A Day in the Life of a Driver

August 31, 2004

Time-lapsed freewayWhat’s with these dri­vers that feel they own the road? They either drive too fast, too slow and rarely a happy medium. It’s no won­der so many acci­dents occur dur­ing the day with peo­ple ignor­ing basic laws.

I’ve seen peo­ple per­form the fol­low­ing tasks while driving:

  • Put on makeup with their eyes dart­ing from com­pact mir­ror to rear-view mirror
  • Read­ing a book with one hand (or both hands)
  • Scarf­ing down Taco Bell and smash­ing the remain­ders on the wheel and
  • Per­form a mad dash attempt to pick up what­ever they dropped

It seems that most peo­ple believe they are par­tic­i­pat­ing in an Indy 500. Have you ever expe­ri­enced some­one attempt­ing to out­run you while they merge on the free­way? Just the other day I left plenty of room open for this guy in a black beamer and he still felt the need to drive at my pace, then speed up and because of this he gets cut off. Of course he speeds up in front of me, cuts me off from the side and then angrily honks his horn.

Believe me, I have road rage. When some­one cuts me off and puts my life in dan­ger it upsets me, but not when it’s a sim­ple mis­take. Most of the time some­one isn’t pay­ing atten­tion, which is under­stand­able since my vehi­cle was issued a spe­cial invis­i­bil­ity fea­ture. At the click of a but­ton I can make my Corolla cloak itself just like on Star Trek.

Thus the rea­son why peo­ple rarely see me on the road. 

5 comments

Believe me, I have road rage.

Ditto. And it’s only because every­one else on the road seems to be from another planet, mak­ing U-turns in the mid­dle of an inter­sec­tion, pulling out directly in front of my vehi­cle, and other idi­otic actions.

You’d think after sev­eral years behind the wheel we would improve at dri­ving, but that cer­tainly is not the case; every­thing is down­hill from 20.

Oh, and don’t get me started with the soc­cer moms dri­ving their tanks and talk­ing on the phone dur­ing the entire dura­tion that their in transit.

I’m con­tem­plat­ing get­ting a red auto­mo­bile for opti­mal visibility.

by Mike on August 31, 2004 at 4:31 pm. Reply #

I’m con­tem­plat­ing get­ting a red auto­mo­bile for opti­mal visibility.

Believe it or not, I used to own a fire engine red Ford Focus. I can’t tell you the amount of times I was tailed by cam­pus police and cops in general.

As a fel­low designer you know the power of the color red. One of the psy­cho­log­i­cal cono­ta­tions with red is anger and it demands attention.

by kartooner on August 31, 2004 at 4:43 pm. Reply #

You def­i­nitely don’t want to drive here in the trop­ics. Add to all of the point­ers above a gen­er­ous por­tion of pothole-ridden roads (even high­ways), slow-ass trucks dri­ving on the fast lanes, clue­less morons that cross-walk the high­way in front of you doing 70, tar-spewing gas guz­zlers from the 70’s, and absolute con­tempt for any phys­i­cal and psy­co­log­i­cal dam­age on others.

On the flip­side, if some­one can drive here and live to tell it, you can get around pretty much any­where — nuff said.

by beto on August 31, 2004 at 7:47 pm. Reply #

beto: How about dri­ving through the rain for­est? Also, if you can drive here in New York (the burbs, not the city) or if you’re from Cal­i­for­nia, you can pretty much drive anywhere.

by kartooner on August 31, 2004 at 8:07 pm. Reply #

Good story.…but are you High?.…cloaking abil­i­ties are only avail­able on Fords, Rangers to be specific.

by Dad on September 1, 2004 at 12:44 am. Reply #

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