Drives Like Crazy / Real Life

As you will soon learn from the below examples, if an area has a sufficient number of cars, there will be crazy drivers.

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By Region

Americas

• The coastal hotspots of the southern United States, especially during the summer months. Not because of the natives, but because of the huge influx of tourists, many of them young adults, from all over the United States.
• Connecticut drivers. HOLY SHIT they are aggressive. There is even evidence to back this up.
• In Fresno, California, a car landed on the roof of an apartment. Perfectly. It must be seen to be believed.
• A common stereotype in English-speaking Canada is that Quebecers are this.
  • People in Upstate New York tend to shudder when they see a car with Quebec license plates.
  • The west-coast equivalent for Canadians and bad driving are Albertans, with an older stereotype of them being that they don't know how to turn.
• Los Angeles has so many really visible cases of bad driving that it used to have its own blog, L.A. Can't Drive, which used to update with a new example every day. One can still follow the author on Twitter.
• California in general is a state FULL of bad drivers who can't follow the rules, bad pedestrians who PUT THEMSELVES IN DANGER just to get somewhere faster, and bad roads.
• Colorado has a tradition for this, with explanations ranging from people who can't drive well in the snow to roads in mountains and other dangerous terrain.
• Jeremy Clarkson once described the Barbados Highway Code as "you can do whatever you like, at whatever speed takes your fancy, so long as you are leaning on the horn at the time."
• In one case of dashcam camera footage, a person was driving without any brakes. On top of that, they were doing this for quite a while so what do they do when they see a police car pull up? They try to stop the car by opening the driver's side door, leaning out and pulling a Fred Flintstone and trying to stop the car with their feet, and they didn't want the car rammed because they didn't want the car messed up. The reason they drove for 5 miles like that is that they were a commercial roofer and wanted to continue to work.
• San Francisco is known for taxi drivers who do "cannonball runs", roaring back and forth between San Francisco International Airport and S.F. proper^note the airport is actually about 10 miles from the city itself at the expense of their passengers' safety and well-being just so they can take full advantage of the airport's "if you get back here in 30 minutes we'll put you in a shorter taxi queue" system, which was meant as an Anti-Frustration Feature for drivers who end up with short-distance fares due to the standard taxi queue often resulting in hours-long waits. This was the inspiration for the video game Crazy Taxi.
• The State of Massachusetts — especially the Metro Boston area — has this reputation. Many stores in the state sell bumper stickers and t-shirts bearing the outline of the state and the statement "Using your turn signal just reveals your plans to the enemy". There is a song about Massachusetts drivers called "Who Taught These Idiots To Drive?". Paradoxically, since everyone knows all the other drivers are maniacs, most people take precautions that would seem insane anywhere else, with the end result being it's actually the safest state in the US to drive in. However, the driving is one of the top reasons Massachusetts residents are known as "Massholes" in the rest of New England.
• The Dukes of Hazzard had its basis in real-life Moonshine runners who had to drive like this (but also very well) in order to evade authorities. The end of Prohibition in the US meant less demand for moonshine, which left many of those drivers out of work, which led to the creation of NASCAR.
• Drivers in the city of Philadelphia have this reputation, but whether it's deserved is a matter of debate. To listen to the rest of the State of Pennsylvania, you would think that all Philly drivers are Mad Max-wannabes practicing for the zombie apocalypse. It's not far from the truth, but everything about traffic and transit in Philadelphia is pretty cut-throat, from public trans to the Philadelphia Parking Conspiracy. Oddly, Philly drivers have this reputation in New Jersey too, and New Jersey drivers have a scary reputation in Philly. Philly drivers tend to be more in the "extremely aggressive/defensive driver" camp whereas Jersey drivers are "just plain reckless," although it's changing, and we're starting to see more "Jersey driving" on Philly streets (no use of signals or mirrors, no double-checking a vehicle's blind spot, attempting to pass when passing is far from advisable, etc). Doesn't help that NJ is one of the few widespread users of jughandles on roads, as opposed to quadro-stop sign intersections.
• Lima, the capital city of Peru is infamous for having the most chaotic traffic in a country where its drivers are already reckless at the steer. The often offenders of this behavior are the taxi drivers, followed by the public transport companies - these are not to be confused with state public transport, whose drivers are more sensible -; however, this problem is also present in private transport. To give you a perspective, the closest the traffic culture can be compared to is a jungle where "survival of the fittest" is in full: those that drive more aggressively are the top dogs while pedestrians and cyclists are at the bottom of the pyramid.
  • Signs that forbid honking your horn are common in many neighborhoods of Lima, because of the popularity of that instrument. A typical use of the horn is to warn pedestrians that the car is coming up to a stop sign at a completely blind corner and has no intention of obeying the sign.
• Drivers in the Washington, D.C. area love to fight about which part of the region produces the worst drivers. Virginia drivers think Maryland drivers are crazy, Maryland drivers think Virginia drivers are crazy, and those in the District think everyone's terrible. But longtime residents know the ones you really have to watch out for are those with diplomatic plates, since they have diplomatic immunity and can get away with things no other driver could. Diplomats have been known to accrue hundreds of tickets for serious offenses which would get any other driver's license taken away after one or two, but there's nothing anyone can do about it except give them a ticket and hope they pay it (which they frequently don't.)

Asia/Middle East

• Drivers in Beirut are famous for just going as fast as they can, sidewalks, intersections, and hills (Beirut has a lot of hills) be damned. One DA artist (the creator of Malaak: Angel of Peace, in fact) did a series of "Driving Manuals" dedicated to her native Beirut, illustrating such motoring tasks as parking and dealing with congestion. (They later were collected in a book — and a second volume is on the way.)
• After spending some time in Najran, Saudi Arabia, John Dolan/the War Nerd listed the rules of the road as follows:
  1. A lane is what I say it is; 2. Pedestrians need to be taught a lesson; 3. I can stop in the middle of the block if I see something I want to look at for a few minutes, and; 4. Red lights are a suggestion.
• Driving in India can make most people from countries with more, ahem, mellow drivers get the shakes. For Indian drivers, the reaction to being told that there are traffic rules is generally one of the following:
  • "Rules? What Rules?"
  • "Rules? HAHAHAHA, No."
  • "Rules? FUCK YOU!" - In their native tongues, of course, because cursing in English is barbaric.
  • And of course, (rarely - we promise!) "Rules? Do you even know who I am?"
  • And sometimes a combination of the ones above.
  • Drivers sometimes say that you only need three things to drive in India: "Good horn, good brakes, good luck."
  • Even crossing the street on foot can be an ordeal comparable to a real-life game of Frogger.
• Drivers in Indonesia manage to do incredibly crazy things on the roads and manage to survive, which include going the wrong way on a road, piling 3 or more people on a motorcycle, wearing no helmets, completely missing the point of traffic lights and buses stopping everywhere.
• Drivers in Israel have been known to scare new olim (immigrants) from Boston. Special mention goes to drivers of the sherutim (shared taxis) - who tend to treat cities like their own personal demolition derbies (although it's not as if e.g. Egged^note Biggest transit bus company of Israel and is actually 15 years older than the Israeli state itself bus drivers don't drive as if chased by Satan and his legions of hell).
• Non-natives in the Republic of Georgia can get... unnerved while riding in the local public transport form known as the marshrutka; drivers of the same tend to regard things like lane markings, driving on an assigned side of the road, stop signs, crosswalks, speed limits, etc. as quaint suggestions only paid attention to by amateurs.
• Reportedly, American troops deployed to Qatar during The War on Terror were prohibited from driving on public roads unless they had successfully passed something called the OSD Defensive Driving Course. Which is essentially the type of driver's training that is provided to special ops agents.
• Anyone who has ever visited Vietnam can tell you, the traffic over there is a whole new experience altogether, to say the least. Liberal uses of horns and signals outside of their purpose, vehicles of all sizes slip into any space that they can find on the road (and the sideways) just to advance just a tiny bit, ignoring the speed limit and just ‘’silk dance’’ their way through the crowded streets, push for one side then turn to the opposite, etc. It’s common for motorbikes to take over or push too close to heavy trucks, with the inevitable results. Small vehicles like bikes and motorbikes carry 3 or even 10 times their weights and sizes.
  • Funny enough, the chaos has gotten so bad it actually goes full-circle into controlled chaos, where instead of obeying the public laws, people in the cities are following unspoken rules that allow somewhat smooth and relatively safe traffic as long as people respect them. Anyone who unknowingly breaks the rules (either people from the countryside or foreigners) will be considered as rude, uneducated, and rule-breakers.
  • A significant part of Vietnamese drivers are women between young to middle age, who are hilariously dubbed “Ninja Lead(s)”. The name comes from the fact that the typical scooter they use is the Honda Lead (or any other similar ones to the brand), and that they covered themselves from head to toe with sun protection gear. These women are famous for their ability to ignore the red light, run on the opposite lane, suddenly turn with no warning or signal, or use the indicator for the opposite direction of where they want to turn.

Europe

• James May wrote a guide to driving in France for Top Gear magazine, listing handy phrases for use during a drive across France, such as, "You can't imagine that ever being allowed back home," and "How much longer until we get to Germany?"
  In France, 'bumpers' are exactly that: basic pre-electronic sensors used to determine the position of your car relative to others when parking. Parking regulations are very liberal in France. Suitable parking places include roundabouts and any space slightly shorter than the car you're driving.
  • Actual French people tend to accuse Parisians of being the worst drivers bar none... with the second-worst being from their own native region.
• Irish lorry (truck to you Americans) drivers have this stereotype. Breaking time at the wheel regulations - check. Disabling engine governors to drive faster - check. To be fair though, this is only done because they come under pressure from the trucking companies they work for. But the fact remains - if you're anywhere near an Irish registered lorry - GET THE HECK OUT OF THE WAY!
• The news article, "Why are Italians such crazy drivers?", from the viewpoint of an Italian journalist.
• There are several Dash Cam compilations like this from Russian roads, due to dashcams being legally required for purposes of insurance and police evidence.
  • If this movement is anything to go by, at the very least plenty of Russian drivers regularly drive on sidewalks.
• In Athens, Greece, many car drivers have quit driving altogether because of dangerousness in driving in Athens and the reckless Greek automobile and motorcycle culture. Justified, since Athens is a very old city and their streets are very narrow and winding even by European standards, and Athens has excellent public transportation.
• Finnish people have a reputation for being this. The stereotype is somewhat justified since most of Finland is sparsely populated rural woodlands with the police force being badly understaffed. This gives rural people little incentive not to treat every journey like a rally stage.

Oceania

• One reason why tourists in Sydney, Australia would be better off if they didn't drive themselves (other than the city itself) is because Sydney drivers are reckless, aggressive, and more than happy to just weave through whatever opening there is. There's also the aversion to blinkers, as well as taking speed limit signs as rough suggestions. And that's not even taking into consideration the taxis and the buses.
• If you look at a traffic intersection in any part of the world, you will likely see that the amber light is a signal for drivers to prepare to stop. If you look at a traffic intersection in any part of Australia, you will definitely see that the amber light is a signal for drivers to prepare to gun through it like a bat out of hell.
• Actually encouraged in Papua New Guinea's capital of Port Moresby, which has quietly become one of the most violent cites in the world^note PNG actually has an astronomical crime rate, mainly due to a complete lack of any economic opportunities. The country really only has two sources of income, mining and farming (industries generally not found near large cities, or known for paying high wages), and is currently ranked 145th in the world in per-capita GDP. There's certain neighborhoods that people are strongly recommended to avoid, but if you choose to ignore this advice and drive through these neighborhoods do not stop the car, for any reason - assaults, robberies, and carjackings at intersections are very common. Because of this traffic laws are completely ignored, not that the meager police force has time to enforce them to begin with. If there's ever a place where you could get away with driving like you do in Grand Theft Auto in Real Life, and actually might need to do it stay breathing, Port Moresby is probably it.

People

• Anyone who makes the life-threateningly stupid decision to drive while drunk. It's a leading cause of mortality on the roads in many countries around the world. Please do us a favor and either drive sober or get a designated driver.
• Any season of any of the Worst Driver series will likely include someone like this. Some of them are genuinely terrifying.
  • One episode of Canada's Worst Driver featured a teenager so arrogant and unwilling to learn on top of his poor driving that they kicked him out... and he was training to be a cop.
  • The guy who boasted about having sex with some girl while he was driving. The drawbacks of this arrangement should be fairly obvious.
• This. Driving like a lunatic is one thing, but this woman going straight through the wall of the test center where she was meant to take her driving test and injuring 11 people might be something else entirely... This exact incident can be seen on the TV series Most Shocking: season 2, episode 13, titled "Dangerous Drivers 3".
• This used to be common in Formula One, as drivers would scare their opponents out of the way, but it fell out of favor in the push for increased safety following the death of Ayrton Senna. Nowadays, Japanese drivers use this trope a lot; Takuma Sato, Kamui Kobayashi, and Ukyo Katayama are recent examples. Katayama was nicknamed Kamikaze, while Kobayashi has been called Cowboyashi, and Kowasabi. Most notoriously, there was Yuji Ide, who managed to cause enough incidents for the FIA to revoke his Super Licence after four races. Otherwise, the Japanese drivers are considered the nicest and most polite on the grid.
  • Both father (Jos) and son (Max) Verstappen have demonstrated extremely aggressive driving styles, and between them, they have caused several accidents (Max in particular). On the other hand Max is now a 3 time World Driver's Champion and won 19 of the 22 races in 2023 ^note And finished second behind his teammate in two of the races he didn't win, so one man's crazy might be another man's brilliant.
  • In 2012 Pastor Maldonado had a bizarre season, flicking between racing brilliantly without incident (such as his first win in Spain) to causing incident after incident, something he's been called out on numerous times. This trend continued for the rest of his F1 career, earning him nicknames like "Crashtor Maldonado" and "Maldozer".
  • Much like Maldonado above, Romain Grosjean had a less turbulent, but still "interesting", Formula One career, either finishing in the top 10, or not finishing at all due to crashes or mechanical issues. In particular, he has been known for at least 2 infamous first-lap crashes: first was at the 2012 Belgian GP, where he took out Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, and Sergio Perez in one fell swoop at the very first corner, which led him to be labeled by Mark Webber as the "First Lap Nutcase", and be the first person to receive a one-race ban since Michael Schumacher in 1994; the second (and just as infamous) would be his fiery crash at the 2020 Bahrain GP, where he binned his Haas F1 car onto the barriers, splitting it in half. Fortunately, he survived both crashes, especially the second due to advances in safety measures for the sport (including the halo, which enabled his head to miss the barrier). However he never stepped into a F1 car again, electing to take his talents to IndyCar the following season.
  • Not far behind from Maldonado and Grosjean would be Russian F1 driver Daniil Kvyat. One of his infamous racing exploits would be when he nearly bumped into Sebastian Vettel during the 2016 Chinese Grand Prix; such aggressive driving antics infuriated the latter, who christened Kvyat with his most infamous nickname - "The Torpedo." It was Kvyat whom Grosjean made contact with in Bahrain 2020 resulting in the aforementioned crash, followed by the Russian flipping Lance Stroll on the lap after the subsequent restart.
    Vettel: You came like a torpedo!
  • Haas F1 rookie Nikita Mazepin has earned this reputation in record time within a few months of his F1 career, due to the sheer number of spins and incidents he has gotten himself into during the first few races of the 2021 season; he has thus gained himself the nickname "Mazespin" for such exploits. He holds the dubious honour of having finished 21st out of 2021's 20-driver lineup.^Note The other driver to beat him, Alfa Romeo reserve driver Robert Kubica, only participated in two races as a stand-in for Kimi Raikkonen, yet he still finished at higher positions (P15 at Zandvoort, P14 at Monza) than Mazepin during his entire career (his highest place being P14 at Baku, but having retired at four races). Of course Mazepin only got this ride in the first place because his father owned part of the team's sponsor, Uralkali (a Russian mining and fertilizer company), and when his father was placed under sanction after Russia invaded Ukraine both Uralkali and Mazepin had their contracts terminated.
  • Predating and surpassing all of the above drivers, however, there was Andrea de Cesaris. His lucrative sponsors meant he was never without a drive for long, but his constant crashes meant he was never at the same team for long, either. At McLaren, he crashed 19 times in 16 race weekends, incensing Ron Dennis to the point he not only sacked de Cesaris but also vowed never to hire an Italian again. At Ligier, he suffered a spectacular accident that demolished the car, then upon returning to the pits and realising the team hadn't seen the crash, lied that he'd merely stalled - when boss Guy Ligier saw what had really happened, he remarked, "I can no longer afford to employ this man" and fired him on the spot. He then moved to Minardi, where he retired from a record 14 of the 16 races, then moved to Brabham and did the exact same thing. To this day, the man they called "de Crasheris" holds the records for most career DNFs, most DNFs in a season, most consecutive DNFs, and most races without a win.^note For the record, he was a talented driver, and a significant number of those DNFs were mechanical failures rather than crashes. He did come close to winning several races, but always either broke down or - you guessed it - crashed.
• The 2019 Formula 2 World Championship bore witness to arguably the most controversial driver in its roster for this very trope: Mahaveer Raghunathan. This video chronicled his racing career up until the end of the said season, and to say that his whole career is, as described, "Tumultuous" is an understatement.
• The otherwise mild-mannered Ulysses S. Grant was actually quite the speed freak, and was the first president to be given a speeding ticket for going upwards of forty miles per hour on a street in Washington, D.C. — in a horse-drawn carriage. He also won an impromptu drag race against Andrew Johnson's carriage... with Pres. Johnson still in it.
• J. R. R. Tolkien was so bad at driving that his wife eventually refused to ride with him. He eventually forsook cars entirely and just used his bicycle. (Evidently, his mantra as regarded driving was, "Charge at 'em and they scatter!")
• The BBC's youth-oriented channel, BBC3, runs a series called Barely Legal Drivers, in which lethally bad teenage drivers are profiled and challenged to prove they can drive sensibly, the prize for the best improver being a brand-new car. This has been criticized as rewarding bad driving, and the police have apparently been viewing footage of the series with a view to retrospectively charge the stars with really bad driving caught on camera; the BBC may also be prosecuted for aiding and abetting drunken driving and other road offenses. See here
• In former NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz's autobiography, he describes landing at Patrick AFB in Florida and meeting a young man in a Chevy convertible who offered to drive him to Cape Canaveral. The man drove in a very fast and reckless way. Kranz wondered if he had hitched a ride with a madman and was surprised that the Air Force didn't pull them over. The driver turned out to be Gordo Cooper, one of America's first astronauts, whose fame allowed him to get away with this sort of thing. The Mercury astronauts also liked to stage impromptu drag races on their way to work.
• It's mentioned in an episode of Midnight Screenings that Dave Gobble (aka Max Force) of Team Snob is one of these. A popular story is the time he ran into a car full of foreign diplomats.
• Thomas Phillip "Tip" O'Neill, a Massachusetts Democrat and former Speaker of the House in the US House of Representatives, split his time between Boston and Washington DC and became well known for his habit of speeding through red lights in Washington DC in his worn down, rickety car while smoking cigars and knocking back cups of coffee with Congressman Edward Boland (with whom he shared an apartment in DC) but was never stopped by the DC police because they knew his car by sight. O'Neill's staff, naturally, was always afraid he would wreck his car in a spectacular fashion and in the process kill the man second in line to the Presidency after the Vice President.
• Canadian pianist Glenn Gould was famously a terrifying person with whom to drive. "It's true that I've driven through a number of red lights on occasion," he once remarked, "but on the other hand, I've stopped at a lot of green ones but never gotten credit for it."
• Though she was actually a very good driver, Queen Elizabeth II once infamously offered King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia a drive around the Balmoral Estate. Expecting a chauffeur he was very surprised to see the Queen herself take the wheel of the Land Rover (especially as women were not at that point allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia) and promptly proceed to drive at top speed along country roads, talking all the time. Apparently, he eventually ended up begging her to slow down and concentrate. Makes sense since in World War Two Elizabeth drove ambulances, and when saving lives, each second matters.
• Babe Ruth had this reputation. He wrecked his cars often enough that his friends were amazed that he never suffered any serious injuries from them.
• James Roday Rodriguez claims that Psych co-star Dulé Hill is this in real life. Well, Hill does admit in the audio commentary for "Shawn Takes a Shot in the Dark" that he loved scenes where he got to drive Gus' little blue car super fast...
• Most, if not all new drivers, are prone to drive like this every once in a while until they fully get the hang of driving.
• In 1966, a man got ten tickets, drove on the wrong side of the road four times, committed four hit-and-runs, and caused 6 accidents, all within twenty minutes. When your terrible driving ends up in the Guinness World Records, ^Source Guinness Book of Records 1997. One hopes the record still stands. it's time for some remedial courses.
• Eden Project founder Sir Tim Smit has been repeatedly banned from driving for speeding.
• According to The Disaster Artist Tommy Wiseau, famous for The Room (2003), drives so carefully (constantly going at least 20 mph under the speed limit, and slamming on his brakes the second he sees another car in a parking lot, no matter how far away) that it warps back around to this. Plus, he doesn't know how to use windshield wipers. He claims to have been in two near-fatal car accidents, which is probably the case, though Greg doubts how true they are. Played straight when Tommy confronts Greg over him talking to his hippie friend about Tommy, where he becomes angry and unhinged and starts driving like the "normal" version of crazy.
• Averted in the case of a Polish driver named Prawo Jazdy, who was given hundreds of tickets across Ireland and was thought to be the worst offender in the country until the authorities determined that Prawo Jazdy wasn't a name, but was Polish for "driver's license."
• In NASCAR, there's Ricky Stenhouse Jr. He's been involved in a number of crashes, especially at Daytona or Talladega where the cars are much more closely bunched together and one car in the front going sideways results in a big pileup known as 'The Big One'. One notable case came in the final restrictor-plate race of the 2019 season, where on lap 182 of 188 he was the lead car on the inside of a three-wide scenario at the front before going up to side-draft Kyle Busch, leading the middle lane with help from his brother Kurt, only to set off the Big One in which part-timer Brendan Gaughan, who had been leading the outside lane and for a split-second was the overall leader, flipped once.

  Brendan Gaughan during the subsequent red flag: Eh, it's Stenhouse, go figure.

• Kyle Busch hasn't been much better, as he'll spin people out for minor incidents. His most infamous example came in the Truck Series at Texas in 2011, where he was forced into the outside wall by title contender Ron Hornaday (a lapped 07 truck hogging the inside line didn't help) and proceeded to turn Ron into the wall. NASCAR responded by parking him for the weekend.

  Brad Keselowski: Kyle Busch is an ass!^note Busch had turned Brad to win the Xfinity race the previous night. Though considering that Keselowski isn't exactly known for being the cleanest driver either there's more than a bit of the pot calling the kettle black there

• One of the deadliest terrorist attacks ever carried out on French soil involved an intentionally crazy driver indeed. On July 14, 2016, an ISIL terrorist drove a truck full speed on the Promenade des Anglais walkway, killing a total of 86 people. To make matters worse, the reason it was carried out on July 14 specifically was that that day is Bastille Day, which is the national day of France (essentially their version of Independence Day in the USA), with the certainty of having big crowds in the streets. In the end, he ended up being shot to death by the police.
  • A similar attack took place one year after in Barcelona, Spain, when one jihadist drove a van through a crowded street killing 14 people and injuring 130, followed by another attack by 5 men of possibly the same terrorist cell in a nearby town, this time using a car, killing 1 woman and injuring 6 people. The latter attackers were shot to death by the police, while the former escaped and was also killed by the police some days later.
• James Dean, Paul Walker and Ryan Dunn were all known for reckless driving that lead to each of their deaths. Razzle of Hanoi Rocks died in a drunk driving accident in a car driven by a very drunk Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe.

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