Car Talk

yeah i understood why you shot it, that was being merciful. it is the accident itself i was referring to as killing the deer, sorry for not being clear about that. how you could have that experience and then go on to drive another day, rather than being paralyzed with fear and trepidation.

I moved to NYC and now just take the train everywhere.

No deer but those loud kids after school are murder.
 
now that's disturbing on a whole other level. :eek:

but with the concept of driving, i don't struggle with personal fear so much, it's more a fear of my potential damaging effect on others. people, bambi, the geico gecko. i am far too empathetic. that is the man-stuff that scares me...where is the empathy, where is the compassion and suffering for those you've caused to suffer?

like, how you can be so casual recounting the tales of vehicular-animal slaughter you've witnessed, or how Rosco was able to get behind the wheel of his car the next day after killing that deer? when i see a dead animal in the road, it makes me wish that there were less highways and a whole heck of a lot less people overpopulating and completing decimating this planet, leaving animals who have every right to be there with no place left to go. i start hoping for some kind of large scale natural disaster to wipe 40% of us humanfolk away. i don't think, "eh, sh*t happens."

In my case, it is because I see a lot of it. I am not dispassionate. I feel badly for the animals, and the people as well. Oddly, I feel worse for the animals. Most pedestrians that get hit are largely at fault for the hit, not the driver. The animal has no concept of cars, or speed, and certainly isn't wandering drunk at 2am in dark clothes on a poorly lit road.

And I felt awful the last time I hit a deer (I was 19). Honestly did. But I can compartmentalise it, move on, and do my job regardless.

i can't even imagine how i would feel if i witnessed a person being hit, no matter how it turned out. a guy yesterday was telling me that he got hit by a car while riding his bike as a kid (went up and over as you described Homburg). as he attempted to crawl out of the ditch that he had flown into, his first words to the driver, who actually stopped and was walking around looking for him, were: "you assh*le!" if i were driving a car and hit some kid on his bike, i don't care if he was okay and able to curse me out afterward, i would probably needed to be institutionalized from the psychological trauma of it all.

I have been riding a bicycle and got hit by a car. I flew clean over the back end of the car, and landed on the other side. I got up, cussed a bit that my bike was hammered, and then asked the driver why he SPED UP when he saw me. He was more interested in cursing me out in german than in trying to cross the language barrier.

And I've seen people get hit by cars twice now. The first case was a drunk, and I was working security. I called 911 as I ran up to the scene. The guy was lucky (as was I) that there was an off-duty EMT nearby when it happened. The second was a woman who, so far as I can tell, was trying to commit suicide. She looked dead into oncoming traffic and stepped out in front of a car. There was a police patrol unit on the opposite side of the street, and he was on-scene immediately.

In both cases, it happened too quickly to worry about feeling anything. The drunk I only had so much sympathy for, as he was drunk at 2am in dark clothes on a dark street. And, well, I feel for anyone that is so down that they're going to step in front of a car, but I reserve most of my sympathy for the person behind the wheel.

just too much power dangit, that driving thing...too much power and too much responsibility for a girl like me.

This is something I can understand. viv and MIS both dislike driving. It may well be rooted partially in power, and the response to it.

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Come up here and I will teach you. Curvy back roads are the best for gaining driving skills

Quite so.

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Master Driver = one million or more miles driven commercially, accident-free.

Your dad is bad-ass. Wow.
 
I actually like the "non driving girl" thing...kind of old school.

But perviness aside, it opens up your life incredibly.

And I always liked being chauferred and saw it that way. But it's getting on my last nerve and M's working too many nights and I want to take a class.
 
And I always liked being chauferred and saw it that way. But it's getting on my last nerve and M's working too many nights and I want to take a class.

Just promise me you wont' ever drive an art car.

@#$% art cars
 
yeah i understood why you shot it, that was being merciful. it is the accident itself i was referring to as killing the deer, sorry for not being clear about that. how you could have that experience and then go on to drive another day, rather than being paralyzed with fear and trepidation.

Because fear is just another emotion. I don't get paralysed with happiness, or boredom, so I don't see why I should be paralysed by fear.

I drive for work, and think nothing of spending 5-10 hours behind the wheel on any given day.

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Just promise me you wont' ever drive an art car.

@#$% art cars

Art cars are awesome. As art. Not as something to be actually driven.
 
I want to learn how to drive, but have no real opportunity to do so. My mother no longer owns a car, and my dad hasn't owned a car since he moved to NY in the 80s. Nobody I know who could teach me how to drive owns a car. I could go to a driving school but that would mean learning on the streets of NYC, and having been in many taxi cabs in my life, the thought of that is terrifying.

Similar to learning how to ride a bike, I never had the opportunity to do so (landlord wouldn't let us keep the bike under the stairs, can't keep one on the street, too heavy to carry to a 4th floor walk up, etc.) and so have only recently acquired that skill. I'm not sure when I'll learn to drive. Probably sometime after I graduate, if at all.
If I had a Syd of my very own...I'd teach her how to drive.:D
 
If I had a Syd of my very own...I'd teach her how to drive.:D

ROFL. Well KC has first dibs. I guess you'll have to fight it out.

*Intense brainstorm*

This calls for a naked chocolate pudding wrestling throw down!!
 
Syd, for what it's worth, I learned my city driving in Boston. I figure if you can learn to survive driving in Boston you can make it anywhere. :D
 
i would like the answer to this one also, and i don't even have the excuse of being a New Yorker...i am a country southern girl from a place where folks typically learn to drive manual shift pick-ups at 11 years old tops. the message just didn't take with me...i have a major phobia about driving. what if you hit another car? what if you run over a pedestrian? what about bambi?


I have the same issue but it is also compounded by health issues. So I don't exactly know whether it is the phobia or it is the health issue that stops me from driving.
 
ROFL. Well KC has first dibs. I guess you'll have to fight it out.

*Intense brainstorm*

This calls for a naked chocolate pudding wrestling throw down!!

It always comes back to food.

Seriously, Syd, don't let fear hold you back. Driving is a useful skill and you never know when you might need it. And it's really, really fun!! As was mentioned, a driving school, (well, a good one), isn't going to throw you into the fray right off the bat.

As for the best places to learn how to drive? Think north, baby. Once you've learned to drive in the snow and ice, everything else is cakey.
 
Syd, for what it's worth, I learned my city driving in Boston. I figure if you can learn to survive driving in Boston you can make it anywhere. :D

I don't want to learn to drive in Boston, either. Fucking insane Boston drivers. Almost as bad as NYC Taxi drivers. Almost.

It always comes back to food.

Seriously, Syd, don't let fear hold you back. Driving is a useful skill and you never know when you might need it. And it's really, really fun!! As was mentioned, a driving school, (well, a good one), isn't going to throw you into the fray right off the bat.

As for the best places to learn how to drive? Think north, baby. Once you've learned to drive in the snow and ice, everything else is cakey.

The fear I have is for learning to drive in my natural habitat. NYC streets are not exactly a cakewalk.

Like I said before, I want to learn how to drive, I really do. However, I don't care how good a driving school is. I don't want to step foot (or tire) onto a NYC street until I've been driving for at least 5 years.

I want to learn how to drive in a huge, empty, wide open parking lot where the only thing I might hit is a stray shopping cart and the only thing that might hit me is a plastic bag.
 
Like Bunny, my learning to drive was done in hayfields. (Well, someone had to run the rake/baler/etc. while the strong men gathered the hay.) Then it was to dirtroads and backroads, the kind that's only big enough for one vehicle to fit down. I picked up my need for speed from racing go-carts with my brother and his male friends (I always won:)).

As far as vehicles go, I am currently driving (and it HIGHLY depends on the way the wind is blowing) my old Mazda 626, again. When we first got the Mazda, it had transmission problems but the place where we bought it from had it "fixed." The guy that "fixed" it said "Mazda's transmissions are throw-aways."

5 years later, I have had to the transmission worked on 2 other times. grrr. Yes, it has been a pain but compared to my "other" car it is way more reliable.
 
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