Wreckless driving...

G

Gabriel

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Would the woman driving the flashy BMW who pulled out in front of me this morning and forced me to make an emergency stop (whilst avoiding an OAP at the same time) and then just drove away please stand up?

I was happily motoring along this morning, over the mountains, to get to the far side of Knocklyon. There's a new estate along the road I travel. I'd say I was about 150-200 metres away from the entrance when she first stuck her nose out to have a look. 150 metres is quite a distance. At about 10 metres (I kid you not) she pulled right out in front of me. There was an elderly bloke walking towards me on my left and she was pulling out from my right. You know that feeling you have (I've had it once before) when you just know you're going to crash and you brace for the impact. All I could do was keep the car straight (to avoid the OAP) and brake as hard as I could. Do you think she even heard my brakes screeching to a halt? No no...she wasn't even in a rush to make it out onto the road. I've seen hedgehogs make faster turns.
I'd say I brought the car to a COMPLETE standstill about 5 centimetres from her back bumper. That's it!
Now...this woman has very nearly caused a serious accident. Do you think she'd stop and apologise...even a wave of her hand? Not a chance. I hope my leaning on the horn behind her afterwards and the fingers I so generously gave her made her think about the serious accident she nearly caused....but I doubt it.

I won't even get into the history of every near miss I've ever had...but needless to say there's been one identical factor (in the other car) in every instance. I'll leave that one up to your imaginations...
 
Gabriel said:
Would the woman driving the flashy BMW who pulled out in front of me this morning and forced me to make an emergency stop (whilst avoiding an OAP at the same time) and then just drove away please stand up?
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How do you know that she was an AAM contributor? :confused:
 
The worst thing about this incident which I have experienced is that the person doesn't seem to realise what nearly happened. Similar thing happened to me except she stopped moving onto the road I was on, I got past her and as there was no one behind us I crawled along about 15kph and made various gestures to her, she slowed behind me and eventually acknowledged her error. I was nearly going to stop and ask her what she was at, but I think she got the message.
 
Yeah Stobear...thing is she'd have to be really stupid not to notice me screeching to a halt behind her...aerated brakes making a thunderous noise.

I was so unbelievably angry afterwards I was close to overtaking her and forcing her to stop...but I thought better of it and just continued on calling her every name under the sun, flashing her with my lights and giving her the fingers a few more times.

To not even acknowledge this though is the height of ignorance. I hope she has a really crap day at work wherever she is.
 
Vanilla said:
So whats the common denominator? The BMW? Or the fact that she is a woman?
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At the risk of being berated by everyone on this board...the common denominator in over 10 years of driving is women.

Sorry if that offends anyone. That's been my experience. Actually, I tell a lie. Women, taxi drivers and the odd white van driver. They're the only drivers I have come across who make unbelievably wreckless or plain bad decisions whilst driving and never apologise for it.

It's not just the odd time either...it's regular...doing things you just don't do. Not having any road sense. Not understanding the concept of moving with traffic. Not understanding how to overtake parked buses. Putting on makeup whilst driving. Not watching who's behind them whilst pulling out of driving spaces. Not moving their car forward a few inches to let a fellow motorist turn into a road or driveway. The list goes on....

This morning must have been a special morning. This was one of three incidents I had. At one point - in Sandymount village, one elderly woman swerved from the other side of the road right in front of me so that she could park her car up on the kerb to my left. Never mind the fact that I was approaching. I had to brake (quite hard) to let her do this. Luckily after my earlier encounter I was prepared for anything...

Yes, I've seen men make poor judgements too (and I'm sure I've made a few in my time) but the difference is I raise my hand and apologise when I do.
 
Gabriel said:
They're the only drivers I have come across who make unbelievably wreckless or plain bad decisions whilst driving and never apologise for it.

...

Yes, I've seen men make poor judgements too (and I'm sure I've made a few in my time) but the difference is I raise my hand and apologise when I do.
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You seem to be contradicting yourself there - you say that only certain other classes of drivers make mistakes but then admit to making them yourself.
 
ClubMan said:
You seem to be contraicting yourseld there - only others make mistakes but you are prone to them too.
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No...no contradictions. The point I made in my first post was that what made me so angry was the complete lack of acknowledgement for the serious accident she'd very nearly caused. She just drove off.

I've made the odd error of judgement myself...nothing like this mind you. But in every instance I've made it my business to apologise in one way or other. It only requires a wave of the hand in most cases.

I realise that what most people like to hear is that there are bad 'drivers' out there (both male and female)...but I'm sorry, my overriding experience is that most of them are female. The errors they make are astounding and they rarely if ever apologise for them or even seem to realise what they've done.
 
Gabriel said:
but I'm sorry, my overriding experience is that most of them are female. The errors they make are astounding and they rarely if ever apologise for them or even seem to realise what they've done.
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Absolutely in my experience too. And anytime I'm driving with my wife, she is the first to accept it - we have a pretend bet going on for a few years now - anytime you see something blindingly stupid I bet a virtual fiver at odds of 1/5 that it's a woman behind the wheel. I am now virtually rich even at those bad odds.

Funniest one (and its not a myth, it happens all the time) is when a woman in front of you spots a bike on the left and careers over to the right hand side of the road to avoid the bike - oblivious to the heart trouble they are causing the oncoming traffic!

Don't get me started on traffic lanes - they're just nice designs on the road!

(Yes, accepted not always women, sometimes taxis, van drivers etc but the difference here is that they KNOW what they're doing!)
 
I think bad drivers tend to be women over 40 and men over about 55 and anyone who drives a BMW!
 
podgerodge said:
Absolutely in my experience too. And anytime I'm driving with my wife, she is the first to accept it - we have a pretend bet going on for a few years now - anytime you see something blindingly stupid I bet a virtual fiver at odds of 1/5 that it's a woman behind the wheel. I am now virtually rich even at those bad odds.
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A friend of mine is a sales rep and even she admits to me that "women can't drive"...she being an exception as she's quite good actually. And I don't mean to say 'all women' can't drive...but it's the ones who just have no concept of how to drive properly or make correct judgements that cause such heartache.

Incidentally, the swerving 10 feet to the other side of the road as they're passing a cyclist (or my favourite - when they slow down to a near standstill when passing one) is because they have no judgement of where the left side of their car is.
 
As a woman driver, who drives on average 400 miles per week, I sadly have to agree when I see something utterly ridiculous occur on the road it tends to be a woman driver.
A pet peeve of mine however is men and it is usually men
who drive so close to your bumper they may as well be in the back seat......You know they are thinking I have to ovetake this woman at the first available opportunity.....til then I will intimidate her so she will get out of my way.....
Ain't gonna happen if I am the woman driver.
And before anyone says it I will admit to suffering from an extreme form of raod rage.....
 
Male chauvinist theories...

Interesting that some men still hold on to the belief that more women than men are 'bad' drivers, despite the statistics clearly showing for example:

Car crashes are the number one killers of young men (16 - 25) in Ireland and driving at excess speed is the primary cause of these crashes.
Driver error was the cause of 81% of all fatal and injury crashes from 1997 to 2000. Male drivers aged between 18 and 24 represented (24%) the majority of these drivers.​
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and

The profile of the young driver most likely to be killed/injured in car crash is:


  • Male, 17 - 25 age group, licence holder for less than two years.
Many die in single vehicle accidents where speeding was the principal factor. Bravado, peer pressure and a sense of invincibility often leads young men to take risks while driving, without realising the dangers of these risks.
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and indeed

Drink driving is predominantly a male problem. Men cause almost nine out of ten alcohol-related serious and fatal road crashes.
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The above are taken from the National Road Safety Council website- www.nsc.ie

Of course, anecdotal evidence is so compelling....​
 
Interesting post. Essentially I think Gabriel is correct when he describes certain behaviours predominantly indulged in by female drivers. Of course male drivers have faults too. When you are overtaken by a driver doing 90mph on a blind bend/hill on a single carriageway so-called national primary road - guess what - it's a man. Similarly, when you're tailgated at a distance of 10 feet at high speed, yep, that's a man too! Or when you're driving in a line of traffic, carefully leaving the correct distance to the vehicle in front, guess who overtakes and slots into the too-small gap. Yes, that'll be the man.`

But back to the girls - I can only come to the conclusion that male and female brains are wired differently. Women do not seem to have as well developed a sense of spatial awareness - watch behaviour in a supermarket aisle. Two women will happily stop for a chat, trolleys side by side, oblivious to the geometrical fact that this blocks the aisle. It's like it doesn't even OCCUR to them that this might be a problem - witness the genuine looks of surprise when somebody says excuse me and tries to get past!

Women don't think (in a spatial sense) and are unaware of the consequences - men do, but are reckless as to the consequences. Fair summary?
 
Observer said:
Women don't think (in a spatial sense) and are unaware of the consequences - men do, but are reckless as to the consequences. Fair summary?
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Couldn't agree more. Men are dangerously stupid, Women are stupidly stupid. (At the wheel) :)
 
I presume that the Wreckless driving is a typo rather than a pun. I suppose it works either way as you managed to avoid her. :)
 
Good post Observer and spot on the nose on both counts.

High speed car crashes are what men/ boy racers are good at.
Compete lack of spatial awareness and general road sense is what most women tend to be bad at.

Vanilla, in relation to road deaths & crashes etc...yes, men (especially young men) are statistically more responsible. But that's not what I'm talking about...and as I said previously, in just over ten years of driving the vast majority of near misses (in day to day traffic - built up areas) I've had have been down to woman in cars doing incredibly stupid things.

That isn't meant to be chauvanistic...just my experience.
 
Well if we are coming back to anecdotal evidence, I still disagree. In my driving experience ( longer than yours ) I have not found 'women in cars doing incredibly stupid things' to be prevalent. In my experience both men and women can do stupid things in cars, but I certainly would not agree that more women than men do stupid things.

Indeed if you go down to the district court any day of the week and have a look at the list of road traffic offences, the names will, in the vast majority of cases, be overwhelmingly predominantly male.

So statistics show that young males cause most of the injury and fatal road traffic accidents, and you agree with that, and most drink driving offences are male, and yet you still come to the conclusion that women are in general 'bad' drivers when compared to male drivers? If thats not a biased view, then what is?

And by the way, I came across this definition of a chauvinist on the web:

a person with a prejudiced belief in the superiority of his or her own kind
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Could that be you?
 
Sorry Vanilla, I have no interest in arguing your experiences versus mine. They obviously differ.
If you want to call me a chauvanist then that's your prerogative. No skin off my nose. This is all anonymous after all.

I'm not referring to car crashes, deaths or drink driving.

I'm referring to day to day driving, in traffic. I do the vast majority of my driving between 8 and 10 in the morning and 5 and 7 in the evening. This is where I see most of the nonsense I'm referring to.

"a person with a prejudiced belief in the superiority of his or her own kind "

As for this reference, that's a bit sad really. When you sling mud like this it's difficult to get off...but a lot of people agree with me. Read back through the posts. Bamhan agrees...so does she have a "prejudiced belief in the superiority of his or her own kind"? Now I'm confused...lol!
 
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