Seems accurate. My entire life, Dad has always complained about drivers throughout the state. "Nobody knows how to drove on 280" or "People drive like idiots on 65". I asked him, so is there any road or highway where people are decent drivers? "No!".
Anyone who drives slower than me is a doddering old fool who needs to get off the road. Anyone who drives faster than me is a crazy asshole with a death wish. And anyone who drives the exact same speed as me clearly has road rage and is trying to piss me off on purpose.
Reminds me of my favorite quote from Justified: “If you run into an asshole in the morning, you ran into an asshole. If you run into assholes all day, you're the asshole.”
"I can zip through traffic and drift through corners in complete control because I am a good driver"
Honestly, if he can actually maintain drifts in complete control, then this guy is a TALENTED driver, but if he's not smart enough to keep this type of thing to closed courses (or at least seriously rural off-times), then he's a shitty driver (and what he said shows that this is the case).
"I am a good driver because I always stay 10% below the posted speed limit"
Nope, this is just a bad driver. Nobody with actual driving skills would do this, and this is unsafe (not necessarily for you, but your actions can cause others to crash) in almost every situation where traffic isn't slowing you down. My grandmother drove like this. She wasn't a good driver.
"I am a good driver because I always keep my hands at 10 and 2 O'clock and keep my seatbelt fastened and stop at yellow lights."
There's not enough here to judge much, but even driving schools aren't uniformly teaching 10 and 2 anymore, because forcing a specific position is bad for driving fatigue, and thus not safe. Obviously, you should always buckle-up, but that's common sense. And stopping for yellow lights is a bad idea, but not awful, and you can be a decent driver and still do this.
Rereading how I wrote that, I was likely a bit overcritical there, but only a bit. If you're making sure you stop at every yellow (which is how I read the quote he's trying to say), then you're not doing what you just said.
And personal opinion, I think it's safer if you treat them as "If you can safely proceed through when the light turns yellow, you should." But I do agree that stopping safely when the yellow is that middle distance away where there's reasonable doubt is also reasonable.
My hypothesis has always been that it's because everybody compares their driving skills to what they think they are capable of, not how they actually drive day to day.
This could actually be "true", because the different drivers might be using different criteria for judging driving... Some people might say they're a good driver because they can hold their car in a drift as they go round a roundabout, others might say they're a good driver because they haven't had an accident in a decade because they just stick to the middle lane or 40mph. Both of those would say they're better than the other one ... and would be able to justify it to an extent.
I needed 20 years of ALL kinds of situations in driving until i thought i was above average. That included car and motorcycle racing, motorcycle and car crashes, drifting, mountain camping with trailers, even old tractor driving you name it... If you just drive to work all your live you suck at driving. Probably don't even know what your vehicle is capable of.
Mine used to be really good, but I haven't needed to drive daily for over nine months. It's crazy how quickly that skill fades. I drove to see a movie and had to do a three point turn for every parking garage ramp and a seven point turn to get into a spot.
I also killed the engine at a red light turning green trying to start too quickly and lifted the clutch too hard, but the clutch on that car is really damn worn, that probably would have happened to most drivers.
Seems possible that this is true. I wouldn't be surprised if 1 in 8 drivers account for the overwhelming majority of accidents and tickets...making 88% of drivers better than the average.
It’s actually possible if the drivîng skill distribution is skewed. Like way more than 50% of people ear’ les than the average salary, due to very high salary skewing the salary distribution, biaising the average way above the median.
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u/xenosthemutant 1d ago
Fun fact: 70% to 88% of drivers consistently report that their driving skills are above average.