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Are Backseat Drivers A Bad Thing?
Asking for a friend…
Is it realistic to expect any driver to be content to sit in the passenger seat of a car with someone else driving without flinching or hitting the imaginary brakes? I mean really, who truthfully can say it’s not a constant battle when your hands are not on the wheel.
I’ve come to realize I have become the dreaded backseat driver.
I used to hate them and their constant passive-aggressive criticism. Well, their comments didn’t make me a better driver, they made me a stressed-out and angry driver.
And now I find that I’m the one trying to bite my tongue and fighting to hold myself from flinching… but it’s all for naught.
Is it too much to ask for a driver to just keep their eyes on the road… all the time?
My friend keeps telling me to just relax, “don’t you trust me?” Well yes… but no. If only it was that easy.
I know where this comes from. My dad considered himself a good driver and so the older he got the more inattentive he became about his driving skills. He would take his eyes off the road to watch kids playing in the park or to watch a dog walking on the side of the road, always for a lot longer than this juvenile passenger felt was safe.
I can’t tell you how many times oncoming vehicles would honk their horn at us as we veered into their lane. He would always drive at whatever speed he thought was appropriate not necessarily what was posted. Usually, it was much slower than the rest of the traffic.
Even before I learned how to drive I knew that he was doing it wrong. Sitting in the backseat (for many years without a seatbelt) I would have my eyes straining at the road ahead and whenever we would start to stray from our lane I’d check to see where my dad was looking… and it was usually not on the road in front of him. If I ever said anything (and I knew better not to) he would tell me to ”relax!” How could I relax when I felt like my life was in danger.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that he was also a distracted driver. He would take his hands off the steering wheel to get a cigarette out and light it. Or while fiddling with the car radio or the 8-track player or (for me the worst) was looking at my mom…
