Americans don't know rules of the road

[protias]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Americ...213013421.html

Twenty-seven percent of women failed the test, while males had a failure rate of 13.6%. The oldest drivers tested -- ages 60 to 65 -- had the highest average test scores at 80.3%.

[yellowcab]

And you are surprised by this?

[protias]

Only the 60-65 age group.

[Aquaholic]

My wife says that this is BS but I've ridden with her driving.

[gotwake]

It amazes me how many stupid people there are on the roads. They just put in 2 roundabouts at our local town. I would love to setup a camera at it. Some dude almost hit me head on in it a few weeks ago. He flipped me off.....and he was going through it backwards!

[krypton2]

I wonder if it's that people don't know the rules of the road or they just don't care. I tend to think it's the latter overall, because people just don't pay attention most of the time and therefore don't care.

That would also explain why the 60-65 age group scored the highest...back when they learned to drive, there were few distractions and driving was taken a little bit more seriously than it is now. They are still young enough to remember all of that stuff but old enough that things were different back then.

I once read a study that said that when compared with other major, developed countries, the United States ranked the highest for driver carelessness - people driving distracted, not knowing the laws, driving like a jerk intentionally, etc.

[Cruser]

A few years back when I moved to IL I had to take the written test again and at least 30% of the questions were about drinking and driving. On the other hand they had a public access channel that explained driving laws, very interesting. I did not know you could pass a school bus stopped if you were going the other direction in IL.

[Maestro]

Actually, driving required people to be able to do more than one thing at a time. I been trying to teach my son how to drive a Manual transmission, it has been an interesting experience to say the lease. This is on a car which is not hard to drive like the old time manuals. I have come to the conclusion that when driving a stick you have to be able to do at lease 5 different things all at the same time and do them well or you are bound to have an accident.

Basically you have each foot doing different things, each arm and hand doing different things so that is 4, while doing all this, you have watch everything going on around you, which is 5. So if you drive an automatic this is reduce to 3 things at once, and most people can not walk, talk and chew gum at the same time what makes you think they can drive.

The only reason there is not more dead drivers, they have made the cars safer, again they are not letting natural selection do its job.

[kpatz]

The only reason there is not more dead drivers, they have bad the cars safer, again they are not letting nature selection do its job.

They've made cars safer, but they've also dumbed down the driving experience with more signs, more signals (traffic lights where they are NOT needed), and more hold-my-hands-and-tell-me-when-I-can-take-my-turn-arrow signals. Drives me crazy. I miss the old days when I could take a left at a light anytime it was green, only having to wait for oncoming traffic to clear, instead of having to wait for my own green arrow which always takes longer, and makes the light cycles longer for everyone.

And don't get me started on "No Right Turn On Red" signs, which are unneeded in 99 percent of the places I see them posted.

Not to mention the ever-present underposted speed limits....