Driver
You’re a great driver.
You’ve been doing it since you were a teen, and have had remarkably few accidents, and do it every single day. To be frank, you’re pretty awesome.
You suffer the bad drivers every day and you know you’re not like *them*. They swerve unexpectedly into neighboring lanes, they brake too long then accelerate to tailgate, they mistime lights, they pass on the right, they turn from the straight-only lane, and go straight in the turn-only lane. They read email or text or do their makeup or shave or pick their nose. To be succinct, they’re idiots.
None of this for you. You’re a solid driver. Sober, calm, alert, consistently responsible. Except for the times you choose not to be, and then you’re still in control, just more adventurous. Because you have the talent to drive faster than you do, to weave harder than you do, to take that offramp just a little faster. You know that your talents are mostly unrecognized. You bear this understanding with saintlike modesty and gentle good humor.
Which is a good thing, because you’re not all that great. Sorry, but no.
Your talents are mostly unremarkable. You’re probably passable in your abilities. You drive *okay*. In all liklihood, you’ve received lucky breaks from other drivers when you did something stupid you didn’t even realize you were doing. Like that time you were changing lanes and didn’t see that car in your blind spot, the car you were going to hit were it not for *that* driver seeing what you were doing and slowing down? Did you know she saved your ass? No.
There’s a normal delusion many - maybe all of us - suffer from. It’s called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. What it posits is that those of us who have the lowest intelligence and competence in a given domain most overestimate our own intelligence and competence in that domain, and those with the highest intelligence and competence underestimate our own abilities. When it comes to driving, we overestimate our abilities. Let’s look at why.
First, a forthright assessment of your experience. You don’t actually have varying driving experience. You drive to work every day, using the same route and the same set of 10 driving actions. You change lanes in the same place every day, you exit at the same speed every day, you know the timing of every street light. It’s not a challenging drive. It’s not pushing your capabilities to their boundaries. It’s so rote that you have, on occasion, found yourself at work in the morning with no distinct recollection of your drive from that day. You do it on autopilot.
Now don’t get me wrong, this is a great thing. Consistency and reliability are great for your longevity and your insurance rate. But it does not make you a great driver. You are, by training and practice, somebody who is going to get to work in one piece almost every time. But that training and practice has also made you quite unfocused and unprepared for the unexpected. When the piece of shredded truck tire gets kicked up by the car in front of you, or when the pothole pops the bead on your front tire, you won’t be ready for it. It’ll scare the crap out of you and at that moment, your smooth resolve will crumble and you’ll shriek and swerve and possibly lose control and generally respond like the amateur you are.
Second, the dim recollection of your wild times as an immortal teenager won’t help you now. No longer available to you is the muscle memory of drifting your car around blind country lane corners and getting air on over-crowned cross-streets and weaving through tight traffic from one closing gap to the next. If you tried any of that in your sober front-wheel drive sedan, you’d end up with body damage and insurance points. If you tried any of that in your midlife-crisis twin-turbo sports coupe, you’d end up with deployed airbags, frame damage and a new insurance company.
Finally, the driving you do in your dreams does not count as actual experience. The vicarious driving you do when watching movies or television does not count as actual experience. You would not do well in a James Bond scenario, and would come out of that kind of encounter much more like “henchman 2,” who is dispatched in the first 30 seconds of the big 5 minute chase sequence. Your car does not respond like an Aston Martin Vantage, nor does gripping the wheel of your boss’s A8 sedan that he writes off as a company vehicle turn you into Jason Statham.
So remember this next time you’re in traffic. Look into the car next to yours. Recognize that the driver there is probably about as good as you are: you’re both competently mediocre. However, if you both stick to what you normally do, and avoid indulging any *Top Gear* fantasy exhibition moves, you are quite likely to make it home from work today, and live to fantasize about the driving you’re not able to do tomorrow.
