Drives Like Crazy / Western Animation

Race cars, lasers, aeroplanes. He can crash them all.

Examples of Drives Like Crazy in Western animation.

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• In Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers, Shane Gooseman considers "any landing you can walk away from" an example of perfectly valid piloting skills. Seeing as he is a genetically engineered super-soldier, his definition is a bit on the broad side.
• Alvin and the Chipmunks: Ride in a car with Miss Miller at your own risk.
• An Animaniacs short titled "Little Old Slappy From Pasadena" is essentially a music video for the song "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena", with Slappy Squirrel in the title role, racing around town in a souped-up Dodge Viper convertible — complete with supercharger^note technically, not allowed in super stock, but this is Slappy we're talking about sticking through the hood — as the song plays.
  Slappy:(the short's only line of dialogue) And I never took a lesson in my life! (Cue police cars suddenly surrounding her at the end, who shrugs as a policeman drags her off by the tail to arrest her for reckless driving)
• One of the Batman Rogues in the Batman/Superman crossover episode "World's Finest" is a very bad driver, and surprisingly, it's not The Joker, it's Harley Quinn. Just watch the scene where she impersonates Mercy and drives Lex Luthor's limo to the Joker, and it will become extremely apparent how bad she is at driving. Not that she's any better in her home series.
• On Beetlejuice, B.J. and Lydia's sentient car Doomie is a peaceful pacifist. At least until it sees a dog, then it transforms into a poster child for AAA.
• Whatever you do, don't let Bonkers get behind the wheel of any vehicle.
• Mr Peanutbutter from Bojack Horseman is a dog meaning he chases mailman in his car. Meaning he chases mailmen with his car and sticks his head out the window while driving. Naturally this causes him to get his license suspended.
• Stinkmeaner from The Boondocks, due to driving a car while blind, and not giving a damn if he hurts anyone.
• Camp Lazlo: Slinkman of all people drove the bus like this in "Squirrel Seats". First he nearly wrecked a bus full of children due to the horrible shock of Lazlo agreeing to sit next to a girl. Later on, he was mocking and deliberately crashing through every sign he saw — still in a bus full of children — because he was disappointed with their latest field trip.
• Gadget in the opening scene of the Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers episode "The Case of the Cola Cult".
• Clerks: The Animated Series: "Oh, no! Bear is driving? How can this be?!!"
• The Crumpets:
  • Granny is a reckless driver using the family's van and three-wheeled truck. She speeds, steers sharply at a fast speed, drives through the woods, outspeeds the police, and almost went to a head-on collision with Ma (and doesn't identify her) while they're both driving.
  • Her rich son Uncle Hurry rams the cars in front of his massive convertible to the air.
• Danny Phantom: Jack Fenton's driving ignores all speed limits, red lights, and certain laws of physics.
  Tucker: Couldn't you have just flown us?
  Danny: The way my Dad drives, this is faster.
• Lee's mom in Detentionaire, complete with throwing her passengers around and plenty of road rage. Cam has this to say on the topic of Mrs. Ping's driving: “Woah, Mrs. Ping! Every drive with you is like an adventure in almost dying! ...Don't get me wrong, though, you know, it's awesome.”
• Disney:
  • The 1950 cartoon Motor Mania has Goofy as Mr. Walker, a mild-mannered suburbanite who quite literally becomes a different person behind the wheel: the ill-tempered reckless driver Mr. Wheeler.
  • Max actually plays clips from this short in an episode of House of Mouse, to get even with his dad for not letting him get a car.
  • Goofy gets to be a bad driver again in the feature film A Goofy Movie, with one notable instance where he is reading the road map while driving, causing Max to tell him to put the map away after he nearly had a head-on collision with a truck.
  • He also appeared in a couple of educational shorts in the 1960s, Freewayphobia and Goofy's Freeway Troubles, demonstrating how NOT to behave when driving on the then newly-constructed freeway system.
  • Donald Duck in the first part of Donald's Tire Trouble. Karma kicks in, however, when one of his tire gets a flat.
• The TV version of Donkey Kong Country turns Funky Kong into one of these, airplane-style. He's a fair pilot, but tends to do a lot of loops and flips whenever he's flying, at one point flying upside-down without realizing it.
• Ling Ling in Drawn Together is shown to be a horrible driver until he gets surgery to be less Asian. Yeah.
• Launchpad McQuack of DuckTales (1987) and Darkwing Duck is of the Flies Like Crazy variety. He's actually a very skilled pilot and capable of some rather insane feats of aerobatics, but it's the landings you really have to watch out for.
  • In DuckTales (2017), Launchpad serves as both pilot and chauffeur to Scrooge McDuck. He's shown to be an even worse driver than he is a pilot.
• The Fairly OddParents!: Wanda is definitely a crazy driver. She caused fires, down power lines, construction workers to take shelter in a sewer, etc. just because of her driving. Cosmo replies to her driving with this:
  Cosmo: Hey, look, you made some new friends!
• Peter from Family Guy. His offenses include getting easily distracted, attempting to pull off dangerous and idiotic stunts, one time driving blindfolded, and of course, drunk driving. The fact that the worst consequence that he ever faced was one time getting his license suspended is pretty unbelievable. Although he did die once in a drunk driving accident before Death decided to revive him.
• Bloo in Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. After hijacking the Foster's Bus, he takes Mac all over the place, getting part-time jobs as delivery boys in the process, and by the end of the episode, has the entire police force waiting outside the front door when they get back home. Oh yeah, and Mac was the one driving at one point, completely hopped up on sugar.
  "Best. Roadtrip. Ever."
• Gargoyles: Lexington's first encounter with a motorcycle definitely qualifies, as he had no idea how to slow down the damn thing; naturally, the ride ends in disaster.
  Brooklyn: Maybe we'd better not tell Goliath about this.
• Bobo from Generator Rex. He seems to take a perverse pride in not having a license. Granted he is a chimpanzee, but this does not stop him from driving heavy armoured vehicles.
• Grunkle Stan from Gravity Falls can hardly put his hands on the steering wheel before he ends up crashing into something since his cataracts render him legally blind.
  Stan: Road safety laws, prepared to be ignored!
• Trina Riffin from Grojband has extreme road rage issues and often causes trouble for other drivers as she drives around.
• This is a running gag on and off in episodes of the series Jem. When the character Pizzazz drives anything cries of "Pizzazz look out" are usually heard as a common occurrence no matter what vehicle it is.
• In Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures, Race falls into crazy driver mode when Jessie goes missing. Jonny as well, even without that excuse. But then again, he is only 14.
• Stumpy from Kaeloo. He normally crashes into everything in sight, and Bad Kaeloo actually punishes Mr. Cat in one episode by smashing him through a car and letting Stumpy drive (and considers it worse than punching or strangling him).
• Master Shifu of all people in Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness. He drives a noodle cart/car recklessly down the Jade Palace stairway and even says a cheerful "I'm a good driver!"
• The Legend of Korra: Korra "parks" Asami's car by smashing it into a lamppost near the docks and netting about ten parking tickets in the process. When critiqued, she immediately points out that she does not know how to drive and was left alone to take the car home. Bolin compliments her on doing that well, given the circumstances. We actually see her drive in the third season, but instead of being reckless, she's excessively slow and cautious, counter to her usual Hot-Blooded attitude.
• Littlest Pet Shop (2012):
  • Roger straddles between this and an accidental Badass Driver: The first time he was shown driving in the series, he veered into a crowded subway station and back out without harming anybody. Most subsequent portrayals of him behind the wheel have shown him goofing around like playing Air Guitar with his eyes shut tight (much to Blythe's dismay). That being said, he apparently makes a good chauffeur when that becomes his job, and he is the best passenger plane pilot his company has.
  • Often subverted as Blythe does some reckless driving of a delivery truck filled with sweets while rescuing her Littlest Pet Shop friends, preventing them from getting killed, as she gets into trouble with the law for driving without a driver's license.
• Lola Bunny and Daffy Duck in The Looney Tunes Show prove to be this as well when they take their drivers' test in the same episode.
• Leni Loud from The Loud House has failed her driving test 14 times, and, as Lori notes, she can't even drive a lawnmower without Lincoln and his sisters "speaking Leni". However, she's downplayed this trope after finally getting her license in "Driver's Dread", but some of her habits are still present. It also runs among her sisters - Lola frequently abuses her toy jeep and terrorizes anyone unfortunate to get in her way; while Lynn in "Lynn and Order" has a tendency to take sharp turns in the school-sanctioned golf cart, and drives using only the accelerator pedal for both going and stopping.
• Coop from Megas XLR. When he had to renew his driver's license, the instructor passed him more out of fear than approval. He also operates his Humongous Mecha this way...
• Grandpa Moo from The Moo Family Holiday Hoedown displays signs of this trope, in the scene where he drives the auto-moo-bile towards the stadium.
• In Motorcity, Mike Chilton is this, as far as Chuck is concerned. Although Mike's actually a very skilled driver at that.
• Nefer-tina of Mummies Alive! is actually a good driver. Unfortunately, she never fully understands that red means stop and green means go.
• Scootaloo from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic tends to pull very crazy stunts on that scooter of hers. Fortunately she is skilled enough to pull it off without harming anypony.
• Two examples in The Octonauts
  • Kwazii is a Hot-Blooded speed freak (he's generally the one piloting the fastest of their vehicles, the GUP-B), and while he can pilot his craft just fine when he's focused and paying attention, he has a bad habit of getting distracted or getting excited by something, at which point his focus goes right out the launch bay along with his piloting skills.
  • Shellington, on the other hand, is just generally incompetent at piloting anything. Tweak, the Octonauts' mechanic, gets nervous whenever he's given a craft to pilot. One episode has him take out three vehicles (only two of which he was piloting himself) as well as hitching a ride on a sailfish that almost impales a jellyfish (which, fortunately, was an immortal jellyfish, so it just reverted to childhood).
• Peppa Pig:
  • The Queen demonstrates these tendencies in one episode. When she can't go across Tower Bridge because it hasn't lowered, her response is to jump the gap. Keep in mind that she's doing this in a bus filled with kindergarten-age children.^note And not to mention Her Majesty actually can drive normally and excellently in real life so apparently her Peppa Pig counterpart is the exact opposite.
  • In another episode, while on a trip to France, Daddy Pig is warned by Mummy Pig that the driving might be different in another country. Daddy Pig tells her not to worry, then immediately starts driving the opposite way in a one-way lane. The family is cheerfully oblivious to this, misinterpreting the other drivers' frustrated shouts as greetings.
• In Phineas and Ferb, Doofenshmirtz is usually shown as a good driver, but that changes in the episode, "Doonkleberry Imperative" when Doof has to take the dreaded "Drusselstein Driving Test Waltz".
  • Candace drives this way in "Bubble Boys". Practicing for a driver's test and trying to bust your brothers don't exactly go together.
• Colleen in Road Rovers. Thankfully, the car does have airbags.
• Virginia Wolfe on the Rocko's Modern Life episode "Driving Mrs. Wolfe."
• Sh'lainn Blaze in Roswell Conspiracies: Aliens, Myths and Legends. She hates technology to begin with and therefore doesn't know how to drive. Nick gets rather annoyed when she tries to drive his car.
• During Samurai Jack Jack once decides to pile some hostages into a getaway skycar and drive them to safety. Promptly this Fish out of Temporal Water rams the car backwards into other cars, then has it shoot off far too fast in random directions because he does not know what buttons to press. One of the hostages bodily pulls his foot off the acceleration and takes over; despite being an alien who's never seen this vehicle before, she does a better job.
  • In Season 5 Jack has had about fifty years to adjust to the future and operates his Cool Bike with much more competence.
• The Save-Ums!: When Custard in the Zoomer, be prepared to go super fast!
• Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century: Lestrade's recklessness behind the wheel is a Running Joke. The very first scene of the series involves her inflicting massive property damage during a Car Chase (in a Flying Car).
• A common joke on The Simpsons.
  • Otto, the school bus driver, is frequently portrayed this way. The fact that he's almost always baked probably has something to do with it.
  • Homer also has his moments. Once, while driving down the road, covered his chest with nacho makings... then, needing to make room for the last ingredient, leaned his seat back so far that he couldn't see out the windshield at all. Another time, he's too busy singing about the fact he's about to crash into a chestnut tree to actually attempt to avoid the tree. He has also been observed making fondue while behind the one, once had an oven in his car that he used while driving and tried to drive with a bucket stuck in his head with only two tiny eye-holes. He also once had a smoke machine operating in the car, to which he said something to the effect of "This is stupid, even for me." Homer's ability to get frequently distracted behind the wheel has sometimes lead to Lisa being forced to take the wheel instead, and her lack of reaction seems to suggest that this has long since become a normal thing for her.
    Lisa: Yeah, I got it!
  • And Marge of all people develops a streak of this when she gets a super-sized SUV called the Canyonero, to the point of having to take classes for road rage.
  • Mr. Burns drives a 19th-century automobile in the manner of early motorists (i.e. with complete disregard of any traffic rules) in one episode, exclaiming "Watch out, I'm motorized!" while pedestrians scramble out of the way of his wildly-swerving car.
  • Interestingly enough, this is typically averted with Bart, who has been a competent driver from a young age and at one point drove three of his friends to Knoxville, Tennessee (apparently a long road trip) without any incidents in the actual process of travel. However, in "Burns' Heir" he's gifted a car by Mr. Burns and drives it straight through a Santa's Village due to not being able to see over the dash, and the episode "Little Big Girl" contains an Opening Shout-Out where—after managing to attain a legal driver's license from the town—he takes his typical skateboard trip home from school in Homer's car instead and hits all the pedestrians he usually passes on the way.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Hoo boy, SpongeBob himself, to the point that this trope should be renamed "Drives Like SpongeBob".
  • He can never pass his driving (boating) test properly, not even in his dreams. Once his teacher, Mrs. Puff, passes him just to get him out of her class, but becomes overwhelmed by guilt and fear thanks to an Imagine Spot of SpongeBob running over pedestrians, causing mass destruction, and herself being publicly shamed on the news.
  • In "Mrs. Puff, You're Fired", said teacher gets fired, resulting in SpongeBob receiving a Drill Sergeant Nasty shark for an instructor. After the whole regiment of Training from Hell, including crawling through the street, acid pit and the like, SpongeBob became an excellent driver... when and only if he can't see, such as when he's wearing a blindfold.
  • Also, his talents in driving is limited to only a boat, where he can drive anything except it, even a rock or a sandwich.
    SpongeBob: Ya' don't need a license to drive a sandwich.
  • In early episodes, it's suggested that he does know how to drive quite well and memorized all the boating rules, but he just gets extremely nervous behind the wheel and can't focus.
  • SpongeBob's bad driving proves to be surprisingly useful when he enters a demolition derby in "Demolition Doofus" — as it causes him to become a completely impossible target for the other opponents, thus he obliterates the entire competition and wins.
  • Just how bad of a driver is SpongeBob? Just take a look at the sheer difference in his thought process on foot and behind the wheel.
    SpongeBob on foot: Starboard! Port! Skipper! Galley! Keel! 1924! (all answered before Mrs. Puff could ask the questions to which the order above is the correct answers)
    SpongeBob behind the wheel: Floor it? OKAY, FLOOR IT!!
• Chiro of Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! drives a spaceship in "Secret of the Sixth Monkey".
• Beckett Mariner of Star Trek: Lower Decks leads a security team on a Starbase in a chase very similar to that of the mall chase seen in The Blues Brothers when she and Brad Boimler are set up to smuggle illegal weapons in "An Embarrassment of Dooplers".
• In Star Wars: The Bad Batch, Hera and Omega steal an Imperial shuttle. As an adult, Hera is a badass pilot, but as a teenager with no real experience she ends up driving it so erratically (including somehow sending it sideways into several other shuttles when trying to take off) that Tech comments that neither the Imperials nor her teammates have any idea what she'll do next, which actually helps them escape.
• The taxicab driver in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) episode "Raphael Drives 'em Wild".
  Raphael: Are you sure you didn't get your DRIVER'S LICENSE FROM A BOX OF POPCORN?!?!?!?!
• In Thomas & Friends, this crops up many times. For example, Duncan sways a lot (or, to use his driver's words, does 'rock n' roll'), and Bertie will often push himself to the limit, especially if he's racing Thomas. One episode features a bi-plane called Tiger Moth who flies like crazy. Even the Fat Controller/Sir Topham Hatt is horrible at driving.
  Winston: (About the Fat Controller's driving) Early days, sir, early days.
• Transformers: Animated:
  • Interestingly enough, the Autobots. In "Human Error", they are seemingly turned into humans and have to drive the vehicles their altmodes are based on. What an APC was doing in downtown, who knows? Optimus trails hoses everywhere, Ratchet drives backwards, and Bulkhead smashes into stuff (oh wait, he does that normally). They're used to being cars, not driving them.
    Optimus: I have to hand it to the humans, driving is much more difficult than it looks.
  • Ratchet might actually be the dark horse of the Automen when it comes to driving skills — he may have been driving backwards, but he was doing so at highway speeds and not having as much trouble as anyone else!
  • Sentinel Prime displays poor driving skills in "Where Is Thy Sting", and has no such excuse. Before that, he showed a complete disregard for any human traffic laws, thinking human laws aren't worth following, immediately before driving off an unfinished bridge.
• The evil Cool Car combiner team from The Transformers known as the Stunticons drive like complete and utter maniacs... which, to be fair, they are, since their roster includes a megalomaniac, an egomaniac, a paranoiac, a nihilist, and a psychopath. Since they're the bad guys, they're not the kind to care very much about trifles like street safety or collateral damage and so their driving could be described as negligent at best (and outright homicidal at most other times).
• The Venture Bros.:
  • Though a very skilled driver, Brock Samson, when renewing his license to kill, totals every car but his own on the driving range.
  • Hank drove this way in a more conventional sense (swerving from one side of the road to the other, going far too fast, etc.) when Dr. Girlfriends forced him to drive Brock's car to the Monarch's flying cocoon.
• Alex starts out as a horrible driver in Totally Spies!, to the point of people seriously doubting her ability to get a driver's license because she demolishes everything in her path. Her skills improve after she successfully steers an airship away from the city, but her overall level of competence continues to be a Running Gag.
• Martin full-stop in Wild Kratts, who has driven their poor jeep flying over a ravine, forgets to put on the parking brake, and lost the keys three times.
• Kitty Pryde, in X-Men: Evolution, is so bad that she scared Wolverine. It doesn't help that, instead of avoiding hitting stuff, she phases the car through it.
  • This is after, of course, he volunteered for what Professor Xavier described as a dangerous mission (without giving the specific details). Kitty drove so badly she terrified a man who can heal any injury and can't break a bone into his body! And to cap it off, Wolverine felt that Xavier had abused their trust by underselling just how dangerous this adventure would be.

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