Is there any hope for me?
Yes, public transport.
Is this a European joke I’m too American to understand? /s
As an American living abroad I can honestly say I don’t miss being required to drive everywhere. Haven’t owned a car in six years and there’s like 2 times a year I need a car so I just rent one. Way cheaper that way.
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You can still take a taxi I’m sure, may just be more expensive than this guy’s insurance premiums.
Yes, there’s hope. Stop driving a car.
The insurance agencies really need a way to recommend the government take someone’s license when they’re a public danger like this.
Well they do give them a strong incentive to stop driving.
They only give them a strong incentive to stop driving legally.
And this is the problem. People who have their license suspended often drive anyway. Sometimes they have to in order to get to work because the U.S. has a shit public transportation system in vast areas of the country.
Taking someone’s licence also gives them a strong incentive to stop driving legally
My state doesn’t require insurance to drive.
Of course sir, you’re new low cost car insurance policy is right through this door over here … 🔒
Give insurance companies the will power to say no im not going to insure you. And then cap insurance rates. and by cap i mean no insurance should be more expensive than the rate new drivers are allowed to be charged.
Where i live insurance rates have a discount for being a good driver. Goes up each year to cap at about 40percent. This is tied to your liscence not insurance.
Increase that discount for good drivers and make sufficiently bad drivers unable to be insured.
Keeping people like this off the road is one of the biggest reasons why every place needs robust public transportation systems.
Sounds like my wife’s asshole cousin who has been in so many crashes and totaled so many cars at this point that he’s had his license taken away and has to get around Indianapolis on a scooter. And he’s in his 20s.
I remember the day at a family function when the roads were icy him bragging to us about how he made it down to the function doing 80 on icy roads and sliding around everywhere but didn’t crash. Seriously, he was bragging about it as if it made him Mario Andretti.
His dad is a doctor, so I’m guessing he was paying that high insurance for quite some time, but no longer. His dad also bought him a Cadillac which, obviously, he totaled. I love his dad, he’s my GP, but he has a big blind spot when it comes to his son.
doing 80 on icy roads and sliding around everywhere […] bragging about it as if it made him Mario Andretti.
This, at best, makes him kinda okay at Mario Kart.
But even that game forces you to give up if you crash too many times.
It’s one of many reasons I can’t stand him.
The fact that his voice has two volume levels, secretly mutter something offensive and shout at the top of his lungs no matter how close he is to your ear, makes me hate even going to her family’s functions.
Has he ever considered becoming a park ranger?
Are they in the habit of muttering offensive things and yelling in people’s ears?
It’s a Parks & Rec reference:
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bragging about that is like bragging about negligently discharging a gun in a crowd of people and miraculously, nobody gets hit.
I wouldn’t put that past him either. And I hope he doesn’t have any guns, but I have a feeling he does and I have a feeling he’s pointed them at people as a “joke” before too.
probably didn’t exercise trigger discipline when he did, and who knows whether it was loaded.
Suppose i should probably put up my premature simpsons “vision” and say that he is going to get fucked up some day.
I was actually surprised at how recent the bike infrastructure was in downtown Indianapolis so using a scooter to get around would not be bad in downtown at least.
He’s in Greenwood. Less bike friendly.
Bro needs a bus pass
So best case for someone like this: don’t drive. Get other people to drive you, use public transportation, get a bike, etc. But this is probably America and that is 100% not possible everywhere. Or even most places.
There is another option: State-Owned High-Risk Auto Insurance. These are insurance plans owned by individual states. Because US states all require auto insurance to drive a car and because driving a car is goddamn necessary in a lot of America, this exists.
It’s VERY expensive. Like when I was looking at getting good coverage for 2 newish cars I was staring down $500/6mo. Our state’s high-risk was $2,000+. But it exists for people like in the post who are just too expensive for ordinary insurance companies to want to insure.
At this rate I bet it’s cheaper for them to Uber everywhere.
No way. Even just commuting assuming $20 each way (cheap for rush hour) that’s $4,800 every 6 months. Probably 2-3 times as expensive as the high risk insurance.
The post said they had been paying $500 a month ($3000 for six months) and it went up with every accident. When you factor in gas and maintenance (let alone deductibles for all their accidents), ride share services might well be cheaper.
$4,800 every 6 months is only $800/month. The OP pays $500/mo on insurance, let’s say $100 on gas a month, that’s only $200/month payment on the loan for an old used car. Car ownership is expensive, but it’s probably more common for the car payment to be $500/month and insurance to be $200/month. This doesn’t even factor maintenance
Where on earth are you getting insurance for 2 cars for $500/6 months? I’m middle aged, drive a 10 year old car, and have a perfect driving record, and mine’s about $100/month. I’ve priced the same level of coverage with other companies and that’s pretty much what all of them offered.
Eta: I’m literally asking. I have no loyalty to my current company, if I can get it cheaper, I’m out.
That was a few years ago. But I have the same coverage and cars for $580/6mo. BTW it’s cheaper to pay all at once usually.
But our cars are compact and subcompact about 9 & 10 years old. We carry 100/300/100. It’s GEICO is MD but it was also about the same with progressive in FL. Only one of us has a perfect record, the other is still minor and rare.
So you may just live in an expensive state for insurance.
Totally possible. CO has gotten pretty expensive for everything. :/ It may still be time to get some other estimates again, though.
I’m in a similar position, middle aged, clear driving history for about 15 years, car’s an '18. I pay ~$450 every 6 months with Progressive. Paying the whole amount up front gives me a good discount. If you can’t do that size payment at once you can pay with PayPal credit and it should be no interest for 6 months so you can get the discount and still pay monthly.
I need to check on whether I get a discount for paying all at once. I’m finally at a point where I could manage it but I have no idea what it would save.
Ooh, just checked looked and nope, USAA gives me $16/month off for autopay but no pay in full discount. Lots of pretend discounts for other stuff but that just puts them around what other insurers would charge anyway. What a rip off.
I live in the Netherlands and now pay €188 a year. It’s just a “wa” insurance meaning if I hit something they pay the damage of the other’s, but not mine damage.
I drive a car from 2009 and have 10 years of no damages. So if your willing to move to the Netherlands wait 10 years you can lower your payment. (Not really a option I guess)
Farmers
2003 Subaru WRX and 2001 Toyota MR2
250 bodily injury per person
500 bodily injury per accident
100 property
Comprehensive and collision on the MR2.
Total is 494.50/6mo
I legitimately don’t get people who can’t drive. It’s actually ridiculously simple to not break the law or get in an accident. I’ve never had a ticket or been in an accident. Closest was I slid on ice and hopped a curb once, but there was no damage at all because, get this, I was driving slow enough for the bad weather conditions :0
It’s actually ridiculously simple to not break the law or get in an accident.
Driving a car is absurdly difficult, incredibly dangerous, takes only a second of distraction to kill yourself and others and in general is such a nightmare that it is contrary to what you say a miracle that people aren’t crashing into each other all the damn time.
Like, everybody I have gotten in a car with for the past 10 years invariably will get stressed out significantly by the unavoidable chaos of driving enough to visibly become emotional about it even during a short drive. Driving is miserable.
I can agree with some of your response to what was said by the other commenter, but my impression is that person was shocked that someone at a young age has been involved in double digit accidents that mostly sound like their fault. Some people really just are incapable of driving, though that shouldn’t diminish that small lapses or true accidents do happen.
I would disagree that driving in general is miserable, though I’m sure this can vary by location. While i would prefer better access to efficient public transit (live in the USA), being able to get in a car and go anywhere is pretty freeing, provided it isn’t during high volume times, especially on a freeway.
i have never been in a serious accident. over 30 years driving, probably 2/3 of it in major metro areas with notably terrible traffic, and i have had maybe 5 fender benders… i would have to really think about it.
driving is absolutely dangerous and terrifying. but wow, it’s kinda nuts that the person in the screenshot has had so many accidents!
I can totally understand, and that makes a lot of sense. I think the sheer volume of accidents in the post are what’s so shocking. I’ve only been in a vehicle with an obviously reckless driver two times (so far. And to clarify, two people, once each), and from my perspective, some people really shouldn’t drive. Heck, one of those two times was supposed to be a casual date (she was picking me up, we were in college), and i asked her to drop me off immediately. Big nope.
being able to get in a car and sit in traffic anywhere is pretty freeing
Fixed that for youuu
That’s why i added not high volume times, so what i meant was regarding specifically driving when you aren’t stuck in traffic. I’m suggesting that the act of driving itself isn’t normally a horrific experience, though yes, sitting in traffic is awful.
Edited for some clarity
Driving a car is absurdly difficult, incredibly dangerous, takes only a second of distraction to kill yourself and others
Yes and no.
It seems that most people are falsely convinced (or even peer-pressured to some extent) that you must drive at the speed limit or even above it. But you actually don’t have to. You must adjust your speed for weather conditions, road conditions, traffic intensity, surrounding safety infrastructure (or lack of it) and your skills and current condition.
It seems that learning how to choose your speed is missing from most driving courses worldwide. Sometimes, road maintenance provides some advice on that, for example in France you have different speed limits for wet/dry road. But in other cases drivers ignore that guidance - sometimes highway speed limit is lowered due to lack of hard shoulder or animal fences but very few people understand that and most just ignore the limit.
And then there’s your own condition - if you’re tired, slow down, your kids are crying in the back, slow down, you’re on new road, slow down, have a gut feeling, slow down!
What you’re describing is actually mostly a case for driving too fast for given conditions. Even if you’re not speeding but you can’t read and comprehend signs, road, other cars, pedestrians and navigation - you’re driving too fast, slow down.
So I think both your and OP’s comments boil down to attention. As long as you remember essential driving rules and pay attention to road, surroundings and those rules it’s difficult to cause an accident. But if your attention is slipping then it’s a slippery slope.
And if you observe that you often struggle to pay attention to one of those things, you should review your actions and skills and apply necessary corrections.
Driving is easy in a way that it’s schematic and there are not many rules compared to say aviation. But it’s not mindless! You must think about your skills, capabilities and your state of mind and act according to those. In aviation pilots do thorough risk assessment before and during flight, and drivers should do that as well. What makes driving easier than flying is that when you identify the risk as too high you can just slow down or stop.
So to summarise. For God’s sake SLOW DOWN! It saves lives.
Driving is easy in a way that it’s schematic and there are not many rules compared to say aviation
I just don’t agree with this, flying an airplane has got to be harder in a lot of ways but one way in which driving is more difficult is the the amount of things you can hit while driving and how easy it is to hit those things.
The entire point of an airplane is to get up into the sky so it doesn’t have to worry about hitting other things when it goes fast…
In terms of regulations, there’s a ton of laws that private pilots must observe.
In terms of situational awareness, I would say in some cases driving and flying are comparable. When flying VFR you are responsible for the separation from other aircraft and for navigating. So pilots need to look outside to stay away from others and look on map/ground to stay away from restricted airspaces, which gets intensive in busy airspaces.
I’m sorry not hitting another flying object in an absolutely MASSIVE three dimensional space that is 99.99% empty is a trivial task next to driving through a busy city in essentially a two dimensional space (you can’t go above or below to avoid hazards) with high speed traffic going the other direction only inches away, abrupt requirements to stop when something pulls in front of you, a dizzying variety of cars, pedestrians, bicyclists and other hazards to keep track of and the constant pressing need to ALWAYS be ready to brake or steer violently in order to avoid crashing.
Also when air airspace does get relatively congested like say at an airport, there is usually a tower full of people who’s job it is to route traffic so all you have to do is follow their directions and communicate effectively. You don’t have to make instantaneous choices like someone trying to get to an exit across 5 lanes of busy highway traffic that isn’t letting them in.
Let me put it this way, with an airplane cruising on a level flight path, how long could the pilot let go of the controls and ignore the environment around them before they hit something? That is a difficult question to answer, it could be 10 minutes… it could be more (assuming the aircraft can maintain a cruise speed and level flight). With a car, the answer is simple, it takes no more than 3-5 seconds of ignoring the environment around you and letting go of the controls to hit something. At highway speeds the difference of a second or two can determine if you collide head on with another vehicle at a combined velocity of 120+ mph.
An airplane pilot rarely is put in a position as risky as driving a car unless they are acting extremely irresponsibly. The rules of flying set out to make it so the pilot ideally never needs the kind of split second reactions that driving requires on a day to day basis (except for perhaps during landing).
The numbers support my claims too, flying is BY FAR AND AWAY safer than driving a car. It isn’t even close, driving is by the numbers extremely dangerous compared to everything else we are required to do in order to live our lives.
I never said it didn’t suck, but it only sucks because other people are terrible drivers. It isn’t absurdly difficult at all unless you’re incredibly incompetent.
I never said it didn’t suck, but it only sucks because other people are terrible drivers.
This is the least important reason driving sucks is because other people aren’t perfect at driving. The reasons driving sucks:
-1. There are wayyyyy too many cars on the road
-2. In order to try to solve 1, the entire landscape has been devoted to facilitating more and more cars which makes it depressing as fuck to go anywhere because where you are going is functionally the same as where you came from.
-3. Owning a car is absurdly stressful, massively stressful so everybody on the road at a minimum is stressed about making sure their car doesn’t fall apart and they can’t get to work.
-4. People spend massive chunks of their lives sitting in cars commuting to work for almost no reason, highways are filled with people everyday stopping and starting, stopping and starting over and over again in traffic using fossil fuels to move several thousand pound objects miles and miles all for nothing.
It isn’t absurdly difficult at all unless you’re incredibly incompetent
-5. This bring me to my last point. Just because it isn’t physically difficult to press the gas and brake pedals on a car and use the steering wheel doesn’t mean driving is easy in the slightest. It is one of the most difficult things human beings have ever been expected to do on a daily basis in terms of extreme life ending consequences for losing attention or control for only the briefest of moments. It isn’t hard to drive a car compared to say riding a horse, but driving a car is so mind numbingly frustrating and exhausting in modern life that there is a good chance one day you won’t be paying attention when that freak rare situation occurs and you need to respond instantly in order to not hit another several thousand pound object hurtling towards you with fragile humans inside (not to mention humans everywhere on the street, barely an arms length from your metal box traveling at lethal speeds).
Driving is extremely difficult, look at how stupendously self driving cars have failed to tackle the challenge even when we created AI opponents that can easily beat the best Go players in the world years ago. The fact that wayyyyyy more accidents don’t happen all the time is actually pretty incredible in terms of the daily volume of sustained, unbroken focus it takes from every single person driving to prevent more crashes.
You think this because you were desensitized to it as a child riding in the car and then a teenager who learned to drive early on. My wife is from a large city where they don’t drive and she only learned as an adult and is basically paralyzed by how terrifying it is half the time.
unless you’re incredibly incompetent
Also, an accident is just a matter of time / miles. You can be the most careful driver in the world and a car can pull in front of you on the freeway and come to a dead stop. You’ll hit them from behind and the insurance company will blame you.
I legitimately don’t get people who can’t drive.
Setting aside folks with serious disabilities, folks with long term mental decline, folks with mechanical difficulties, folks with rambunctious kids in the back seats, folks in neighborhoods with high speed limits and generally unsafe driving conditions, folks who have to drive through inclement weather, folks who don’t regularly maintain their car’s brakes and tires, folks who drive cars that have poor visibility (big trucks, particularly), and folks who just never learned rules of the road before getting a rubber stamp from a DMV that does not give a shit…
It’s difficult to understand why other people don’t drive as well as I do.
One sec. Sorry. Banging this out on my phone while driving and I had a whoopsie-doodle. Let me clean this up and I’ll finish my post.
Ok so obviously if you have a medical condition that makes you unsafe to drive, you shouldn’t drive. If you don’t maintain your car that’s entirely on you. If you choose a car with poor visibility you’re purposefully endangering everyone around you so you shouldn’t drive. If you don’t understand the rules, you certainly shouldn’t be allowed to drive but that’s a whole separate issue.
Not everybody has a choice or an option, there are so many places in the US where the place you live absolutely necessitates the use of a car to do literally anything related to living your life. Living in places with actual transit infrastructure that allow independence from cars are sometimes too expensive or have high COL’s
Yes I’m well aware, I live in one of those areas.
Yet every fucking “car forum” is just filled with people who believe that it is their God given right to do 100mph+ on every highway, and that if you slow them down they are then justified to aggressively weave in and out of traffic.
Practice just going the speed limit. It is liberating.
Let us accept that these people exist. They are one of the many reasons walking, biking, bussing, and train riding should all viable as main modes of transportation. If your town is too small for a train, leave that out. If it’s too small for a bus, leave that out. Ain’t nobody’s town too small for good walking and biking layout and design. We did it naturally right up until we got hooked on cars.
I totally agree and fully encourage people to not drive whenever possible. Most of the truly stupid drivers won’t do that though
I was actually thinking more in terms so that the rest of us can avoid being on the road with these morons, but getting some of them off the road would also help.
Some people have zero spatial awareness and/or an inability to judge speed and distance – their brains just aren’t wired for it. They can be perfectly normal in every other way, and some don’t even realize (or are willing to admit) it’s a problem.
Yep, and we should have driving tests that actually are challenging so people like that don’t get a license.
I don’t have the gross motor coordination to safely operate a car. I could probably drive one remotely with a controller, but I can’t make the full-body motions needed to press pedals and steer with my arms at the same time.
I was obviously not referring to people with medical conditions. The average able-bodied person should be able to safely operate a vehicle without causing an accident.
I haven’t driven in decades. It’s something I’m terrified of. Luckily I’ve lived in dense urban areas so even well before Uber/Lyft there was always plenty of public transit and cab stands everywhere.
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I believe it. A childhood friend of mine had totaled like 7 (very cheap) cars by the time he turned 25.
After a particularly brutal crash, he was diagnosed with epilepsy after having an absence seizure in the presence of an ER nurse.
Hasn’t wrecked since.
Are you saying he drives better with epilepsy or that he hasn’t driven since?
He got medicated
I still don’t have an answer to either of my questions though!
Medication meaning the epilepsy is now effectively treated and he hasn’t had a seizure since.
If it isn’t a real story, there are plenty of real stories like it. There are just a disgusting number of people who are reckless drivers.
Almost no one in the town I live in uses their turn signals. It’s infuriating. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve almost rear-ended someone who suddenly slam on their breaks in the middle of an intersection and turn off. I also live in a subdivision with no sidewalks and a speed limit of 25 mph. People are regularly walking their dogs and kids are everywhere. I see people flying down the curvy subdivision roads doing at least 50.
I’m amazed I haven’t heard about anyone getting killed.
A lot of it is also people who know they shouldn’t drive but have no other choice. In the vast, vast, vast majority of the US, if you don’t have a car you can’t even go to the store or get a job.
This is my partner. Has epilepsy, but no family, money, or insurance.
Ironically since they can only get part time work with flexible hours, they’re stuck in customer service, meaning when their hours get cut they have to doordash to make rent.
Worst part is if you did rear end them in that situation, you’re the guilty party for insurance etc.
Exactly. It both pisses me off and terrifies me every single time. And it happens at least once almost every time I drive. I honestly don’t understand it. I’ve never been in a place where so many people refuse to use turn signals.
Many people need a near death experience to teach them respect for the mass and energy involved in driving.
I had a bad crash over a decade ago where somebody ran into me at low-ish speeds. It was head on though, and it was more than enough for me to remember for life. I wasn’t a bad driver or anything before that though.
the best way to teach people how mass and inertia works in a car, is to put them in the passenger seat, get up to highway speeds, and then send the brake pedal to the floor.
They won’t be able to breathe.
There are the “Worst driver” TV shows. There are some real head cases in there.
Maybe you should learn how to fucking drive?
Pffft, that’s what the insurance is for, so they don’t have to learn.
Makes me wonder how having a personal driver would affect premiums. Does the owner of the vehicle pay it? Does the driver? Do both?
Depends who owns the car or who has the loan out against the car. If you own the car and hire the driver, you insure the car and put them on the policy as the primary driver.
Huh. I’ve never thought of that, and it’s a really good question. I’m guessing there may be some kind of “I own it, but don’t drive it” group within insurance that deals with it, or maybe be kind of shared responsibility between the two.
Skill issue!Not everyone has health good enough to drive car safely. Or drive at all.Then don’t fucking drive. 🤦♂️
Never thought I’d take the side of an insurance company.
My suggestion would be to:
- Move to a place where not driving is a viable way of getting about. If you already live there, great!
- Get a lifetime transit pass and consider getting a bicycle
- Ditch your car and never look back
From the amount of accidents they have had. Maybe start with walking and see how that goes first before getting anything with wheels.
Yeah, I was about to suggest an e-bike or e-scooter. But probably better to just walk or take a bus/tram/metro.
at least with a bike the likelihood that they get into a fatal accident is incredibly more apparent.
And hopefully they realize it.
Lifetime transit what now?
Easy, just move to Luxembourg.
https://www.marketwatch.com/guides/moving-services/cost-to-move-out-of-state/
Average cost of moving out of state - $4000-$12000
https://fortune.com/2024/02/01/emergency-1000-expense-most-americans-broke-debt-bankrate/
Less than half of Americans can currently incur a $1000 expense right now
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I got quoted $840 a month for insurance. Clean accident history. Insurance is bullshit levels of expensive.
How old? What kind of car?
At the time it was a 3 year old Scion IQ.
That does seem very high o.O
Just a tad.
Damn. I managed to get basic insurance for like $75/mo but it’s one where they require you to install a tracking app on your phone for the first month that gives you a higher rate if you accelerate or brake hard. I just drove like a grandma for a month and uninstalled it after.
Yeah I pay ~1k now for all the cars in the house for a year. No tracking app. 3 cars.
I’ve noticed that some insurers give insane “fuck you” quotes for no reason. I had Progressive under my parents since I started driving, and when I got my own insurance, it was around $500/6 months through them. I wanted to get other quotes from some other insurers and the rates were absolutely insane by comparison. Like, $500-800 PER MONTH. I have no idea why they were so much more. I know there are loyalty discounts and such, but I don’t think they’re going to be ~85%.
Car insurance generally hates young adults. I paid through the nose for 6 months of crap insurance through progressive than immediately jumped to a broker who got me a lower rate on better coverage (and actually knew what the right amount of coverage was) and they’ve consistently got me more coverage for a lower rate ever since. Granted some of that probably comes from my aging out of that high risk 18-25 bracket but still
I totally get that, but what I don’t understand is why Progressive was so reasonable compared to literally everyone else for literally identical coverage. It’s like for whatever reason they were the only ones who didn’t care I was in that <25 age bracket.
That’s a pretty typical rate except for comprehensive for an entire year
This was a month.
As your attorney I advise you to buy a bus pass.
How tf do you even get a water bottle under the brake pedal?
I imagine they’re one of those people who just have piles of trash in their car sliding around the floor and probably dashboard too.
It’s only got one post but !carbage@lemmy.world
It can be done. I drove Uber part time and a group of girls in the back decided why not drunk water bottle fight. One rolled under as I was going downhill. That is up there with one of the most terrifying moments of my life.
I used the emergency brake and stomped the foot brake as hard as i could multiple times until it was crushed then fished it out.
I no longer drive Uber part time.
Drunk girls are the worst.
Wait till you hear what drunk men do
Emergency break? You mean parking break?
pedals have this thing where they have space behind them, and if you have no concern whatsoever for safety and yours, and others lives, then you can just slap a water bottle on the floorpan in front of you, and when you brake, that water bottle can roll forward and get caught under the pedal. Leading to restricted braking ability.
So, basically, he had one accident per year. And he is not smart enough to understand that the universe is trying to tell him “Don’t drive a car, then!”
I mean “don’t drive a car” isn’t always an option, especially if you’re in America.
From a certain accident rate upwards, it is. Anywhere.
Nah, people here just drive without a license. I really wish that wasn’t the case but it’s kind of inevitable when so much quality of life here is dependent on driving.
If you’re lucky enough to have people to support you that can really mitigate it, but unfortunately we’re not all so lucky.
