DRIVING SKILLS NUMBER TWO: Not Trusting Anybody

DRIVING SKILLS, NUMBER TWO:  Not Trusting Anybody.

At first glance, my suggesting that you don’t trust anyone sounds harsh and cold, almost as if I’m saying that you should shut everyone else out and live alone in a cabin in the woods with only a squirrel and a raccoon as friends. But that’s not what I’m saying at all: I’m saying that you should never give any driver, pedestrian, motorcyclist or bicyclist the gift of your 100% full trust, because inevitably, that decision will come back and bite you in the butt. Here is why.

Before we go deeper into this, let’s do some defining. What does it mean to trust? Well, in a basic sense, it means that you can let your guard down around someone because you know that the person won’t hurt you or cost you something. This is exactly the kind of behavior I want you to avoid in a car. Not trusting anyone means not letting your guard down around other drivers, pedestrians, or riders, even if they look like they are as safe and as harmless as a white bunny rabbit in a grassy field.

Let’s look at some examples. What is to be feared from this driver?

Nothing, right? This is your standard minivan, full of a husband, wife, and kids, going along harmlessly to whatever their day has planned. You look at this, and this is likely what you think of:

And honestly, who can blame you. Minivans look so innocent, so dull, so incapable of causing problems. We think of minivan, and we think of efficient, safe people mover. But let’s look a bit deeper. What if that minivan above looked like this in the back:

Or what if the driver, instead of being a sweet, innocent, devoted mom driving her careful bundles of joy around, actually drove like this:

If the minivan in the first picture actually looked like the last two pictures, could you trust that driver to be safe? Could you trust that driver to not be distracted with kids having light saber fights in the back and mom trying to drive, text, and eat an ice cream cone all at the same time? Of course you couldn’t. The chances of that lady in the pic above  rear-ending a car at a stop light, or side swiping a bunch of parked cars because she was focused on her phone is very high. But you can’t see any of this from the outside, so how do you know?

Am I saying that the lady above is most minivan drivers? Of course not. Most minivan drivers are safe, careful drivers. I used the example of a minivan because of its reputation for safety. But there are a lot of drivers like here. Not trusting anyone means that you don’t trust a minivan just because it’s a minivan and it has a reputation as a safe and harmless car. No car is harmless when it’s being driven like it is by the woman above.

Another time people put their trust on hold is with elderly drivers, after all, how can a person like this harm anyone?

But what about this driver?

Can you trust that the lady in the picture above can see where she is going, and can drive in such a way that you aren’t in danger? Will she be able to stop in time when a light turns red, or when a car pulls out into the street without looking? Will she be able to see when she needs to turn, and make that turn safely? I personally wouldn’t say yes to any of those questions.

Again, this example was not designed to bash on senior drivers. Most of them have a wealth of knowledge and experience behind the wheel and are the safest drivers on the road because of it. But just like with minivans, when someone sees a senior citizen driving, they rarely consider them a threat, and that is what I find dangerous. There have been many times where seniors have gotten into accidents because they hit the gas pedal when they meant to hit the brake, or they couldn’t see where they were going and ended up hitting other cars or driving into businesses or homes. The bottom line, don’t trust anyone or anything based on an assumption of safety. No one and nothing is trustworthy when you are driving. Everything you see on the road can hurt you.

But does not trusting anyone mean that you hate everyone or look at them as beneath you or not worth your time because you have to watch out for them? Absolutely not. This philosophy of not trusting is simply a way of thinking that allows you to be ready for anything, and not to fall for stereotypes. To wrap this up, let’s look at one more picture:

Here we have what is undoubtedly the safest and most worry-free situation one could encounter: a bunch of happy kids, walking along, getting ready to Trick or Treat. There can be no more trustworthy situation than this, right? Well, what if the kid in the black hat (I'm assuming that's a hat, anyways, the kid in the black headgear, rear right!) in the background sees his friend across the street and runs out into the street to go meet him? What if the little cowboy in the foreground has his plastic pumpkin kicked into the street, and he runs out into the street after it? What if the little cowgirl in the foreground is told something mean by Dracula in the background, and runs home crying, crossing the street in the process? Can you really trust these innocent kids to stay on the sidewalk while you drive past them?

Hopefully by using these three examples, you have gotten what I am trying to say about not trusting people. What trusting anyone boils down to is basically an assumption that they will do what you think they will do when you are around them. But people are human after all, and being as we are ruled by our emotions and our desire to get wherever we can, as quickly as we can, sometimes people don’t act logically. Not trusting anyone means that you don’t assume anything of anyone, and that you are ready for anything, from anyone. When you drive past that minivan, you don’t assume that it’s safe; you drive past ready to take action to avoid anything. When you come across that senior citizen behind the wheel, you don’t assume they are safe because they are driving too slowly to be a problem. You drive by, ready for anything they could do. As you pass pedestrians of all kinds, you don’t assume they will stay on the sidewalk, but you are ready in case someone runs out.

Being ready is the bottom line of this article. This was not written to bash any group that was mentioned here, or to say any group mentioned here are bad drivers or bad people. The goal of this article was to get you used to the mindset that no one can be trusted, and that as a driver, you need to be ready for anything when you are behind the wheel. Until next time…