Well, I do think the owners of luxury cars are better looking than the average crowd.
I agree that the demographics of the Prius drivers has changed. Before it used to be the green eco/techy/nurdy group, hypermiling and trying to save the world. Now seems like everybody is driving one. The gas savings and proven reliability has expanded the sales. Now I see souped up Prius’s with sporty rims racing down the street.
Now that they get 45 MPG, Prius drivers can jack rabbit all they want and the mileage into drops into the high 30s. They’re better than the rest of us anyway. Just ask them.
I must agree with WheresRick. Pickups rank right up there with aggressive drivers.
I guess you could put sporty rims on a Prius, and probably tint the windows and otherwise make it look idiotic, but soup it up? Priuses (Priii?) are probably the least friendly vehicles in existence to any kind of performance mods. Most people into that thing don’t have a tenth of the know how or money, and while I haven’t searched on it, I doubt there are any real mods for them. Which doesn’t matter much, as they are anathema to real motorheads IMHO.
I think it has to do with our own prejudices: whenever we see a jerk behaving badly while driving a car we associate with bad drivers, it reaffirms it. We might say “See, all BWM drivers are morons!” (insert your favorite douche car or truck here).
When it happens to any other car, it just irks us but we move on.
Cars are not extensions of our personality.
Except when it comes to SUV driving soccer moms in SW CT - they absolutely are the most aggressive worst drivers ever!
“Except when it comes to SUV driving soccer moms in SW CT - they absolutely are the most aggressive worst drivers ever!”
Absolutely!
The sight that I really hate to see in my rearview mirror is a tiny woman driving a huge SUV.
In my area, typically, they are driving something like an Infiniti QX, which is about the same size as the Queen Mary, and has similar handling characteristics.
These women are always steering with one hand, while they clamp a cellphone to their ear with the other hand, and they apparently believe that it is appropriate to drive about 3 feet behind the car in front, even when traveling at 50 mph +. Apparently, these dizzy dames are too damn stupid to be able to synch their cellphones with the Bluetooth device that their 60k+ luxo-barge is equipped with, hence the hand-held phone.
Normally, they are incredibly distracted, but…God forbid that you actually make a full stop at a stop sign, or that you hesitate more than 2 milliseconds after a traffic light changes to green, because then they will lay on that horn.
If a man drove like that, it would only be a matter of time before somebody punched his lights out, but because they are women, they seem to get away with being the most distracted and most dangerous drivers on the road.
The sight that I really hate to see in my rearview mirror is a tiny woman driving a huge SUV.
Or even a tiny man. Here in NH…the BIGGER the SUV…the smaller the man. Everyone man/boy I know who owns a Full-Size SUV are about 5’5…and weight about 150lbs. And they are very aggressive drivers.
Down here in the south, be careful around that soccer mom in her SUV. About half of them have a carry permit and are carrying. Of that half, about a sixth are having their monthly visitor. That means about one in twelve might shoot first and think about it later.
I think it depends where you live.
In Jacksonville, FL the biggest jerks are the ones with lifted pick-up trucks sporting a University of Florida Gator logo somewhere on the truck.
In the Treasure Coast, FL area (Stuart, Fort Pierce, Jensen Beach, etc.), it’s the POS cars you need to look out for, but until recently, if someone cut me off in the Treasure Coast area, he was usually sporting a bumper sticker that read “2012 END OF AN ERROR.” (BTW, I agree. 2012 was the year we got rid of Allen West.)
In the South Florida area (from south Miami to Jupiter/West Palm Beach), look out for all German car makes, with Mercedes sometimes being the exception. If someone is tailgating and passing on the right, he’s usually driving a BMW or a VW. If it’s a Mercedes, it depends on the age of the driver. Some Mercedes drivers can be trusted if they are over the age of 40.
I have noticed some out-of-control Prius drivers recently, but not enough of them that I would call it a problem. The same goes for Lexus.
The one common denominator seems to be that people who can afford to pay fines and higher insurance rates without it impacting their lives. I have a vested interest in avoiding moving violations. If I could afford a luxury car, I could probably afford to drive like a jerk.
"Here in NH…the BIGGER the SUV…the smaller the man. Everyone man/boy I know who owns a Full-Size SUV are about 5’5…and weight about 150lbs. And they are very aggressive drivers. "
I don’t doubt that, Mike.
However, at some point, those little guys are going to wind up being dragged from their cars, and beaten as a result of cutting somebody off, or tailgating, or…God only knows what other bone-headed type of driving they are engaged in.
Women, on the other hand, can do the same things day in and day out, but they will not suffer this type of reaction, simply because they are women. And, I think that because they know this, many women feel that they are invulnerable when they are on the road.
My experiences today included one prius going 20+ over the 35mph speed limit in town, a ford explorer tailgating aggressively, but the worst was a grand am Speeding, tailgating, weaving in and out of traffic, all for me to catch up with them at a red light a half mile up the road.
I add grand-ams to that list.
Its kind of funny when you pick one lane on a slow moving freeway during rush hour and then see another car pass you while weaving in and out of traffic, then they pass you again, and then again, and then again…
What seems almost a crime to me is seeing a fairly young person in a newer Corvette, Mustang, etc. going way under the speed limit and/or generally driving it like a granny. I guess it’s better than driving like a complete a–h--e, but it still makes me a little sad. Why did they bother buying it?
who said THEY bought it? They probably had mommy or daddy buy it for them. Or they are on a joy ride in their parent’s car and don’t want to get caught by the police