Other things they need to ban in driving:
Shitheads who refuse to use turn signals. Not shoulder checking. Not Leaving a gap. leaving your high beams on. Not Getting to the side for emergency vehicles. Doing multiple lane changes all at once.
These are already not legal but too many drivers do this shit. No one is reinforcing it.
Looking for excuses to Turn off your brain just cuz your foot is on the gas pedal should be when you have your licence taken away.
Shoulder checking isn’t even necessary. People just don’t set their side mirrors correctly. If you can see your own car in your side mirrors, they’re incorrect. Or I guess I should say inefficient for what they are trying to accomplish.
Setting those properly would do a lot of people a lot of good.
Edit: I should clarify, I’m assuming shoulder checking meaning looking back, beyond 90 degrees to look backwards. Most people do this to check the “blindspot”, but this basically doesn’t exist if mirrors are correctly set. You still need to check the immediate sides of the car.
Blind spot is in all cars back passenger side window. It’s so well known that it is taught to avoid that spot while riding a motorbike. Refusing it exists makes you all that more dangerous behind a murder machine.
I absolutely do not understand that diagram at all… How can you have a blind zone where you can literally turn your head 90 degrees and see?
Motorcycles are a bit different, in that I’m always extra careful if I see them around since they are small. I can’t speak for all cars, but in both of the ones we have, I can see a car smoothly exit my rear view mirror into my Sideview mirror with a bit of overlap and then as it is exiting the side mirror I can see it with my eyes and my head turned, with a bit of overlap. There’s literally no place to hide.
Also your comment is pretty rude, painting me like I’m some invincible road warrior who just merges with no precautions because I’m so confident that my mirrors are right that I merge hard enough to kill someone. I still signal, wait several seconds, merge slowly, and remain aware. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.
With properly adjusted mirrors to create a continuous field of view, motorcycles are visible. Car has “blind spot” detection but is completely useless. The vehicle it claims is out of my view is in fact. Your diagram is actually incorrect as well. The passenger side mirror is angled too far inward. It’s a pretty poor diagram because I certainly don’t have any issue seeing motorcycles no matter where they are.
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15131074/how-to-adjust-your-mirrors-to-avoid-blind-spots/
The blindspot absolutely exists with mirrors. It’s just bigger or smaller depending on vehicle size.
I don’t know what to tell you. In my car I can see a motorcycle that approaches and passes from the rear view, then the rear and side mirrors, then the side mirror, then the side mirror and out my window, then out my window as they pass. I literally never lose them for a moment between these 3 visibility areas.
I drive a pretty sensible car, so I can imagine this is more of an issue with large trucks, but I simply do not have an area that I am completely blind to.
I was recently proposing regular drivers re-tests as a solution.
My teen has already developed some bad driving habits, like we all do, and is focused on not doing them during his upcoming driving test. For example, what if he fails for driving a little too fast?
Similarly, maybe if people had to think about their bad driving habits and risked losing their license if they slipped back into them, maybe it would help reinforce safer havits
Everyone is blaming older people, yet as I’ve seen older people approach the point where they should no longer drive, they limit themselves before anyone else does. That older neighbor driving to church once a week may be slow but they’ll probably be ok.
Meanwhile, it’s the people who have no physical/mental impairment who blow through stop signs and rights on red, who speed excessively, who drive drunk, who text and drive, who drive trucks bigger than they can keep in the lane, who can’t park between the lines, who rage drive ……. There are a lot of dangerous drivers who have nothing to do with being elderly, and many of these behaviors are more likely to cause injury/death
The highest group for liability are actually teenage boys
The risk of motor vehicle crashes is higher among teens ages 16–19 than among any other age group.
It’s so much so that insurance companies know to charge the highest risk group statistically
Women tend to pay less for car insurance than men. And it should come as no surprise that young drivers pay the most. Age correlates with driving experience and the risk of getting into a car accident.
If anything, speaking statistically, people are probably the least accident prone in their 50s-60s if they were good drivers all their life.
The high car insurance rates that young drivers pay start to go down at age 25. You’ll get the best rates in your 50s and early 60s
The idea someone gets lisenced once and never retests for decades is absurd. Road rules, car technology, bad habits, and health issues all may change drastically over that time period. Regular retesting would be expensive but should be done. Make the drivers pay for it and use it to reduce the subsidizing of roads.
Where I am in the US, there’s no longer Drivers’ Ed. class in public schools, and DMV road tests are so far behind that you have to schedule your test appointment two years in advance.
What stopped me from driving too fast, when I developed that habit, was the realization that my eyes and brain can’t process fast enough to prevent the worst possible scenario. A child runs out from between two parked cars? The 10 miles an hour between 25 and 35 makes all the difference.
This just makes me sad that the police won’t do what we actually want them to do.
I think the car has got so common and roads so vast that it is nearly impossible for the existing police service to effectively police the roadways causing a focus on the most extreme violations.
I passed a cop doing radar in a school zone the other day, average speed was 15 over and they didnt pull anyone. They probably still handed out several tickets for 20+ over in that zone but they couldnt ticket 80% of the drivers on the route as it was too busy.
