Intelligence and Driving

by Joe Schlockenblock
22/Nov/2002

If you drive a vehicle you are either one type of driver or the other. This essay concerns itself primarily with the other type of driver, the incomprehensively dumb, fucking moron who by all outward appearances obtained a license to drive through fraudulent means.

You know the type. In a jurisdiction where drivers are permitted to make a right turn on a red light the moron has several methods in his little bag of tricks sure to waste your time.

Consider the last-second-lane-switcher. You will be driving in the far right lane of a four lane road, you know, a road which has two lanes going in each direction. The last-second-lane-switcher moron will be forty or fifty yards ahead of you in the left lane.

You are both approaching an intersection with stop lights. The light is green, but a stale green and you know it will be red when you get to it. You intend to turn right at the light, a simple enough procedure for anyone with a shred of common sense and acceptable vision.

The last-second-lane-switcher moron in the left lane is in a position to either continue going straight or make a left turn at the intersection. Unable to read minds you don't know that this individual intends to go straight. This other driver fools you briefly by activating his right turn signal. You think he is going to turn right at the intersection too. But you're quite wrong. Far from intending to turn right this individual intends to go straight.

All he accomplishes by switching lanes is to ensure the lane you need to turn right from is blocked by his vehicle for the entire duration of the red light. You examine the environment to determine whether there was some condition you failed to observe previously that would have necessitated this maneuver but you do so in vain. There is absolutely no advantage to be gained by the other driver in occupying the right hand lane.

There is an effect though. You are now delayed. It's no big deal. It's only a minute or two that this individual has stolen from your life. However, when you consider the cumulative effect this idiot and all of his idiot cousins have had you will come to realize that you have, in your lifetime, spent months, maybe even years sitting behind some miracle of nature, the mental capacity of whom is so tenuous as to render controlling breathing and heartbeat extremely difficult and speech beyond a primitive grunt impossible.

"Half the people we meet in cars on the road have below-average intelligence, and 1 in 20 must be seriously retarded, with a mental age of 12 or below."

Taken from Definition of IQ

Some cities have systems of one-way streets with synchronized lights which, if you know the proper speed to travel at allow you to hit green lights all the way. One aspect of the one-way synchronized light system is that if you make a right or left turn from a one-way to a one-way on a red light you will usually get a green light at the very next intersection after your turn.

When Mr. Brain Surgeon last-second-lane-switcher holds you up for a full cycle of the red light you are usually in for an added treat in the form of another red light after you make your turn.

As if Mr. last-second-lane-switcher isn't aggravating enough wait 'till you encounter last-minute-lane-switcher-who-actually-is-going-to-turn-right-but-doesn't-make-a-move-until-the-light-turns-green even though there is no oncoming traffic within ten miles of the intersection.

While counting the seconds of your life as they slip away... one-steamboat, two-steamboat, ... six-hundred and fifty thousand steamboat.... you have plenty of time to speculate about the state of mind of the driver of the car blocking you. A few explanations seem to have come to occupy the top spots in my hierarchy of speculations:

1. The individual driving the car in front of you is high on LSD. People on LSD often hallucinate. This would explain the behavior quite well.

   The reason Mr. last-second-lane-switcher moves into the right-hand lane at the last second is because he thinks he sees a stalled car in the left lane and figures he'd better shift to the right so's he can slide around the guy. Or he thinks he sees a bunch of pink cows milling around in the left lane. Or maybe he thinks he sees a pile of crates right in the middle of the intersection and he will have to slide around them on the rightt. Any of these explanations are plausible.

2. You are living in the Twilight Zone. The car in front of you is occupying space-time in at least two separate universes. The one being shared with you makes his maneuver appear totally assine but what you don't know is that in the parallel universe there is a stalled car or a bunch of pink cows in the left lane or a pile of crates in the middle of the intersection.
3. The driver of the other car knows exactly what he is doing and being a devotee of the Dennis Leary "I'm an asshole" school of driving deliberately acts to piss off other drivers.
4. The other driver is just a fucking complete moron who acts and reacts without thought, reason or justification. This type of person doesn't really have a clue how to drive a car. Every time this person gets into a car he has to drag out the owner's manual to figure out how to get the damn thing started.

   Severely restricted in reading ability he somehow manages to read the relevant section of the manual, find his car keys, start the car and maneuver it into traffic.

   Exhausted from all of the previous effort his brain now shuts down. Driving along in some kind of delirium the moron now only reacts to minute stimuli in the same way one imagines a bug or a fly might react to the nerve impulse sent to it's "brain" by a reduction in photons hitting it's eye when a human approaches with a folded newspaper.

   Why does he keep doing the brake-gas agogo? Because he keeps on sneezing. Every time he sneezes he leans on the horn. When he hears the horn he automatically touches the brake thinking someone is honking at him.

   Why does he change lanes? Because his elbow is itchy. Taking one hand off the steering wheel to scratch the itch the side of the steering wheel with the remaining hand attached becomes unbalanced and the weight alone causes the wheel to turn.

   Why, when he is the only car in front of you at a red light, does he just keep sitting there after the light has switched to green? Because he isn't even looking at the stop lights. He doesn't know what they are for. He takes his queue from the vehicles around and in front of him.

   Like a new born baby duck, he just follows whatever he sees moving first... thinking it is his mother. If nothing around him is moving he just sits there waiting for something, anything to move.

   This person usually does start moving when the driver behind honks but this is easily attributable to the Pavlovian Stimulus-Response phenomenon. This guy always hear's someone honking at the same time he feels pressure under his right foot (I.E. whenever he presses the accelerator). Thus a honk is all that is required to get the guy to move.

   Why do some drivers turn left from the wrong lane? You know, sitting in the far right lane at a red light they make a sudden left hand turn crossing one or more lanes of traffic going straight ahead. The reason for this maneuver is somewhat complicated so follow closely....

   1. This is another maneuver of the new born baby duck type driver mentioned above.
   2. This driver has managed somehow to get just slightly ahead of the other cars on the street and has lost sight of any moving object to follow.
   3. The next thing he sees moving is a furniture delivery truck crossing the intersection slightly ahead of him (or the dog running across the street).
   4. Thinking the truck (or dog) is his mother he merely obeys his instincts and follows it.
   5. His real mother is sitting in the back seat white with fear but he doesn't know who she is. All he knows about her is some vague connection between her and the rolled up newspaper she keeps hitting him with.
   6. Why doesn't he know who his real mother is? Because she was there the first time he ever drove a car. The first thing he saw moving was his own father. After the funeral his mother resolved henceforth to remain absolutely still whenever sonny boy was around. She carries the rolled up newspaper as her only means of communicating with her son.

Warning to Parents

Teach your children to remain perfectly still whenever traffic is approaching. Above all NEVER buy one of those colorful plastic tricycles. These drive the new born baby duck type driver wild. If you have ever seen a car embedded in the wall of a house you will know exactly what happened there.

Other Fucked Up Driving Explanations

The Tailgater

There are several types of tailgater. First off, there is the obvious moron covered above. This individual isn't even thinking about the car two inches in front of him. This would involve a degree of mental abstraction our typical moron driver is incapable of. If you asked this guy what he would do if the car in front of him suddenly stopped his answer would be a sincere, "Gee, I never thought of that!"

Then there is the driver who thinks there is an invisible pressure zone two inches from the bumper of the car in front of him. This driver is in a hurry and when the car in front is not going fast enough he tries to make use of the pressure zone to give the car in front a little "push."

Finally there is the Real Important Purpose tailgater who is also in a hurry. While most of us become aggravated by the moron wasting precious minutes of our time, the Real Important Purpose tailgater is concerned with microseconds.

These drivers are usually employed by secret government agencies and when they are in a hurry they are really in a hurry, usually to disarm a nuclear suitcase bomb or save some politician from assassination. These drivers could also be trauma surgeons or firemen rushing to save lives, off-duty cops going for donuts or politicians late for a photo op. It could also be Marvin Caplan rushing to the scene of a person smoking in a bar.

These are the same guys you see a lot of on holiday weekends when there are a lot of nuclear suitcase bomb plots all over the place. You will be part of a long convoy of traffic traveling along a two lane highway and you will observe a few drivers overtaking at the risk of serious head-on collision to shave a few car lengths from their one-hundred or so mile journey.

A few car lengths may not seem all that important to most of us... until a nuclear suitcase bomb goes off.

The Fool Who Doesn't Know Cars Stop

This last is one who never seems to learn from experience. Though the roads are full of morons, parallel universe occupants, acid heads, last-second-lane-switchers, new born baby ducks and other perfectly normal drivers who have to stop their cars for various reasons or who are forced to stop by mechanical problems etc. the fool who doesn't know cars stop will always drive his car up to within inches of the car stopped in front of him.

Without the benefit of being able to learn from experience this individual is always getting stuck behind a car that has stopped in front of him. As a simple rule, if you always leave enough room between yourself and the car in front of you, you can always simply drive around anyone who unexpectedly stops or unexpectedly fails to continue moving etc.

The fool who doesn't know cars stop has never figured out this simple practice therefore he always finds himself having to switch into reverse to back up a few feet so he can finally get around the car in front of him that did the most unusual thing... it stopped. These fools really hate buses and taxis. Wonder why?

The fool who doesn't know cars stop is trumped by yet another dazzling intellectual achiever, the fool who doesn't know cars stop and who doesn't know about the reverse gear. This fool will just sit there for however long it takes before the car in front starts moving again, or he will lay on his horn hoping the noise will act as an incentive to alter the behavior of the car in front.

Avoiding Road Rage

We have briefly covered a few examples of idiotic driving often implicated in incidents of road rage. It was never our intention to be exhaustive in our exploration.

We did not, for example, cover the moronic Richter Scale driver who gets his jollies by installing a fully functioning earth quake generator in his car or the idiot who spends money on vanity plates that say shit like "born2shop" or "IBJAMEN" or whatever.

No exploration of this topic would be complete without a few suggestions for avoiding or mitigating incidents of road rage.

The number one piece of advice for anyone wishing to avoid road rage is simply this... don't drive. Don't get a driver's license, don't buy a car. Use buses and taxis. You will save money and be a happier person all around.

If you absolutely must drive consider buying a used army tank. This will solve most of your problems respecting the other idiots on the road. No longer will you run into the last-second-lane-switcher... you'll drive right over him. The baby duck following his mother? Oh, you mean that flattened piece of metal you just left behind you?

That asshole with the earth quake generator? If he so loves hearing hear BOOM, BOOM, BOOM you can use your cannon. If he wants a fucking earth quake give him one with it's own crater. Then you can feel kewl too.

Tailgaters? Get a second windshield washer system for your car only fill this one up with some corrosive acid and have the nozzels installed at the rear of your car so when you activate the pump the acid sprays toward anything following behind you. This will rot out the guy's radiator and other car parts giving you enormous satisfaction.

What about those assholes who are trying to turn into your lane from a parking lot or an adjacent street and figure it's OK nose out into traffic partially blocking the lane? Simple solution.... get some heavy steel balls and weld them to heavy spring metal rods. Install so they are re-tractable and can be controlled by a switch on your dashboard. When one of these assholes get's in your way you release the springs so the steel balls swing out like a cat's whiskers and do some damage to the asshole's car.

Even if you follow just a few of the suggestions included here you will notice an immediate improvement in your driving experiences. Lower stress, less delay and a much friendlier disposition toward your fellow drivers as well as a generally less complicated existence will become your faithful companion.

A Final Thought

The Cat's Whiskers can also be used when you come up behind some jerk riding a bicycle in the middle of the road. The roads are not for sharing with fucking bicycles. Whoever made up that fucking shit anyway? Where are you supposed to draw the line?

Should the roads be shared with pedestrians too? Even the moron politicians know the answer to this question, which is why we have sidewalks. If the roads are supposed to be shared with bicycles then where do you draw the line? Tricycles? Pedestrians? Motorized fucking wheelchairs? Hand powered wheelchairs? Drunks crawling home?

last modified:Wednesday,March 19, 2008 at 04:40