defensive driving.

"Hey, you IDIOT!"

The Idiot didn't hear me, but I imagine he heard my car horn. I love my little Japanese sedan, but its horn just doesn't adequately express my rage. I was left seething that my life had been so needlessly threatened by someone too lazy to check his blind spot with only a wimpy little honker to express myself.

Everyone seems to think themselves a better than average driver. Statistically, this is impossible. By the same token, it is impossible for everyone to be a worse than average driver, but that one seems very likely if you spend any amount of time on the road. Maybe the average is just very low.

I am not a particularly good driver. I drive nine miles per hour over the speed limit, I talk on my cell phone, I fiddle with the radio, I eat, I mess with my hair, I sing and dance, and I've even been known to change clothes completely while driving (which can probably be distracting to other drivers as well). Given all that, I sound like an absolute menace. But I've never had a car accident. Just lucky, I suppose.

I had a friend who swore by the concept of defensive driving. As far as I can tell, this idea means that you can drive however badly you want to, but you have to be constantly vigilent for other people who are following this policy (or any other bad driving policy). I don't know that he would have defined it as such, but he was just another terrible driver who thought it was all everybody else's fault. It seems to be a rather arrogant concept the way he used it. Defensive driving: Because everyone else is an idiot.

I believe in defensive driving, too. There are idiots out there, and I've had to avoid letting them kill me. But you know what? Sometimes I am the idiot. Sometimes I pull out when I shouldn't, sometimes I don't check my blind spot, sometimes it's dark and rainy and I'm sorry, but I just didn't see the median. And sometimes other people have to compensate for my idiocy. The point of defensive driving is not really that everyone else is an idiot, but that we all have lapses. It's just karma - I'll save you from yourself this time so that someone else can save me from myself.

Defensive driving: Because we're all idiots sometimes.