Tuesday, January 09, 2007

People Who Drive White Cars

I think I must have taken a grumpy pill this morning, and I don't care if I get accused of being carist. The fact is, some drivers suck.

Survival on the roads relies on one's ability to form an almost instant stereotype view of other drivers according the the make or colour of car they're driving. Here's a little list, not complete, so add to it at your leasure...

White Cars
What is it with people who drive white cars? Why are they always doing 20kmh less than the speed limit? Why are they oblivious? I really don't know the answer. I just know that people who drive white cars are really really bad drivers.

BMWs
Arseholes. The lot of them. Arrogant and pushy in that childish nouveau riche "look at me, look at me" sort of way.

Ferrari Drivers
The universal law of inverse proportionality applies here... and those Ferraris seem to have very big exhaust pipes.

Taxi Drivers
Oblivious, and they own the road. Oh? They Don't? Really?

Greenies Driving Really Old Cars
Saving the environment, apparently, means keeping your old car until it disintegrates around you. It's belching acrid smoke, burning twice the fuel as something with a little more technology under the bonnet (hood) and dropping oil all over the road that, the next time it rains, finds its way into the eco-system you're trying so hard to protect. Doesn't matter. You're making a stand against the evil, wasteful consumerist world we live in.

Volvo Drivers
What more can I say. The stylist might have moved in since Ford bought the place, but a Volvo driver is still a Volvo driver.

Old Men In Hats
Is driving so much more confusing now than it was back when radial tyres were still on the drawing board at Goodyear? Or is it just that, as soon as you put a hat on INSIDE the car, it somehow has the same effect as putting a phone up to your ear?

Young Chicks With Mobile Phones
Here in Oz, it's illegal to use your mobile phone while driving (unless you've got the hands free thingmy). That doesn't stop pretentious 19 year old femmes in their little Mazda 3s that daddy gave them for finishing high school. Talk, text, drive fast, change lanes, talk some more. They're proof that natural selection doesn't work. Stuck up little bitches.

Idiots Who Panic In Tunnels
A few years back, someone in Sydney decided that we should put our freeway system underground (and then charge a toll so that it's not free). Come on people... the speed limit in here is 80... can you give me any reason why you're only doing 50? At this speed, by the time we get to the other end, I'll have died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

People With "Magic Happens" Stickers
The only magic likely to happen around this lot involves the piece of crap they're driving actually making it safely to wherever they're going.

People With Ixtheus Stickers
If you keep driving like that, He's not going to save you, and while you're keen to meet Him really soon, some of the rest of us aren't so sure.

The Best
By the way, the best drivers in the world are in LA. You have to be good when you're heading South in the HOV lane on the 405 at around 6 on a Friday night at 70mph, and you're off at the next exit. Those 6 lanes of traffic you have to cross make life worth living. For readers unfamiliar with LA, they used to have a "High Occupancy Vehicle Lane" (I think it's gone now... maybe someone there can tell me). "High Occupancy" = Driver +1, and I'm sure that on the Hollywood Freeway, your dog counts.

The Worst
The worst drivers in the world are in Manilla. NFI. Nothing more to add.

Here?
Sydney drivers aren't bad... actually, they're pretty good. They have to be to navigate their way through the mess we call a road system. I know there's a piece of cheese at the end of the maze somewhere, and one day I'll find it.

Perth drivers, though, seem to think lane choice is a life commitment. Changing lanes isn't in the driving paradigm. You're just going to have to wait until the driver returns to his parked car. Sometimes, Perth drivers have been known to wait days.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

This rant is practically word for word my personal chauffer's rant whenever we go for a drive. You forgot taxi drivers though, those gods who "own" sydney streets.

Chester The Bear said...

Bad driver stereotypes are universal, and your chauffer is obviously a man of great worth and integrity.

Matsby said...

I love this. This is the kind of thing I swear about and then my wife says "but not everybody in a white car drives slow!"

Women...

Chester The Bear said...

Gatsby, tell your wife she's WRONG (in the nicest 'no need to sleep on the couch' kind of way, of course).

Everyone who drives a white car drives slow. It's one of the immutable laws of the universe.

Since I wrote this piece, I've been held up behind white cars as though they'd all read my blog and said to each other "ok, if that bear thinks we're slow, then lets show him what slow really means".

I'm not imagining it. EVERY time there's been someone driving too slowly to get through a set of traffic lights, or driving at 50 in the 80 zone with 2km of traffic banked up behind them, it's been a white car.

Bah!