Gilda

My wife and I got into this discussion earlier tonight. Each of us believes that she is the better driver. It turns out that this is because each of us is applying different standards to determine what it is that makes a person a "good driver". My main standards are safe, law abiding, and courteous. Her main standard seem to be "ability to operate the vehicle safely in a high risk situation".

Here is the situation that prompted the discussion. She thinks I'm too timid behind the wheel. I am timid, but it's not something that causes me any harm. We went to a movie tonight, taking my car because it gets better gas mileage than hers. I got to the movie theater, and pulled into the left turn lane and signaled, and waited for traffic to clear enough for me to make my turn. Approaching from the other direction was a row of cars. They were going over a really nasty speed bump, which caused them to bunch up at the bump, then spread out a bit as they went over it. So I waited for the line of cars, perhaps a dozen of them, to all go past before making my turn. This irritated her, because, in her opinion, there was plenty of room to make the turn in between any two of the cars. The driver of the car behind me agreed with her; he began honking after the fourth or fifth car went past.

Grace was right as far as she was concerned. There was enough room for her to make the turn, and she undoubtedly would have done so. But she wasn't driving, I was. I was also right; there wasn't enough room in between any two of the cars that I felt comfortable making the turn, and it was only a matter of waiting a minute for them all to clear before completing the turn. I saw no reason to take the chance when, at worst, it was a minor inconvenience to wait a minute for it to be safe.

So I'm timid when making left turns; I wait until I have a nice, large gap to get into. I see this as absolutely harmless, but it irritates her because it's a "waste of time". I'd rather sacrifice time for safety.

This means waiting sometimes. If the light turns yellow, and I have room to stop, I stop. She'll try to scoot through on yellow. This gets particularly contentious at the light nearest our home. There's a left turn lane with a dedicated arrow, and no left turn on solid green. The left turn green arrow lasts about a second, then goes yellow and red. There's time for maybe three or four cars on green, but most drivers will go ahead and go through on yellow, making it so another three or four go through then. If the light turns yellow before I get there, even if only two or three cars have gone through, I stop. It means waiting maybe 45 seconds for another cycle, but that's negligible in the grand scheme of things, and again, I don't feel comfortable taking the chance.

I also require a much larger gap to change lanes on the highway than she does; I have on rare occasion missed an exit as a result of not being able to get into the correct lane to make a turn. Again, this seems to me a minor inconvenience, especially as I always allow enough time to get to my destination.

She does things that irritate me just as much, like driving 85-90 on the interstate (speed limit 70 around here), and generally driving a lot more aggressively, taking turns hard, going through intersections on yellow, not coming to a complete stop at all stop signs, making left turns into gaps half the size of some I'd let go by, and so forth. I see this as risky behavior.

I've said in the parallel parking thread that I can't park going in backwards, but with my car it really isn't necessary, and in that way, she's the better driver. I also can't drive a stick, but both of our cars are automatics, so that's entirely irrelevant in our case, but I will concede that she drives a stick better than I do, as I can't.

However, I've never been in an accident while driving, and I've never gotten a ticket. She's been in two accidents and gotten three moving violations in the four years we've been together. I believe that this indicates that, despite being more timid behind the wheel, that very quality makes me a safer, and thus, better driver. Her contention is that because she's more "assertive" (I'd say aggresssive) and takes more chances, she's better prepared for an emergency. This might make sense if it weren't for the fact that I have no accidents, and she has two.

So, what makes a person a good driver? What criteria should be used to determine this?

__________________
I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.

~Steven Colbert