Overconfidence is a huge problem, but man so is under confidence. People who freeze up will cause bad things.
this post was submitted on 02 May 2025
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The best advice I was ever given related to driving was "never trust the other driver is going to do the 'right' thing"
Always be ready for the guy next to you to be a complete noobie moron
I always assume that all other drivers are dangerous morons that are trying to kill me. I know that's not true for most people but it only takes one.
Same. except it was phrased "it's not you that you have to worry about. It's the other person."
That's the basis of "defensive driving."
My underconfidence tells me I need to be in the right lane 2 miles away and if I'm not in the right lane when my turn is coming up I'm looking at a hopefully short drive to the next offramp.
You're my wife. And worse, she didn't start driving until she was 50. One thing I figured out, she thinks a mile is about a kilometer. So when the sign says, "1 Mile", she thinks it's close.
That's still less than a minute at highway speed, and if the right lane is clogged you'll have to shop for a gap. 1 mile is a perfectly fine distance to get ready to exit IMO.
A friend of mine is like “our exit is in 10 miles, so you should probably move over all 5 lanes right now”
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Did they seriously just drive off after that?!?!
They usually do
I watched someone drive off after hitting a cyclist and breaking his arm. Driver even stopped for a moment to look, then sped off.
Many hit and runs are done in panic. Lots of them turn themselves in later
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For my kids, I stressed that while knowing your way around is critical, it’s also beneficial to always use GPS because it will always calculate a new route. Just miss any turn or exit and it will get you there either way minimal impact
I missed my exit once and it was like 15 minutes before the next one to turn around but that's better than killing someone.
The Florida turnpike did that shit. Last free exit (that I wanted) was unmarked (absolutely no signage). The next (legal) turnaround was 10 miles and tolled.
tolled
So sorry you live in a place like that
Florida is a freedum state after all. Can't have them commie taxes pay for things like public infrastructure and shit.
Tbf a stopped car in the middle of the road on a sunny fucking day also shouldn't cause a collision, either. Guy in the grey van fucked up worse than anyone but they'll be blaming the stopped car instead of their own inattentive driving
There's a minimum speed on highways because it is dangerous to slow below that limit, the stopping distance for 70mph is around 240 feet and 2.5 sec for perception & reaction.
Yeah, but cars do break down. I once had all the transmission fluid in my car drain out while doing 65 or so on a highway. A mechanic failed to replace the drain plug properly, and suddenly the car started shaking violently. I was lucky to coast off to the breakdown lane before coming to a stop.
And I’ve seen things like improperly secured ladders and chairs fall onto the highway as well. Nothing like having cars suddenly swerving in front of you to avoid those sorts of hazards.
While true, cars that breakdown don't come to a complete stop, generally. You should put your hazards and roll to the shoulder. That's not always possible, of course. But if a vehicle is clearly disabled, you wouldn't stop behind it waiting for it to move out of the way, which is what happened here as well.
Guy in the gray van was blocked in on at least one side, possibly both.
No. The moron in the first car fucked up the worst; NONE of that would've happened without that dork stopping.
Guy in the gray van could've seen the cars in front of him stopped and then also stop. It's still also his fault.
Right, zoning out for a second is definitely way worse than selfishly illegally stopping like that /s
One is illegal and the other isn't, for good reason. Willful mistake versus moment of distraction
They might’ve stopped for a legal, non-selfish reason too. A health emergency can happen anytime. It’s the drivers responsibility to not zone out and look ahead.
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Psst, there's a third possibility if you think critically.
! Both are wrong.
No shit?
The red car is still the cause here.
The gray van is a consequence of that cause. It would happen regardless. Even if the person in the gray van was paying attention, someone else would not be paying enough attention and still wreck.
You're confusing proximate cause and root cause. The van is a mechanism of failure, the red car is the cause of failure.
This is still the red car's fault, entirely. The van of course is holding my ability for being the proximate cause, but at the end of the day blaming the van for not paying attention doesn't actually prevent situations like these from occurring.
It’s pretty infrequent that roads go on after an exit to 150km uninterrupted highway or some other reason to behave this way.
These people are maddening.
They tend not to have a good command of the accelerator pedal’s capabilities to boot. There were a few opportunities for the problem driver to get going.
There might be a couple stretches in Ohio, but this isn’t one. There’s a spotin Massachusetts that’s like 60 miles round trip if you miss the exit, and it’s a tiny state!
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That’s great ODOT put out a psa not to do this. Could they put one out about people swerving into the exit lane way after the exit.
Why didn't they just take people's licenses when they do something like this?
Because we live in corporate dictatorships and fossil fuel corpos made everything car-centric. Now we have to allow the negligent and incompetent to drive or else we'll damage "the economy".
This is true, but it's more than the economy. While driving is a privilege, we've created a world where living without it is incredibly difficult and in some cases impossible. While it could hurt the economy it also starts to become a cruel and unusual punishment, even though it shouldn't be it is due to the car centric environment society has created.
At least they had their turn signal on 😆
Absolutely the most terrifying aspect of driving on the Interstate.
Cammers Fault...
Welcome to Portugal!!! Wait a minute…
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