Starting a written piece with "I" is bad, but I have a confession to make. I'm a bad
driver. It's not often you hear that confession. It seems we are open for many things,
but not to being a bad driver. Why is that? Men (as an example) think they drive better
then women and vice-versa, using statistics from insurance companies to proof a point. A
point that is plainly wrong. I mean, I really don't believe on of either sexes is better in driving.
How many times have you been driving to work, home, for pleasure and not seen a single
mistake by another driver? We will always see another driver being in an accident, doing
something stupid, like forgetting to indicate, or worse, forgetting to look when overtaking.
Now if you are really honest, how many mistakes do you do each single drive? I for one
will speed - if only a bit - ignore stop signs (not coming to a complete stop), but mostly, we
will do things when not even thinking about it, the worst kind of thing in driving. I am sure
you all have those moments when driving that you think "how did I actually end up here?
I cannot recall the last mile of driving".
This brings me on to the subject of driver aids. Or rather, how driver aids make us
worse drivers. Because "lane assist" (a sensor detects that you go out of the lane
you're driving) might be a good thing in general, it does mean that we are apparently
absentminded when we need a help like that. Instead of thinking "let's take a break"
people will drive on after this reminder. ABS is a good help for braking, but the
general public simply brakes much later now. System fail, as was so nicely demonstrated
recently on television, which shows that we still need human supervision.
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/QJ6z3IArINI&hl=en_US&fs=1&" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/QJ6z3IArINI&hl=en_US&fs=1&</a>]]>But it goes further then that. We are so used to our superwide tyres (compared to those
on old cars) that we go around corners much faster then we would normally do. Only
yesterday, driving home, this was all to apparent. A driver of a Kia Sorento was driving
behind me. The section of road we were driving was very twisty, with lots of corners,
bushes on both sides and the road was rather narrow. Even though all that, the driver
was almost pushing me on my rear bumper to go faster, when doing a good 40mph. Even at
that speed, going around a corner, I could never stop in time when there would be an
accident around the corner. Let alone the man behind. In the event of a sudden real-life
moose-test, I would not like to sit in that car.
Technically the cars can do it, in most cases nothing will happen, but when it does...
We should all be driving in cars fitted with a big spike on the steering wheel. Just to
remind us that when we screw up, it will be just that. In stead, we try to make cars
foolproof and we will achieve the opposite. I think it was Jeremy Clarkson who said that
driving a classic car will make us better drivers, because with an old car, there is no
airbag, no crumple zone, no seat belts.
So there you have it: Driving a classic cars make you a safe driver. You can now go to a
party and exclame you're a good driver, because you drive a classic. As I do not, I am a bad driver.
