my opinion.
Do you know the Darwin Award?
Basically, it is a prize won by those who helped the process of natural selection, by not spreading their.. defective(?) genes forward
As an example, an elderly deceased man has received this award after dying in a highway car crash, having masturbated while driving.
Imagine how I feel as a construction worker on the highway. Blatant disregard for our guys on a daily basis, everyone is in too much of a rush because they left late. Speeding to your destination only saves minutes at most. Slow down and save lives. We would also like to go home to our families.
It terrifies me that people think only being a few feet away is acceptable. I hate it when leaving a proper gap is seen as an invitation to slide in front of me without indicating.
Even if Ai driving is 100% safe, it still safer than some of the idiots on the road. At least the AI is getting smarter. And Drivers are getting dumber. :)
Nothing will de-normalize this for you like traveling to a country where they drive on the opposite side of the road. I went to Scotland, my buddy picked us up, and the ladies sat in the back to catch up. So needless to say, I'm riding shotgun in a VW Polo, sitting in my normal "drivers seat", with no pedals of steering wheel, oh and driving on the opposite side of the road.
My right calf had a cramp from pushing the imaginary brake pedal, and I was as close to a full blown panic attack as I've ever been.
This is why I never got a driver's license. I wouldn't trust myself behind the wheel. I know there are literal teenagers driving cars but still
I am the same. I have no idea why people are down-voting you.
Not getting a license won't save them from all the people that have one but shouldn't as long as driving is practically a requirement to get most places.
Yes. All it takes is one driver with high cholesterol who experiences a common TIA and it's a tragedy.
My phobia agrees with you. I do not drive nor own a car. I'm 32 years old. I walk or ride bike every where. I do take rides but it's from two people only that's it. It's hard but I'm getting better.
Now think about being on a motorcycle. Every time I ride to work I think "doing 75 between all these cars should feel way more dangerous."
I think about this all the time. We get in a chunk of metal hurling through the open space at 75 mph a mere 6 feet from another ton hunk of metal coming at us at 75 mph with trust that they will stay in their lane because we have some paint on the ground telling them to stay over there.
You have to trust the other people not to do something idiotic too.
There's a social construct that everyone is going to follow the rules and not drive head first into traffic.
It's the same thing as the shopping carts but with consequences scaled to the extreme. Maybe that makes it different?
Unfortunately this doesn't always work, I was tboned back in November by some silly prat driving a van, he shot out of a yield road on the right of a cross roads and struck my front drivers side wheel arch, that shunted me into a car waiting in the left yield road. My car was a write off, only had it for 7 months by that point -_- ended up off work with concussion for 3.5 weeks.
how many months?
I'm guessing they meant 7
That is correct XD
7, I fat fingered it
u
Sometimes I think about this while driving down the highway and need to exit and take the back roads.
We're trusting the average person not to stray across a painted white line and destroy us and our family.
That's not a thing in Europe. You can only drive at highway speeds on highways, which are roads where a physical barrier is required between lanes of trafic going in opposite directions
Uh, def been driving 100kph (legally) on many European roads narrower than US roads. Some of which don't even have painted lines between lanes.
The limit on secondary roads, without any kind of separation, is only 20-30 km/h lower in Spain. True for most of Europe.
Oh come on. All good to be pedantic but I think you know what is intended here. There are many many miles of higher speed roads in Europe that are only separated by paint. Maybe they're not called "highways" but you know what OP means.
And literally no one complies. I've had people on European highways be 5 to 10m behind me while going 120km/h
We all can agree on only one thing in this country and that is follow the rules of the road.
Why is it clear to me that America is the only country you could be referring to?
I say just be predictable. Fast or slow, holding your lane or bobbing and weaving, I can feel safer if you keep doing what you're doing and I'll act appropriately.
We don't though...eg, speed limits are de facto quasi-minima, with most people going about 20 percent over them.
Since when do people follow the rules of the road?
There's rules?
They be more like guidelines
I always get an involuntary shiver when one passes very close
Don't worry! You are completely protected from oncoming traffic, by a line of paint.
I'm 28 and more than half the friends I've lost up to this point were due to auto accidents.
If cars were first proposed in the year 2002 we probably wouldn't allow them.
Don't know where I heard it but for every 10mph you should be one car length away from the car in front of you. I try to do this.
Just a month ago headed to GA a car in front of me slammed into the back of the car in front of him going over 80mph. Because I was a handful of car lengths back I was able to slow and switch lanes.
I sometimes imagine one of the cars just swerving into my lane and I get into a head on collision.
You're trusting that every single car that passes you in the opposite lane doesn't just decide (or accidentally) swerve into you. It's insane.
And we trust a brightly coloured stripe of paint will keep them on their side.
"rules"
We live in a society
More of a suggestion, really.
You can pay for the privilege to not respect them, technically.
Also barely clearing a semi truck's front end before they cross over in their lane. Stupidity at its finest.
Nothing stupider than entering a wagon's braking distance.
You're asking to die.
Yet, if I hit and kill someone in my semi I'll go to jail until I'm cleared. And even then I may still get sued.
One time I was riding passenger in a car while I was on acid and I realized the whole system of control for these heavy pieces of metal rocketing at 100 km an hour is painted lines and colored light bulbs
Haven't been the same since
That's because people usually respect them, because they don't want to die. Which is usually good motivation for humans.
This is why we build dual carriageways (divided highway) and it doesn't always have to be a motorway or highway to have the lanes separated
Eating a lunch that could give you lethal dysentery or ecoli poisoning is weirdly normalized. Walking on a sidewalk where if you were to fall backwards you could fracture your C1-C2 vertebra leading to internal decapitation is weirdly normalized. Riding in a train car packed to the brim with the most aggressive and deadly predator the world has seen is weirdly normalized. Sitting on your couch watching TV when you could blow a brainstem aneurysm and die in moments is weirdly normalized. Life is risk. Death will happen.
I long for the future to be strictly public transportation.
Or teleportation. I'll take that as well.
You are supposed to be 1 car length away for every 10 miles per hour you are doing.