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  • Pete Malloy seems to think this of Jim Reed on Adam-12. In "Vice Versa", Pete let his license expire, so Jim has to drive. Pete spends the episode nagging Jim as Jim does seem to take a few more risks than Pete. Not anything illegal, though.
  • The Adventures of Pete & Pete: Big Pete. Driving simulation. Five words.
    "Congratulations, Mr. Wrigley. You're dead."
  • Agatha Raisin: A subplot in "Agatha Raisin and the Potted Gardener" involves joyriders fanging around the village at night; doing burnouts and generally terrorizing the village. Ultimately the joyriders are revealed as a couple in their 80s or 90s who always fancied being speed demons and decided it was never too late to live their dream.
  • There was one Dave Allen sketch showing an older Irish guy (played by Allen) driving like this, ending with him passing a big truck and cutting in-front of it just before reaching an intersection. Now if you want to see the punchline for that gag, you'll have to watch the sketch yourself. Starts at about 6:58 here.
  • Angel: Referenced with Illyria in the comic continuation; During her road trip with Gunn, Illyria asks for another turn at the wheel. Gunn flatly refuses, saying that the last time Illyria attempted to drive, she sent twelve cars flying off the freeway. Illyria states that if she can rule the Earth, she can learn to master driving.
  • Lucille from Arrested Development tries to run over a man on a Segway (who she thinks is her son). She's one of the World's Worst Drivers. Really. She was featured on that show, parked horizontally across three parking spaces.
  • The A-Team: Captain H. M. Murdock flies like this. However, unlike a lot of these crazy drivers, he knows exactly what he's doing, but he just prefers to fly the crazy way.
  • Batwoman (2019): As shown on Season 3, Alice really sure like to drive especially driving the titular character Batmobile, no wonder both Ryan and Mary don't want to take a ride with her.
  • The Big Bang Theory:
    • Sheldon is a terrible driver, once managing to miss the Pasadena Freeway exit he was supposed to go over, managing to fly off the highway at high speeds, and then somehow end up on the second floor of the Glendale Galleria before crashing into a pet store... and that was on a driving simulator that Howard Wolowitz developed. Ironically, the one time he had to be behind the wheel of an actual car, he actually drove somewhat well... sluggish driving and overly cautious methods aside. Unfortunately, that also landed him with a speeding ticket (and it's not even his fault, but Penny's).
    • Penny herself is often accused of being an irresponsible driver, but actually more in line with someone who has been driving a very long time and will bypass "normal behavior" for a quicker route every now and then. That doesn't stop the fact she frequently ignores her (constantly blinking) check engine light from being a running gag.
    • Howard Wolowitz is a bit of a nut when driving on his Vespa (at least according to Sheldon whom once spent a ride home with him screaming over every speed bump like a mad man-which granted, he is).
      • It was implied part of the reason Howard drove like that was because Sheldon had been so annoying he simply wanted to get the ride over with ASAP.
  • Blue Bloods: Every Reagan other than Jamie is a terrible driver in some form. This is firmly established in one episode where Nicky is learning how to drive, and bails from having Erin teach her because she can't deal with her mom's, erm, style. Frank points out that almost everyone in the family is a bad driver:
    • Erin is a lead-foot horn-leaner who gets frustrated and rages at other drivers at the slightest provocation.
    • Henry is forced to give up his keys and license partway through season 3 due to failing eyesight and reflexes, causing him to bang his fender on the garage door too many times.
    • As the police commissioner, Frank hasn't driven himself in years: his security detail does so for him.
    • Danny drives all the time like he's in a Car Chase. He once got a ticket for doing 80 mph in a 25 mph zone.
    • Averted by Jamie, who drove himself to and from Harvard for years without a hitch. Naturally, it's him who Nicky opts to learn from.
  • Richie & Eddie from Bottom: Richie doesn't know how to drive and so asks Eddie — who presumably has more experience. Eddie's idea of "How to Drive" is... "Well, you get the wires from underneath the dashboard and jam 'em together until the engine fires up. Then, you drink another can of special brew, aim it at the post-office and put a brick on the accelerator." Richie decides to "stick the key in and see what happens." With a clear road ahead he ram-raids an off-licence, in reverse.
  • By his own admission, Detective Hitchcock in Brooklyn Nine-Nine "has nothing to live for, and drives that way". The reaction shots of the other characters screaming in terror do bear that statement out.
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
    Snyder: Whoa, Summers, you drive like a spaz!
    • Cordelia apparently wasn't much better:
      Cordelia: (upon seing a policeman) Can you help me with a ticket? It's totally bogus. It was a one-way street. I was going one way!
    • And Anya in "Triangle", which is apparently her first time driving (while hunting down a rampaging troll as well).
      Willow: Whoa, why didn't you say you didn't know how to drive?
      Anya: Well I didn't know if I could or not until I got behind the wheel. I'm going to press this button now. I expect us to accelerate.
  • Christine Cagney from Cagney & Lacey by all accounts drives like this, although the budget of the times means it is rarely shown on screen.
  • The entire premise of being a participant on Canada's Worst Driver is "You qualify for this trope, and everyone wants you to STOP, including your friends and loved ones (one of whom is paying for you to be here)." All of the drivers do things such as speeding, road raging, being distracted at the wheel, ignoring signs and traffic lights, driving while drunk, texting while driving, and much more.
  • Cheers: Lilith, of all people. When Sam takes her out practicing in his corvette, he returns to the bar shaken, since Lilith rammed a truck off the road and left Sam to face its irate owner. A later episode has her acquire Sam's corvette for herself, and within a few days has gathered so many tickets Frasier tries assisting Sam in getting his car back.
  • Novice driver Cassidy is this in the City Guys episode "Big Brothers". During the driver's ed class, she is a virtual Driving Disaster Area as shown in "Big Brothers"... and, we mean virtual in the literal sense. While using a driving simulator in class, Cassidy does so badly, making a litany of errors (including nearly crashing into a bus, nearly hitting an old woman on a crosswalk and driving on the sidewalk), that she manages to actually short-circuit the simulator, leading to Al remarking that she "took out more of New York than Godzilla did". In fairness, she did mention earlier in the episode that she sucks at driving simulators. She somehow later does pass, with the lowest passing score in the history of the driver's ed class.
  • Control Z: Invoked by Javier twice. He saved Luis from Gerry, Darío and Ernesto by deliberately crashing his car through a wall and made an improvised drift while passing by a construction area while he and Sofía rushed to the school to stop the avenger from forcing Gerry to kill himself.
  • Cracker. When Fitz pulls one of his usual stunts on his Love Interest WDC Penhaligan, she likes to get back at him by driving extremely fast, while enjoying the expression on Fitz's face instead of looking at the road.
  • Calleigh Duquesne on CSI: Miami drives a Humvee in a manner usually reserved for mid-war Iraq:
    Wolfe: Do you realize you drive like a madwoman?
  • In an episode of CSI: NY, Stella Bonasera drives in such a manner that poor Hawkes in the passenger seat looks like he's afraid to be flung out of the window.
  • The Devil Judge:
    • Young-min does this deliberately. He drives towards random bystanders and pretends he's about to run them down, he nearly kills an old man who can't get out of his way, he zooms around the city at terrifying speeds...
    • Yo-han does this while trying to catch Young-min, cutting in front of and weaving around other cars without regard for his own or anyone else's safety.
  • Doctor Who.
    • The Doctor in pretty much every incarnation, and it's only somewhat mitigated by them being a Crew of One for a six-person ship.
      • "The Time of Angels": River corrected Eleven on the controls to level out flying and minimize sounds (largely by taking off the parking brake, or so she claimed), he complained that he liked it better the original way.
        River Song: It's not supposed to make that noise. You leave the brakes on.
      • Of course, as noted in "The Doctor's Wife", it's an uphill struggle trying to get the TARDIS where the Doctor wants to go rather than where she wants to go.
      • "The Shakespeare Code": When Martha asks if passing a test is necessary to fly the TARDIS, the Doctor replies yes, and that he failed.
      • Possibly an issue with the TARDIS itself being an antique, compared to its modern counterparts. The Master once likened it to "flying a second-hand gas stove" when he tried to fly it in "The Claws of Axos".
        The Master: Overweight, underpowered museum piece... Might as well try to fly a second hand gas stove.
      • Tasha Lem claimed that it wasn't flying the TARDIS that was hard, but flying the Doctor.
      • The Doctor might just be like this, no matter what he operates. "The Bells of St John" has the Doctor ride a motorcycle up the outside of a skyscraper.
    • Amy as well.
      Amy: Is he helping you fly the TARDIS? Why do you let him have a go? You never let me have a go!
      Rory: Uh, Doctor, don't. Seriously, don't. I let her drive my car once.
      Amy: To the end of the road.
      Rory: Where, according to Amy, "there was an unexpected house."
      […]
      Rory: Have you ever seen Amy drive, Doctor?
      The Doctor: No.
      Rory: Neither did her driving-examiner...
    • "Resolution" presents us with the insanely reckless driving of a woman under the control of a Dalek recon scout. Among other things, she drives at over 160 kilometres an hour and veers directly into opposing traffic.
  • The Dukes of Hazzard was "let's see what crazy stunt the Duke boys can pull off this week". Jumps (mostly on makeshift dirt ramps), high-speed turns, you name it and Bo and Luke probably did it in the General Lee. It makes sense, since they used to run moonshine for Uncle Jesse before they got caught prior to the start of the series. Even Uncle Jesse and Boss Hogg (who used to be moonshine runners themselves) will get in on the act.
  • In Ellery Queen, Ellery's distractedness causes him to ignore minor details like red lights.
  • In The Flash (2014), Lisa Snart a.k.a. Golden Glider is fully capable of driving properly, but she prefers to drive like a maniac because it is more fun that way.
  • Invoked by Adam in Forever when he kills a taxi driver, steals his cab, and picks up Henry in it. He's rigged the doors to lock and seals the barrier between himself and the back seat, trapping Henry there, and proceeds to drive like a maniac to freak out Henry, before finally shooting himself in the head, vanishing and thus proving he's immortal, and leaving Henry trapped in a cab that's hurtling down a pier and over the side at high speed.
    Henry: Just slow down! Someone's going to get killed!
    Adam: That's the idea.
  • Friends:
    • Rachel is a horrible driver who hasn't renewed her license. When she gets pulled over the cop only lets her go with a warning because she flirted with him. He tells Ross to take over driving on the way back, but then Ross gets pulled over by a different cop for driving too slowly.
    • In the Grand Finale, Phoebe drives Ross to the airport to stop Rachel going to Paris. Ross spends the drive freaking out at how fast Phoebe is going (well over the speed limit), and mentions that she may have knocked down an old woman.
  • Full House: In one episode "Stephanie's Wild Ride" Stephanie and her friend Gia take a ride with two new boys they met at the mall, only to find that they like to drive dangerously fast and purposefully in the wrong lane, among other reckless acts. She excitingly tells DJ all about it, so when she's invited to go out with Gia and the boys again, DJ forbids her from going. Stephanie remains angry at DJ throughout the night until Danny comes in to inform them Gia and the boys were in a car accident, everyone surviving but the car totally wrecked.
  • Everybody Loves Raymond:
    • Ray Barone's dad. Although he does manage to rein it in just long enough to get his license renewed.
    • His mother Marie, in one of the show's most famous moments, drove the car through the front of Ray and Debra's house.
  • Demon Crowley from Good Omens (2019):
    Aziraphale: Watch out for that pedestrian!
    Crowley: She's on the street. She knows the risk she's taking.
    Aziraphale: Just watch the... Watch the road! Crowley, you can't do 90 miles per hour in Central London.
    Crowley: (taking his hands off the wheel) Why not?
    Aziraphale: You'll get us killed. Well, inconveniently discorporated.
  • Hang Time has Kristy (also a novice driver) in "Julie's Guy," who tells Teddy that she has gotten into accidents during her driving lessons. When he volunteers to teach her how to drive in the gym using a golf cart, Kristy accidentally backs into a cardboard cutout of a mom carrying a baby stroller. When Teddy decides to have Kristy practice on the road one night, Danny, Michael and Vince burst into the backseat and ask her to tail a car carrying Julie and Jason Redmond (a player on a rival team she's on a date with), causing a harried Kristy to speed and make very hard turns; after she slams the brakes when they reach a red light, Teddy – happy that he's still alive after the debacle – passes out.
  • In the 2010 reimagining of Hawaii Five-0, Steve McGarrett should have this as a bumper sticker. It doesn't matter what law it is you can break on the road, he has broken it. It doesn't matter what he's driving either but it's usually Danno's car with Danno riding shotgun. He is especially fond of speeding in combination with everything else and it happens so often that Danno has to frequently remind him that they "can't solve crimes while wrapped around a telephone pole, Steven!"
    Danno: Why are you putting both hands on the wheel? Whenever you put both hands on the wheel, something bad happens and I have to pray.
  • In Heroes Claire Bennet intentionally drives a guy's car into a wall at a fast speed after he murdered her. She is unharmed as usual.
  • Hightown: Owen veers all over the road while nearly running into other cars and pedestrians as he cusses at them when driving with Osito.
  • In the Home Improvement episode "Tanks for the Memories", Tim Taylor was given control of a tank in the Marines division, and he ended up plowing the tank through a golf course, which resulted in him being banned from ever driving a tank again. And then there was the time he mounted a jet engine on a riding lawn mower. Which resulted in a 20 mile high speed police chase. (On the plus side, he mowed fifty lawns and made $500.) He also once launched a grill into orbit (he was using NASA-provided rocket fuel, but still).
  • Meldrick Lewis on Homicide: Life on the Street is a terrible driver, and isn't so good at parking the car either.
  • In the Ice Road Truckers spinoff IRT: Deadliest Roads, the sheer cliffs, dirt roads, and rigs of questionable quality that liter India, Bolivia, and Peru all pale in comparison with the suicidal drivers that appear to be trying to push the several ton trucks off the road.
  • JAG: One episode had a guest character, a young ensign from Jersey played by Sarah Silverman, who absolutely tears across base in a Humvee, hardly ever looking at the road, rambling on about whatever comes to mind, and generally terrifying poor Bud and making Harm nervous. Bud is forced to have her drive him somewhere on the other side of base because he's in a hurry, and finds her driving much less terrifying if he takes his contacts out first. When Harm asks what she did before joining the military, she says, "Drove a cab, sir!" and Harm nods as if to say, "Yeah, that explains it."
  • After Toyota issued a recall due to stuck accelerators causing cars to unexpectedly accelerate to very high speeds, David Letterman joked in his talk show that New Yorkers call that phenomenon a "taxi cab".
  • Parker from Leverage.
    Parker: Who knew a sedan could hit 140?
    Sophie: Parker, you are never to get behind the wheel of a car again, okay?
    • From another episode there was this:
      Eliot: Parker, where'd you learn to drive?
      Parker: Before I stole cars I was a getaway driver.
      Hardison: Before? You stole cars when you were 12.
  • Gene Hunt from Life on Mars. A 1970's Ford Cortina should not be able to speed in reverse. (And he's a police officer.)
  • Mann & Machine: Mann accuses Eve of this.
    Eve: I constantly compute velocity, traction, and road conditions, and make turns at optimal speed. Sometimes that means slowing down and sometimes it doesn't.
    Mann: Tell that to the jogger you nearly ran over.
    Eve: He was crossing against the light, Mann. I can hardly be expected to include disregard for the law in my calculations.
  • An episode of The Mentalist has a scene in which Lisbon lets Van Pelt drive to pursue a suspect fleeing on a dirt bike. Cue Dukes of Hazzard chase sequence, ending with Van Pelt stopping the biker suspect with the side of the SUV.
    Lisbon: I gotta get you out of the office more often!
  • Sgt. Troy in Midsomer Murders, who regularly does things like turn his head to talk to the passenger or drive on the wrong side of the road. In one episode, Barnaby notes his improvement by the fact that Troy actually glanced at the mirror.
  • Monk:
    • In "Mr. Monk and the End Part 2", Stottlemeyer and Disher, when attempting to rush towards Judge Rickover's house to stop Monk from attempting to exact revenge on Rickover for the latter arranging for Trudy Monk's assassination via car bomb, were driving extremely recklessly for the road (the fact that they couldn't even use a portable siren due to Disher selling it in a yard sale and it was pouring heavily outside only made matters worse.)
    • In "Mr. Monk and the Three Julies", Natalie steals Stottlemeyer's new Dodge Charger unit twice. The first time, she manages to break off the shotgun door mirror. The second time, she manages to crumple in the hood (ostensibly from taking a shortcut across the creek, despite Stottlemeyer informing her that there are no bridges across the creek).
  • Mr. Bean is an extreme case of No Social Skills, so maybe that's why he doesn't know you shouldn't brush your teeth while driving, drive using a broom and ropes from a chair strapped to the roof or, in general, go out of your way to pass everyone and run that blue Reliant off the road every time you see it.
  • NCIS:
    • Ziva David, period. Even Tony, himself an example of the trope earlier in the series, is terrified of her driving. Ziva claims that driving fast and making abrupt turns "is the best way to avoid IEDs and ambushes" and brushes off attempts to point out that neither are exactly common in the US.
      Gibbs: She almost killed my entire team yesterday.
      Jenny: How?
      Gibbs: Driving home from a crime scene.
      Jenny: I should have warned you. I think she was an Eastern European cab driver in a past life.
      • In "Aliyah" we learn that even in Israel Ziva is regarded as a crazy driver.
        Eli: With traffic, I wasn't expecting you for another hour.
        Ziva: I drove.
        Eli: Enough said.
      • "Enemies Foreign" reveals that this runs in the family:
        Vance: Most fathers teach their daughters how to drive. Do I have you to thank for this, Eli?
        Eli: This she learned from her mother.
    • It's not remarked on as often, but Gibbs is just as scary. He spends most of his time looking away from the road while weaving through oncoming traffic. He has no apparent excuse. Not surprisingly, Gibbs is the only person in the series who doesn't have a problem letting Ziva drive.
      Kate: Gibbs is driving.
      Abby: I'm saying a prayer in many languages.
  • Kensi Blye from NCIS: Los Angeles is implied to be this during one episode where the main characters switched partners and was allowed to drive by Callen. They arrive at the crime scene with him looking somewhere between carsick and shell-shocked.
    Kensi: [A little offended] I am an excellent driver.
  • Nightwatch (2015): Holly & Nick's patients often complain about Holly's driving, and Nick says it's because she's too short to see over the steering wheel.
  • The classic spoof advert from Not the Nine O'Clock News:
    Designed by computers. Built by robots. Driven by Italians.
  • In her first scene on One Tree Hill, Peyton Sawyer almost runs over main character and her eventual husband Lucas Scott while haphazardly looking for a CD she dropped on the floor of her precious Mercury Comet. Her horrible driving skills are sometimes mentioned by the others, though not quite at a Running Gag level.
  • Our Miss Brooks: Teenagers Walter Denton and Stretch Snodgrass are chronic offenders of this trip. More surprisingly, Miss Brooks usually is as well. A running gag has her telling Mrs. Davis why she can't drive her car. Often enough it's in the shop. However, there are many occasions where Miss Brooks is to blame after having proved herself a stereotypical woman driver. In "Trial By Jury", Miss Brooks goes to court to fight a charge of reckless driving after her car crashes into a fruit stand.
  • Player:
    • Byeong-min drives recklessly while trying to evade the police. Jin-ung makes things worse by grabbing the steering wheel, making the van swerve back and forth.
    • A-ryeong buys time for the other three to get away by driving her motorcycle right in front of the police cars.
    • Jin-ung invokes this to make a criminal talk: the guy is duct-taped to the road, and Jin-ung speeds towards him to frighten him into confessing.
  • In The Professionals, Bodie and Doyle can't drive a car without squealing tires, or do a U-turn without using the handbrake. Eventually, even the series started poking fun at it. In the episode "Blackout", a country policeman has to pedal off on his bicycle to get hold of a witness for CI5, and gripes that: "They probably expect me to jump in my high-powered motor and go screaming around corners, tires screeching like on television!"
  • Saturday Night Live:
    • "He drives around/All over the town/He's Toonces, the Driving Cat!"
    • When Taylor Swift hosted, there was a parody ad about bad parent driving.
  • Saved by the Bell: The New Class:
    • Played for Laughs during the Season 5 episode "Goodbye Paris". When Mr. Belding and Screech decide to see sights, Screech, desperate to cram as many sights and as quickly as he can, takes over the steering wheel of the cab he and Mr. Belding are taking at one point, resulting in Mr. Belding and the cab driver embracing each other tightly in the backseat in sheer terror.
    • Played for Drama late in the Season 6 episode "The Young and the Sleepless", where Eric, driving while sleep-deprived, nods off behind the wheel at least once, nearly colliding with a truck from the opposite direction, and is moody when awake. The episode end with him crashing his car into the wall at the school ground, although no one ends up seriously injured or killed.
  • From The Sentinel, Jim is infamous for the number of trucks he's wrecked, to the point that it's almost impossible for him to get good insurance. Every Car Chase involves gratuitous Fruit Cart destruction, numerous "orange"-light runs, and any passengers cowering in their seats.
    Blair Sandburg: Jim, that's a red light. Jim, there are pedestrians in the road! Jim, slow down! Jim!!
  • Maya DiMeo from Speechless. The series begins with her making a ten minute journey in three minutes by way of driving off the road and banking on cops being too afraid of her to ticket her for speeding, all to take advantage of an about-to-expire breakfast coupon.
  • Whenever Sweep from The Sooty Show gets a hold of any vehicle, like Sooty's campervan, things will never end well for him as he will end up driving erratically and mostly crash into obstacles. One particular time when he ended up getting a hold of the campervan, he ended up in a police chase which led to him getting cornered down a dead end street and get apprehended, but thankfully that was All Just a Dream.
  • Hilariously, Captain Kirk in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "A Piece of the Action". He may be able to do things with a massive, hyperspeed starship that will blow your mind, but he cannot drive a 1920s Ford without knocking over everything in sight. Spock's reaction sums it up: "Captain, you are an excellent starship commander, but as a taxi driver you leave much to be desired."
  • Stath Lets Flats: Stath constantly parks his car haphazardly (leaving it partially on the curb, blocking other cars from leaving their parking space, etc.). In one episode, he even falls asleep in the middle of the road.
  • Supergirl (2015): Alex Danvers refuses to let her sister Kara drive. She even calls her a crazy driver. Half-justified, of course, since having X-ray vision, super reflexes, and super-hearing removes one of the main obstacles for fast driving - namely, lack of visibility - but still.
  • Tatort: Well, it kind of depends on the point of view which trope applies more, but Professor Boerne (the Münster chief coroner) of all people is this mixed with a Badass Driver; he is a chronic speeder in the bicycle city Münster who takes a warning that a traffic light is about to go red as invitation to hit the gas, and would drive a Porsche 911 cabriolet across a golf course (Justified though, to stop a murder from happening). This trait is so well-known with the Münster team most members tend to warn him of his "points in Flensburg"note  from time to time. Amazingly, the only thing he's ever run over is a wild boar (at over 150km/h though), and he managed to perform an accident-free Car Chase through a no-car-zone right in the first Münster episode.
  • In Taxi Brooklyn, Detective Cat Sullivan is such a terrible driver that the first episode sees her losing her driver's license after crashing her car into a school bus during a Car Chase, leading to her having to hire taxi driver Leo Romba to driver her everywhere. Her mother mentions that she's always been a bad driver, to the point that she almost didn't earn her badge after repeatedly failing the driving test to become a police officer.
  • Matthew Newton's role in one of the more famous Thank God You're Here improv skits was as a driver whose car had crashed through a building wall. Specifically, one three stories up. And the car had learner plates on. Notably, the cast's usual Catchphrase of "Thank God you're here!" was modified to "Thank God you're alive!"
  • In Tin Man, it's implied that DG makes a habit of this on her motorcycle.
    • This is shown in a scene where she manages to hide from a cop chasing her and start her shift at the diner. Her first call is to deliver food to... the cop writing her a ticket.
  • Top Gear (UK):
    • The Stig normally drives like this, even with a tractor. Justified most of the time in that as the show's test driver, he is expected to make the cars go as fast as they can in order to compare performance.
    • Jeremy Clarkson indulges in this occasionally on the show. His bout with a Reliant Robin? Well...Herr Clarkson is an exuberant driver, and Reliant Robins are very light and, thanks to having a single front wheel, not very well balanced. That said, rolling a car 7+ times in fourteen miles is still just a bit excessive. According to co-presenter James May, Clarkson averts this trope when not filming and is actually quite a courteous driver.
  • Top Gear (US) features Adam Ferrara as one of the presenters. In the first season he quickly became notorious for breaking cars during challenges, to the point that he's subtitled "The Wrecker" from season 2 onward. He's a perfectly fine driver outside of challenges and on regular roads, but he tends to push his cars past their limits when asked to perform.
  • Torchwood:
    • Jack, in his own words; "I'm going to need to break the speed limit. Big time." Admittedly he warns the police in advance.
    • Owen plays this trope straight:
      Gwen: What I am saying is that you are speeding and there are children!
      Owen: Well if kids are out at midnight, they've got it coming to them!
      [Cue crazy driving as a blowfish on drugs tries to get away in a sports car.]
    • And a little after that in the same chase scene...
      Owen: Hold the wheel.
      Gwen: [catches on] Don't you dare, Owen!
      Owen: Hold the wheel!
      [Cue Gwen taking the wheel and Owen leaning out the window to shoot the sports car's wheels.]
  • The Twilight Zone (1985):
    • In "Dead Run", the trucker Johnny Davis is a reckless driver who has gotten into four accidents in two years and can no longer get any insurance company to take a risk on him. His fellow trucker Pete gets him a job as one of the truckers who drive the condemned to Hell.
    • In "Nightsong", Simon Locke's tendency to drive recklessly resulted in him being killed in 1981 when he drove his motorcycle over a cliff. He had been going much too fast because he needed to clear his head as he was afraid of success and his relationship with Andrea Fields becoming serious.
    • In "The Crossing", Mark Cassidy's girlfriend Kelly was killed because of his careless driving. He is still haunted by the experience more than 20 years later.
  • V.I.P.: Hard Val's Night. During the big car chase at the end of the episode, Val is flying through traffic like a maniac while trying to both get her clients to their concert on time and escape the arms dealers chasing them. Her clients, the members of Lit, are simultaneously terrified and impressed by her driving. This is also one of the rare times where it's a net positive, as she takes out the arms dealers and gets the band to their show in one piece.
  • In Waiting for God, Diana Trent drives on the wrong side of the road, on the off chance some idiot is doing it the other way.
    Tom: Mind the old people!
    Diana: We are the old people!
    Tom: Exactly!
  • Warehouse 13: According to Claudia, Artie is this. This is an interesting variation, because in this case it's the energetic, younger character making the comment toward the less-energetic, older character instead of the vice-versa that normally happens.
  • Implied about Without a Trace's Samantha Spade—when she insists on taking the wheel, her partner Martin Fitzgerald declares, "Oh God. Where's the airbag?"
  • It should come as no surprise that a lot of people like this turn up in the various Worst Driver programs around the world.
    • In the Canadian variant, Montreal is especially bad, with at least one contestant from Montreal with speed/road rage issues each season.
  • You Can't Do That on Television had a school bus driver of questionable sanity named Snake-Eyes who drove like this and was proud of it. He once tried to break the world record for longest time driving without using the brakes, while driving the school bus.


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