I’m open to the possibility that it’s just me being more aware/sensitive to how people are driving around me too. And I’m not necessarily talking about drivers I have to interact with myself but just seeing what people are doing in general.
Maybe a little more irrational and chaotic, haven’t noticed much change in aggression or rudeness. Just more impulsive decisions, like switching lanes at the last moment. Just today I witnessed a near collision between three cars who were all abrubtly switching lanes simultaneously almost into each other.
As you age you’re likely slowing down, becoming more timid, and as a result of that are becoming an obstacle on the road for people to avoid instead of being a part of traffic. This perspective shift will make it seem like other drivers are being more aggressive than before, because to you they probably are.
Drivers were definitely more aggressive and dangerous 20 years ago than now where I live
I think it’s a combination of fallout from the pandemic and BLM protests.
During the pandemic traffic disappeared. If you were one of the unlucky few who still had to go on-site to work, the first thing you noticed was there was no traffic. What was a 1.5 hour commute previously was a 45 minute commute during the shutdown. When people started driving again it was like they all forgot how to do it.
Regarding the change in driving habits, the most dramatic example I’ve seen is people crossing the double yellow line to pass cars. I never used to see that, but it’s almost routine now. I’ve seen people do it in areas where they can’t even see oncoming traffic. Crossing over into the other lane to pass 20 cars sitting at a red light. It’s insane.
Apart from all that there’s also so many more people with their eyes glued to their phone when they are driving. You see someone swerving all over the road for miles, and if you get close to them they are always looking at their phone.
EDIT:
Re BLM, in some cases police policies directed officers not to get involved in traffic stops. In other cases, I think butthurt cops decided if they weren’t allowed to abuse brown people, they’d just refuse to do anything.
Wow such slander, this had nothing to do with BLM dumbass.
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It would be libel, not slander (slander is spoken, libel is written).
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Who would be the target of this alleged libel?
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People on their phones at red lights is insane. And then they have the absolute fucking nuts to look at you in the mirror when you beep at them for almost missing the entire turn arrow, like you’re the moron. Blows my nuts off. I gotta get out of the city, man.
I’m at a point where i’m glad they use the phone on a red light.
People ALWAYS say that drivers have gotten worse since [date] or that [my-local-area] drivers are the worst. I remember people saying this 30 years ago.
I am aware that pedestrian deaths are up in the US, which can be attributed to phones and vehicles increasing in mass. Other than that, let’s see the data.
The same thing happened after 9/11 and lasted for months. People were stressed, upset and angry and it really showed up in their driving.
We now have the Republicans and their malignant narcissist glorious leader who are actively destroying this country. Medical costs, housing and grocery prices (among other things) are completely out of control and keep getting worse while Trump claims affordability is a “hoax”. Nearly eradicated diseases are surging again and children are dying. Our food has become unsafe to eat. Screw worms are infecting our cattle and humans are next. We’re in a war that was completely unnecessary. The dotard in chief is literally shitting his pants, hiding in food carts and has no idea what to do. Nero isn’t just fiddling while Rome burns, he and his ilk are smearing shit on the walls and actually lighting more fires.
People are naturally stressed, upset and angry, and it’s again showing up in our driving.
What makes this worse is they actually don’t have the humanity to care because to them you’re just “poor people”.
Actually, JD Vance calls them unhumans in his writings. they don’t deserve human rights because they aren’t human
Since 2020. Covid broke a lot of brains. Once people started driving again, it’s like they forgot (or rejected) all the rules. Bad behavior that I rarely saw, like blatantly running red lights, aggressive driving, using turning lanes as passing lanes (even through intersections) went from rare to daily.
SO many people are GLUED to their phones at all times now, too. Every red light the 1st place car sits at the green until someone honks because they just CANNOT STOP DOOMSCROLLING.
I am a technology evangelist and I have been since I was quite young. I’m addicted to my phone. I admit using it while driving on rare occasions to like change to the next song or something, or adjust Waze at a red light. But dude, come the fuck on what are people DOING??
The red light situation is insane since then. People would always push it a bit here and there, but now i routinely see people with a red fly through an intersection after people with the green light have already entered the intersection. Social media has convinced simpletons that because they see “movies” of their own life on their devices that they have plot armor. And it will take a serious accident to make them learn otherwise. Its frightening as fuck to share the road with people like that.
Reminds me of an old joke:
My car was in the shop, so I asked for a ride to the grocery store from my neighbor. He agrees, no problem, and we’re off. The first time we come to a red light, he floors it and we dart through the intersection. There’s a cacophony of horns and squealing ties, but we’re unscathed.
I whip around to him, wide-eyed, and yell, “What the hell are you doing?! That was a red light!”
He smiles and says, “Don’t worry, I watch my brother do that all the time. No problem.”
I try to argue, but he keeps doubling down: “Never seen my brother get hit. Everyone just stays out of the way. It’s totally fine,” as we fly through one intersection after another, ignoring seemingly every red light in town.
Finally, mercifully, I see us pulling up to a green light. I reassure myself that we’re almost there, and I’ll be home soon.
But as we roll up to the green light, my neighbor slams hard on his brakes. The car behind us lays on their horn and skids to a sharp stop right behind us. I’m white as a ghost as I turn to my neighbor and demand to know why the hell we stopped at a green light.
“My brother could’ve been coming from the other way.”
Yup. I saw this twice this week, the first happened at a 4 way stop and everyone took their turns until one car just followed the car in front of them, knowing people will still be paused. The fucking gall of someone to not only skip the line, but blow a stop sign to do it. 4 way stops I’ve found to be the worst at seeing this kind of behavior.
The second was someone I work with, apparently. Not someone I know but they clearly work on my shift. Our building is right off the highway and I took the offramp to it and waited at the red light. Nobody was coming so I started to turn right on to the road toward work. Then I look left again and there’s a black Dodge ram going easily 45 in a 30 just to slam on the brakes mid turn, halfway into the intersection when that light was red. I pull up behind him and the lights for the side street had just turned yellow, and this cum stain blows the red were stopped at early at full acceleration. Only to turn into the western parking lot of the place we work. The stupidest part of this story? We were 40 minutes early.
Using turning/bus lanes to cross intersections is something that I see that went from rarely to daily. It drives me crazy since they usually try to force their way back in to the lane once they cross.
I sometimes see people with their phone on their steering wheel while on the highway (in the US). People just don’t give a fuck anymore and it’s terrifying
You’ve an uptick in this type of behaviour coupled with a decline in enforcement.
You can go to countries where there are no traffic rules being enforced at all, but there’s not the same wanton disregard for life that I see daily on US roads. Recently was in Houston and you couldn’t pay me to live in that hellscape of entitled drivers.
It might be the age of most drivers around me but they all forgot how to use turn signals, how to merge onto a highway, what a yield sign means (hint: it’s not stop) and how to anticipate that they need to merge instead of waiting until the last minute and creeping into the other lane.
And just about every time it’s someone in a Subaru driving like they were beamed into a car and don’t know what they’re doing there.
Oh, and just about everyone comes to almost a complete stop to make any turn.
Yeah. And people honking as soon as the light turns green. I got a dollar says the people that honk like that are the same people running reds making me not go when the light goes green.
There’s a lot of people clearly using red lights as opportunities to check their phone. If I can see a phone in their hand when the light turns green, I’m honking immediately.
When I was younger and had a larger vehicle, if someone honked at me less than a second after the light changes, and especially if I had my foot going for the gas… Well I hope you like sitting still because I’m now hitting the brake instead, and we would sit for another light cycle.
While I probably wouldn’t do that nowadays, I’d be sorely tempted to brake check.
Someone being slightly rude to you justifies you screwing up the flow of traffic for everyone?
Or the fact that No and mean almost no one moves over for emergency vehicles on the side of the road. Did fucking they stop teaching that in drivers education?
I just had a dude cut me off by barreling through three lanes of traffic with no blinker and then brake check me through the right turn in an intersection only to go ten miles per hour under the speed limit on the next street and hog the left turn lane.
Fuck cars. Fuck unsafe drivers.
Hell yes, since the pandemic, it has been nuts. Especially how they behave in parking lots.
I have noticed an uptick in the behavior that when you are backing out of a spot, people are more likely to speed up to get by you than stop and wait. When I can’t see what traffic is coming, I back up slowly until I can see. Recently, I had one guy honk to let me know he was going to speed past. Thanks, I guess?
It’s difficult to discern if it’s statistically significant. Perhaps these are people who always back into their parking spaces due to automated parking on more vehicles. Maybe they have lost their empathy for people who back out of spaces. Meanwhile, I have to guess what they are doing and then wait for them when they suddenly stop and back up towards me to get into a spot they had driven past.
Unless its a pull through spot, this is why you always back into parking spots. Its been this way for much longer than the time frame OP is talking about. Parking lot driving has always been a Mad Max experience
That’s a sure fine plan until you need to load something into your trunk or truck bed. If all you’re transporting is your own two butt cheeks, it works fine.
That said, I waddle my bike backwards into parking spaces because it ain’t got reverse.
The city I live in had 15 pedestrian deaths from cars as their previous record, this year we are up to 40.
Cars are rapidly increasing in size and weight, decreasing their visibility, and people wont get off their phones. I do also partially believe that covid hit cognitive function and that tough times are making people antsy and angry too.
The thing that is pissing me off recently is that when people stop at a light with wayy too much room in between their car and the one in front of them. I think it is a byproduct of many drivers not being able to visualize how large their car is Like seriously, most people leave enough room to fit an extra car or two at the stopped light. Imo it contributes heavily to how many cars can actually pass at a green light, and it makes traffic so much worse.
Counterpoint:
The last time I was rear-ended, I was in stop-and-go traffic going uphill. Every time I moved a few feet and stopped, the car behind me would pull right up to within a few inches of my bumper. It was driving me crazy.
Sure enough, the person behind him hit him, then he hit me.
The rule from the book when I was teaching my kids to drive was: You’re supposed to stop when you can still see the where the rear wheels of the car in front of you touch the street. If your good obstructs the view, you’re too close. If you can see street between your car and their tires, you’re too far.
I don’t trust the ass hole behind me to use there breaks and I’m liable if you push me into them.
Not really. It sure can feel like it when you run into one, but people have been shit at everything since forever.
I wish I lived in a first world country who could provide reasonable public transportation so I didn’t have to deal with driving for EVERYTHING in my life.
Yes, because police stopped working after Antifa demonstrations in 2020.
Either way they get paid.
I think the older we get, and the more we know how things “are supposed to go” we notice more when things don’t go that way. I usually try to chalk it up to people that are inexperienced, elderly or not local. But there will always be people that are dicks because they can
