March 21, 2005

Horse 318 - The Worst Drivers by Marque

Precisely one month ago my boss made the comment that "Camry drivers are the worst". This is somewhat odd as he himself drives that most dreaded of vehicles, a Volvo. So then rather than let the myths perpetuate I conducted a rather inexact survey from 20 Feb to 20 Mar to see which Marque truly has the worst drivers. The results may shock you.

Here is the list for total acts of numptiness, arrogance and stupidity I encountered for those 4 weeks:

Toyota 38
Holden 9
Ford 9
Mercedes Benz 8
Hyundai 7
Kia 5
BMW 2
Renault 1
Volvo 1
Nissan 1

Me? 12.
Total 98

In 28 days I found that it's likely that you'll come across or be the cause of 3.5 acts of bad driving in a day, ranging from being cut-off, failure to indicate, tailgating, barging into people's braking zones etc.I think due to the fact that I was aware of other people's mistakes, I also had a heightened sense of my own including 7 acts of turning against a "No Right Turn" sign (actually I do this every day at Pendle Hill it's just that most of the time it's outside the hours).

The Toyota question came up - why are they so vastly over represented? The reason for this is three fold.

1. Toyota as a marque have more makes than any other. As far as I know, they are the only marque represented in all classes of car. This includes Echo to Camry and even their small trucks.
2. Some of it must be put down to the demographics of where I drive. On the Lower North Shore you're likely to find that every third vehicle is a Land Cruiser (note that these are immaculate and usually only used to drive children to school in), but in Chatswood, Camrys are the chosen vehicle.
3. Also some of it must be put down to the character of the driver for this I also choose 3 dot points:
3a) Arrogance - This occurs mainly on the North Shore and in 4WD's. These people know that they have a larger vehicle and will tend to deliberately intimidate other drivers more.
3b) Ignorance - Camry and Corolla drivers are on the whole blissfully unaware of any car around them. Camrys are the classic lane wanderers and Corolla drivers will tend to be younger and consequently be on their mobile phone more and/or indicate less.
3c) Belligerence - More common in Sydney's west and espescially likely in older Corollas with wacky paint schemes, mag wheels and doof-doof. These drivers own all the road including the bit you happen to be on, they will race everyone and cut-off and chop at in excess of 20km/h over the speed limit.

Interestingly of the 38 Toyotas there were no Celicas or Supras which indicates to me that the people who in theory have a car in which they can more agressively drive simply do not do so, at least not in peak hours.

So then Volvo's crown is well and truly unfounded for it is Toyota drivers who in my sample are the worst of all.

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