It's interesting, well to me anyway, that rather than improving or demanding higher driving ability standards, we instead, demanded and got safer cars. That of course, leads to even worse drivers as people feel safe in engaging in even worse driving practices, ie, cell phones, makeup application, texting, eating, doing paperwork, reading, performing light surgery, etc. One could make a very reasonable argument that for all the wrong reasons, Lee Iacocca was right about making air bags mandatory.

What's that old saying about getting what we deserve?


JohnE

I'm a left foot clutcher

AMEN!

Been there, done that too...

There are many reasons most kids can't drive worth a darn. For one, a lack of open land and back roads - most kids grow up in the city or burbs ... no where to really learn. My dad gave me a car when I was 14 (all I had to do was get it running - took me nearly six months but I sure learned a lot about cars). My extended family had land and a bunch of teenagers with junkers to race around a dirt/mud track every weekend.

I invested in my son's safety with a very good local driving school (first day they did timed slalom runs) and some relevant experience I gave him. He is now 18 and drives a 5 ton plow/salt truck all night in Cleveland for decent money. I asked him how he got the job over older people with experience and he said the owner of the company told him the other applicants couldn't handle the truck.

To me, learning to swim, cook, shoot, drive, and the like (in the real world) are life skills that should be mandatory. Oh, wait ... they're all pretty dangerous. Insurance ... liability ... what am I thinking??? Nevermind.

Remarkably, they still get to learn all of those except drive in Boy Scout camp, although the do gooders are trying to get us to eliminate the rifles, shotguns, and archery range every year. (Some scouts do learn to drive in the camp pickup, depending on whether they are the ask permission first or ask for forgiveness later types... )

I learned to drive manual in a truck at a Scout camp. It was a great learning experience. I learned to ease into the gas and off the clutch, I learned what gravel does to an auto paint job, and the guy behind me learned not to pull up too close to an 18-year-old learning to drive a stick in a gravel lot.

Like everything else, it's because nothing is our own fault or responsibility anymore. All accidents are because of a shortcoming in the equipment, procedures, etc.

There's a little car I would love to own but getting one imported is a royal pain because it isn't available with air bags. The powers that be will happily let me run out and purchase a motorcycle but heaven forbid I be allowed something as reckless as a car without air bags.

</rant>

"we instead, demanded and got safer cars"

Actually we got more 'safety' features wich don't necessarially make safer cars. I've seen a lot of so called safe cars in accidents that were minor yet the passenger compartment was damaged and people hurt because solid frames were replaced with features such as air bags.

Some studies i have seen written up show that people tend to drive more carelessly in vehicles they think are safer. They pull out into situations they wouldn't when they were driving a car with fewer safety features.

In essence people are subconsciously comfortable with a certain level of risk. As cars get safer people subconsciously begin to drive more carelessly to maintain the same relative level of perceived risk.

It isn't a one-for-one trade off. Safer cars remain marginally safer even with people intuitively balancing their relative risk. But there is a definite buffering of safety gains as people correct by driving like there were bulletproof. Increase the relative safety by 10% and you only see perhaps a 3% gain.

Alone these lines I'm dubious about what sort of gains left-foot braking gets you. I will give you good odds that if you think you can react faster that you probably following closer. Even when you think your not. Such is the way of the human mind.

Also I have profound doubts as to what the extra fraction of a second of earlier braking, assuming you get any real benefit after you subconsciously normalize for perceived risk, gets you. If another tenth of a second makes or brakes your ability to avoid an accident I think your following too close and cutting your margins too fine.

IMHO split-second timing has a place on a racetrack but, humans being humans, most people on the highway, including myself much of the time, are not tuned in and tuned up enough to reliably work with that precision. Highway driving is mostly long hours of bone numbing boredom. Interspersed randomly with very short periods of life threatening danger. It is the transitions from routine to desperate that gets you.

Driving on the highway I try for a steady two to three second following distance. On the highway I try to deal in complete seconds. Doing that the fractions of a second take care of themselves.