Top 10 Driving Etiquette Mistakes and Misdemeanors

By Maureen Condon

The Lane Drifters - endangering everyone on the road!


What's your take on the Top 10 Driving Etiquette Mistakes and Misdemeanors? And what do you call the people who commit them?

Here’s my take on it! You may beg to differ, and you can do so by posting your comments at the end of this blog.

1. Lane Drifters. Drivers who don’t stay in their own lane and mindlessly drift over the white lines on the highway. Not only is this rude, it’s extremely dangerous and should be a crime punishable by high fines and misdemeanors.

2. Tailgaters. Again, rude and dangerous drivers. Tailgating causes the most serious of accidents. The worst tailgaters are so close you can’t even see their headlights!

3. The No-Win Mergers -- Drivers who merge onto a divided highway at a low speed with no regard for the cars already traveling in the right hand lane. If you wait for them, they slow down even more, and if you speed up to safely pass them, they speed up too.

Unemployment Up. U.S. Highway Fatalities Down.

There is a downward trend in the number of traffic fatalities nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that part of the reason for the decrease is the increase in unemployment. Fewer jobs means fewer commuters means fewer accidents during rush hour.

While final figures for 2009 have not yet been released, figures for the first nine months indicated the trend in fewer fatalities was continuing downward. But, even before rising unemployment numbers were helping to lower traffic fatalities, the 2008 highway death count at 37,261 represented a drop of 9.7 percent from 2007. Fatalities reported in 2008 hit their lowest level since 1961.

Tips for Installing a Child Car Safety Seat

In April, in our community blog, we offered you tips on how to evaluate and select a child car safety seat.

Now, we are going to direct you to a number of sources for tips on how to install it properly.

But first, some statistics. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) nearly 80 percent of all car seats are improperly installed and used. That is a very troublesome statistic, and may to a large degree contribute to another very troublesome statistic: Automobile accidents are the number-one killer of children under 14 years old.

As anyone who has tried to install a child car safety seat knows, getting it done right isn’t easy. That’s because there are so many different model cars and car seats that the combination of the two is probably some number in the thousands.

So, it’s a safe bet there’s no set of directions specific to the combination car seat and car you are working with.

But don’t get discouraged. Help is available from a variety of sources.