Re: Motorcyles, cars, American driving sucks

[George Rath <lxl@dnai.com>]

Igor Kessel wrote:
> 
> will gadd wrote:
> 
> > While Canadian driving has problems, people still often pull to the right
> > shoulder to let other drivers pass; I've yet to see this happen anywhere in
> > the US. Nope, the American driver feels compelled to maintain full use of
> > the widest lanes on the planet at all times. I live in the US but drive all
> > over the world; I often come back to the US after a trip to Europe or South
> > American with the distinct feeling that I've entered some sort of weird
> > game in which the object is to drive lard-fed cars poorly at low speeds
> > while doing everything but actually looking at the road (cell
> > phone/doughnut/coffee cup/radio/hairdryer/lottery
> > ticket/newspaper/shaving--I've seen all of these things in combinations of
> > up to three).
> 
> Man, were you reading my mind!?
> 
> Igor Kessel
> '89 200TQ
> 18psi-TAP
> '97 A4TQ
> on order

Just an other side: my friend from Ingolstadt (yes, exactly
Ingolstadt!!!)
visited me last year. He is (not all the time, but sometimes he "uses"
this profession) an examiner in the local (in Ingolstadt) driver school.
I would say, he is not an authority - but his opinon about the German
vs.
American driving has some weight.
He told me, that the drivers here (we drove in the Bay Area and in
Nevada)
are less nervous and less agressive, than in Germany.
My father (from Hungary) told me the same. Accoding to him, the
Hungarian
drivers are freaks compared to the drivers here. He visited me a few
times -
twice in Connecticut, twice in California. We where in NJ, NY, PA, RI,
MA,
VT, CA, NV. I have a Hungarian travel guide - and the author expressed
the
same opinion.
True, both my father from Hungary and my friend from Germany agreed, the
U.S. drivers seems to behave more silly than the drivers do in Europe.

The guys with "ego" you have to watch in one place are who drive a new,
big and mean Merc/BMW/Audi/Volvo OR the guys who drive a Trabant. Both
kind of drivers try to prove somewhat:
  a) "My car is way better than your shit, go away"
  b) "I am a better driver - see - I drive a shit, but can pass your
Merc"

In th other place the guys you want to watch for aren't the same. The
Yugo/Pinto/old junk drivers have no ego. The Merc/BMW/Audi/Volvo/Lexus
drivers have no ego as well. (Ones are happy to go from A to B, the
others
are happy to enjoy their car). The ones you watch for are the big and
mean
pick-up trucks and SUV-s driven by rednecks. You can/may argue with a
Trabbi or Merc driver - you don't want to have even a brief contact with
a redneck. Don't forget: Timothy McVeigh is nothing else, just the
ultimate
"development" of a redneck. (We tend to call them in Hungary or Germany
just
plainly "fascist" or "nazi")


George