Crash Course - Things to Avoid

After living in your general surroundings you usually begin to see patterns in how things function. The same thing applies to when you're driving. People have certain ways of driving, certain personality shifts when they're driving, and their cars themselves can indicate how their driving will be. I've been a passenger and driver long enough to evaluate how somebody will drive just by looking at their car. The same applies to understanding what type of people will be in the area I'm in.

Crash Course - U-Turning

When I think back to when I acquired a driver's permit and was required to drive a certain amount of hours I somehow assume other people my age learned to drive on better vehicles. My mom's car at the time was a 1998(I think?)Plymouth Voyager. That car was a step up from the 80's Ford station wagon we travelled so many years in, facing backwards most of the time for myself. That's not saying much though when you consider it drove like a slug on a salt bed in the middle of summer. But, BUT, it had power steering. Where am I going with this? Well, dad mostly taught me how to drive, and most of the cars he drove didn't have power steering in them at all. Or if they did have power steering is was very limited.

So because of dad's cars posessing a congenital, abnormal alignment, or at least something of that nature, I had this assumption that most cars handled in the same manner. No, they don't handle that way. I've since learned to drive a regular vehicle.

Crash Course - Circles

When I lived in New York there were certain areas that had traffic circles for merging into different routes. Maybe it has changed since then, but from what I remembered as a kid they were nervewracking because they were commonly situated on the border of New Jersey, the state with exceptionally aggressive drivers.

The rules for yielding within these traffic circles was different for each state. For New York drivers, if I remember correctly, you yielded before pulling into the traffic circle. It was more cautious. And for New Jersey drivers they would rush right in and expect those in the traffic circle to yield for them. Strangely enough that's how people here tend to yield for anything, traffic circles or not.