Driving is something many of us do daily. To and from work, to the store, going out somewhere, it doesn't matter where. Wherever it is most, people drive to it.
But how many of us are bad drivers?
There are a few things I've noticed on roadways; one is that everybody thinks they are a good driver. If anything dangerous happens on a highway it is always the other driver's fault. Second, driving is to travel what the Internet is to conversation: the anonymity of being inside a car and only interacting with other vehicles for a brief moment before being gone leads to incredible disrespect.
I haven't yet experienced road rage manifest itself within me yet. I'm pretty calm when it comes to driving, and getting angry about something probably impairs one's judgement behind the wheel as much as alcohol.
I have seen it in others and it's kind of a funny thing. People just believe they can do no wrong when planted firmly in a driver's seat, and when that's the mindset, people get angry. They become completely blind to what they are doing and so bothered by what others have done.
Anything that goes wrong, every close call, is because the other guy wasn't paying attention, not because I was toying with the radio.
Though I thought I was done with these forever, I recently took a fake driving exam on The Globe and Mail's website to see what I knew. I thought I'd take it to prove to myself what I already know: I'm the best damn driver in the world. There were 25 multiple choice questions, where a score of less than 21 was a fail. I scored 20, beating only 20 per cent of the other people who took the test that day before me. Something must be very wrong.
I still feel confident that rest of the world is safe with me on the roads. I did learn some things though, from my wrong answers, that may make me a safer driver.
Did you know that passengers can't watch a television screen while a vehicle is in motion? Every minivan in mass production since 2005 has been released with a DVD player that flips down for everybody in the back seat to watch. It turns out those can only legally be used while the vehicle is parked in the garage or for the 60 seconds the van is stopped at a traffic light.
I'm not sure if knowing this will make me a safer driver, but I will mark down the licence plate of every minivan committing the heinous crime of occupying children so they don't bother the driver. I will no longer be tolerant of that.
I also found that it's perfectly OK to slam on the brakes for no good reason. That doesn't even mean no good reason as in, I wanted to see what that funny sign said before I drove past. That rule means if driving down a freeway and somebody is behind you, slamming on your brakes is a completely acceptable driving maneuver. After doing so, I assume you have to continue on your way because surely there's a law preventing someone from parking in a lane on the Trans-Canada.
One thing I did know was how to handle myself in the dreaded traffic circle or roundabout. We don't have a lot of these in Canada but apparently I would do just fine in them. I answered correctly that drivers must yield right of way to the vehicles to their left. Only 45 per cent got that one right.
To make roads safer we all should take a humbling fake driver exam, just to prove to ourselves that we aren't necessarily the image of perfection that we see in the rearview mirror.
