Young Driver, Crazy or Pro?

[Ksa]

I am 31 y.o. and it happened to me so many times to drive with an older person, well in their 50s or 60s in the passenger seat and I noticed a weird pattern:

- On the highway, when someone is cutting off several lanes with signal on and speeding in between cars, they call them idiots, crazy, completely stupid and they don't understand what they're doing.
- On several occasions, on the highway or in town, especially when I'm passing a long trailer truck and moving between cars, some got scared to the point of wanting out, I had to calm them down.

From my vantage point, I can realize some drivers make sudden decisions and take some drastic actions, but I can certainly understand what they're doing and it all makes sense to me. To older people however, it's completely crazy, and they complain that more and more crazy people are on the road. This left me puzzled for a while, then I realized what may be the cause of this:

Older people, when they first drove a car in their young age, they had zero hours of driving simulation. For them, the perspective of moving landscape and objects was completely new. My generation however, when they first drove a car, they could have had up to 10,000 hours of behind the wheel driving simulation, thanks to games like Need For Speed or GTA, which allow them to do almost anything that's possible behind the wheel of a car, in a pretty realistic city environment with moving cars, people, buildings, traffic signs and everything else. They experienced every single thing that could go wrong from driving too fast and took direct corrective action within the game to avoid these situations.

It so happens that gamers who were exposed to these simulators are able to process a lot of information when driving a car. I know myself can process the position in time of over 10 different cars in the next 3, 5 and 10 seconds, which technically makes it very easy to move in between them and not hesitate in doing so. I also noticed that gamers always check their rear-view mirror, a lot more than older people, so they have a complete picture of what goes on behind, and in front.

Comment on this...

 

[nuttynutskin]

Basing real world driving to video games is probably neither safe nor realistic.

 

[alasdairm]

^ indeed.

...some got scared to the point of wanting out, I had to calm them down.

i guess it's possible that you're a really great, safe driver and your passengers just don't get it.

it's also possible that you're not the amazing driver you seem to think you are - you're just another driver who takes chances and is ego-driven. i know i'm a different driver when i am alone compared to when i have passengers. maybe you need to drive a little more defensively when you have passengers so you're not scaring the shit out of them?

alasdair

 

[thujone]

as someone who typically drives a very light, very low car i find most drivers way overconfident and flat-out disrespectful of others on the road. sometimes i drive a sedan or a van and it's remarkably easy to go twice as fast as i do in my tincan car and still feel like i'm moving at a safe speed, even though i'm going much faster and in a car that is twice as heavy and twice as slow to bring to a stop.

in a funny way all the safety features that have been added to the cars over the years have made drivers feel safer by putting more shielding between them and the road, but at the same time put everyone else at more risk by negatively affecting things like visibility and whether or not you can even feel the road through the steering wheel or the throttle through the accelerator. nowadays even driving a new coupe is a less visceral experience than driving a sedan used to be, it messes with your senses and judgment.

 

[beagleboy]

You have some very good points Ksa.
I have a Class A commercial drivers license ( 18 wheeler with air brakes ) and I am proud to be a real driver. The way you talk about gamers makes me think that you all have an addiction to the thrill and exhilaration driving gives you.

 

[Ksa]

i guess it's possible that you're a really great, safe driver and your passengers just don't get it.

it's also possible that you're not the amazing driver you seem to think you are - you're just another driver who takes chances and is ego-driven. i know i'm a different driver when i am alone compared to when i have passengers. maybe you need to drive a little more defensively when you have passengers so you're not scaring the shit out of them?

alasdair

That's a good judgement. I also drive a lot slower and a lot more softly when with a passanger, but I do not feel my safety has increased, in fact I feel like it has decreased because I have reduced my margin of maneuver in order to accommodate the passenger, and all my reactions first go through the proxy of "how is the passenger going to react to that" before becoming action.

Basing real world driving to video games is probably neither safe nor realistic.

Of course it's not, where did I base it? It also works the other way, if a well proven driver were to play GTA, it would look so hilarious the footage would be worth being put on Youtube and people would wonder, why is he not bashing the other driver on his head to take his Ferrari, it's way better than his own car?! Naturally that you can't compare videogames to reality.

What you can compare however, is how video-games train you to avoid imminent collisions. How often are you in an imminent collision situation in real life? While you may not be in a position to pass a driving test after playing Need For Speed, you will be in a decent position to dodge a head on collision, just by reflex, that a regular driver would not have acquired through experience, because they are not ever confronted with such a situation in reality, while a gamer is just about every minute. In fact, I can describe to you 10 or 20 scenarios where things can go wrong when driving into incoming traffic. You ask a proven driver, he will only assume, unable to picture what that would look like.

In fact, if you are in New York, driving into oncoming traffic and a car comes up in front of you, dodging that car through your right as opposed to left would improve your chances of survival, while in London it would be the opposite. That is because, when the victim driver faces the bully driver driving the wrong way, his instinct is to move into his lane, which is right lane in NYC and left lane in London. How about when 2 or 3 cars are facing you? These scenarios can only be tackled through video-games, I hope that clarifies it

You have some very good points Ksa.
I have a Class A commercial drivers license ( 18 wheeler with air brakes ) and I am proud to be a real driver. The way you talk about gamers makes me think that you all have an addiction to the thrill and exhilaration driving gives you.

That would certainly explain any un-necessarly sudden or imprudent action, if nothing on the road can warrant such action, the action can only be explained by the human factor, that's correct.

 

[TheAppleCore]

Basing real world driving to video games is probably neither safe nor realistic.

Yeah, but I think it's hard to deny that gaming exercises your spatial awareness, reaction time, and so forth. There's a reason the gaming industry has exploded to the point where certain spectator events attract more viewers than the Superbowl... and I believe that's because games are much more than mere escapism.

The way you talk about gamers makes me think that you all have an addiction to the thrill and exhilaration driving gives you.

I get a lot of driving anxiety, and treating it as a game is one of the only ways I can keep calm and focused in L.A. traffic.

 

[Ksa]

^ It's normal to have some levels of anxiety because after-all, your cock and balls are traveling 70mph and if you hit something you won't be able to tell the cock from the balls and they have no replacement option. There's situations like in Canada we have snow, ice and poor weather conditions during winter, driving on snow is never anxiety free for anybody because regardless of experience, you don't know where the ice is...and the laws of physics can hit any time.

I drive an Acura TLX 2016, 4wd with winter tires and although the SUV bullies who have the upper hand over faster vehicles during winter are unable to bully me, I can't say that I drive anxiety free...ice is ice and if you hit it you're fucked.