Safe Speed Forums

Our friend Basingwerk is oft heard referring to the evils of Testosterone Man, and I'm sure we can all conjour up a mental image of the type of driver/driving to which he is referring. The thing is, I'm not altogether concerned about TM and his appalling attitude towards driving. You see I can spot him coming from a mile away and can take preventive measures which ensure we don't come into contact. Sure, I deplore his tailgating and lane chopping, but don't wish to be involved in his next accident.
No, I'm more concerned about Mindless Maureen and Daydreaming Dave because I have to think for them. Maureen and Dave concentrate only on what is happening in their immediate vicinity. I don't get alongside them through roundabouts because they have a nasty habit of drifting across lanes, I have to create their 'stupidity space' for them.
I saw Maureen today in fact, overtaking me on the M54 in her little red Peugot yet oddly drifting towards my rear offside; in my mirrrors a collision looked possible. A toot of the horn and a jink to the left onto the hard-shoulder soon woke her up, or rather forced her to lower her outstretched left arm which was holding a mobile phone into whose hypnotic screen she was staring. Oh, did you know, Maureen is a nurse You think she'd know better
Dave is just as bad. He seldom looks at anything that is more than 3 foot ahead of him, comes flying into the close where he lives giving nary a thought to the kids playing nearby. His wife (another Maureen oddly) does exactly the same thing.
The difference between TM and Maureen/Dave is that TM probably knows what he's doing, although he pisses a lot of people off doing it. There's also a chance that TM will sooner or later attract the attention of the police, something Maureen and Dave are unlikely to do as they blend in with their clones. And with modern road safety policy being the mess it is, we're creatng more and more Maureens and Daves all the time.

BW does seem to talk a lot about TM, a lot more than I have reason to (and no I'm not TM - for a start I'm on an economy drive where my aim is to spend as little in fuel tax as I can). I see TM on my 50 mile a day commute about once a month.

95% or more of my commute is motorway and I see lots of people doing 60-70 a few doing 65-75 and a number doing 70-80 and a few doing 80+. Non of these I would consider TM, they are not aggressive, do not tailgate and are generously courteous. The very worst of TM I've seen was a woman who joined the motorway at the same junction as me tried to drive at 100+ right up peoples backside until they moved away, this continued for months until I saw her car on the hard shoulder having rear-ended some poor soul.

My question is, does BW attract TM more than me? s\he certainly notices him more than me and I believe we share the same roads.

Cheers

Paul

Without testosterone there would be no humanity. You can't have it both ways...

If you want to eliminate a hormone go for oestrogen. Far more dangerous in my book...

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Speed camera policy Kills

TM definatly does exist, but in much smaller numbers then BW constantly implies. And yes, as you eluded to Rigpig, at least he does have some degree of ability behind the wheel. If only he could channel it into driving positively and safely we'd have the makings of a good driver. The most satisfying thing about TM is watching him sprint off at the lights, only for you to catch him up at the next set going at a more normal pace and creep upto his bumper. So long as you don't get wound up by his antics and don't needlessly impeed his progress then he poses few problems.

The worst offenders of bad driving are to use a phrase I've leart from here, the TIBMIN's. They are usually the ones who freely admit they are "crap" drivers, yet don't seem to realise that driving is not an automatic right and that they have a responsibility to drive safely. They also have only one speed - 40mph. Oh and they usually have no clue that you have just avoided an accident thanks to your anticipation of their stupidity. When they do have an accident the "car came out of nowhere" of course and that "it's one of them things, innit?" is how they'll percieve the crash.

The most common sort of tailgating i see not as a result of TM being impatient and aggressive ( Basingwerk must be very unlucky in being surrounded by this type of driver ), it is the unthinking act of just following the car in front.

If you slow down then they slow down, but wont overtake even if you are on a clear straight with plenty of opportunity for overtaking.

Recently i had a driver so close behind that i slowed right down on a long, wide straight and pulled over and signalled, she got the hint and overtook - then proceeded to drive a couple of mph slower than i had been when she caught me up. Until there was another car in the distance, then she latched onto the back of that one and increased her speed to match that car - following only a few metres behind

Is this sort of driver unable to decide for themselves what speed to travel at so decided the right speed was the same as the car in front?

On a similar note I have seen an increasing number of MLM who will latch themselves onto your rear bumper despite lane 3 being free. This really winds me up to the point a few weeks ago when I pulled into the empty third lane - MLM proceeded to undertake me - he thought this was safer than overtaking me in the clear outside lane. needless to say I overtook him just a mile or so up the road when traffic in the middle lane was slower. (and in this instance the 1st lane was empty - I know, I was in it until I came up to MLM again)

Cheers

Paul

I hate this use of stereotypes. I think it's potentially extremely misleading. We end up trying to fit complex people into pigeon holes because they have one or more of the characteristics of a group. We then project the rest of the (frequently imaginary) group's characteristics back onto individuals.

It's OK to talk about 'aggressive drivers' (for example) because we can see them behaving aggressively.

It's OK to talk about young male drivers because of the statistical performances and behaviours of the CLEARLY DEFINED group.

But most of the others? No thanks.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Whatever...

Still see 'em all the time though, clearly identifiable and pidgeon-holeable.

I don't agree that it is ok. This idea that 80% of nutters on the road are men is a bit like justifying prejudice against muslims by saying 80% of terrorists are muslims (or even better, 80% of terrorists have brown eyes.)

The fact that the nutters are a member of a group is not in itself evidence that all, or even most, members of that group are also nutters because the fraction who are nutters might be small.

I agree with your point - but I think that we have to address the problems associated with some members of the group by communicating with the group as a whole. I don't think we have an alternative.

On the other hand, it isn't ok at all to blame individuals for the characteristics of other group members. Perhaps that was your main point?

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Paul - I think you are worrying unnecessarily here! What rigsy is describing may be stereotypes, but he has gone out of his way to characterise them as generically and interchangeably as possible so that they summarise driving traits rather than create false associations between, say, skill level and age or sex.

He's not inferring a cause for these traits either. There is no harm in summing up these traits in a sort of caricaturish way, especially if you can then get some people to recognise these traits in themselves. In fact it can be quite helpful in getting the point of SafeSpeed across to the mindless masses who swallow simplified T2000 type propaganda.

Completely agree.
Has anyone noticed how many women tailgate?

Thanks r11co you summed it up nicely.
OK, I gave my trait possessors names implying some sort of pidgeon holeing, but its the traits I'm more interested in. There are tell-tale signs that certain types of driver transmit to other road users, and who of us can say we don't look out for them be they aggressive or indecisive or whatever? I know I certainly do, although I've no interest in which demographic group the driver belongs, it could be anyone.
All I'm saying is that the body language transmitted by our TM is often unmistakeable as are his/her intentions. Other drivers give little or no warning that they are about to do something daft, you and I have to think for them.

Ahh, I see what I've done. I was talking about the wider use of stereotypes, and I wasn't directing it at this thread. And I certainly wasn't directing it at Rigpig. There's quite a lot of it around this forum and quite a lot in popular psychology. I find it singularly unhelpful in most contexts. It's particularly unhelpful in road safety in general.

It's always OK to refer to characteristics... He's a tailgater... He's driving aggressively. It's often OK to refer to clearly defined demographic groups... He's a young male driver... Drivers over 70 years old and so on.

But some of these others. 'TIBMIN" - what the hell does that mean? Is it even possible? The risks are: 1) We'll have different ideas about what it means because there's no clear definition. 2) We might put people in the group who don't belong there. 3) We'll imagine strategies for dealing with a problem based on individual and woolly definitions, so those strategies will be flawed. 4) We risk seeing these people everywhere, not because they even exist, but because the label seems to fit.

So there you have my personal view: I try very hard not to use stereotypes. I am always deeply suspucious of popular psychology that uses stereotypes. I am especially concerned about road safety policies or ideas that may be based on ill-defined stereotypes that mean different things to different people. Bottom line: Stereotypes are potentially extremely misleading.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Have to confess to wondering about that acronym myself. Anyone care to offer a definition of TIBMIN??

Ta. Chris

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Stultus est sicut stultus facit - a known fact
Stercus accidit - a truism!

Thumb in bum - mind in neutral.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Thank you kindly - while I've met many, I'd never have worked that one out!

They must be the group that thinks that NSL on a single carriageway is 50 then?

Cheers, Chris.

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Stultus est sicut stultus facit - a known fact
Stercus accidit - a truism!

Indeed! Don't forget who it was came up with that one...

(whisper it..... Basingwerk)

Yes r11co - it is a term I've often heard in Canada, sometimes used to describe the begutted-underclasses who spend their welfare cheques in the Casino de Montreal, mindlessly feeding slot machines, smoking players and drinking strong beer! What a life!

I also use it to describe the general brain-deadness of some people, especially the moron who nearly ran me down today, while driving over the pavement into a pub in a huge Voyager while talking on his mobile phone and getting nagged by his entire family in the back! Yeah - he was all over the place, absolutely TIBMIN!

Testorone-man, on the other hand, first saw the light of day while I was gazing down into the waters of the St Lawrence from the Jacques-Cartier bridge in Montreal, watching the dangerous and stupid antics of hairy men on Sea-Doos far below. I use it for cases of pointless masculine bone headedness, that cars seem to bring out in guys.

Generalisation is part of the great fun of language. Less lazy people than me might like to be more specific – that’s up to them – but I like to keep it vague, for the obvious reason that it allows a good rant! In any case, they have stuck around for a bit, like a bad smell, so I am proud of both of them!

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I stole this .sig

Nice speech.

However, did the irony of the bad smell analogy escape you?? The only reason TIBMIN has hung around is because you keep repeating it like the after-effects of a bad curry....