Driving: Is Aggressive the new Defensive?

Chaos

Well-known member
I've noticing more and more than the more defensive I drive, the more trouble I get into lately, particularly in rush hour.

For example, if I leave a 2-second gap (which is what you are supposed to do) between me and the car in front, I am about 100% likely to be cut off. People see a gap, and they go after it like a rabid dog - this includes lane changers, people turning into the road, and my new favourite, people making lefts using any gap possible. I am immediately put in a situation where I have to hit the brakes hard or else I hit the guy in front of me.

Oddly, when I drive more aggressive, it's much less stressful. I close that gap, no one attempts any stunts around me. I drive more peacefully.
 
Depends on your definition of aggressive and defensive I'd say. Defensive doesn't necessarily mean passive. Driving passively will get your murdered around these parts. :D

The truth is somewhere in between aggressive and passive...but more towards aggressive. Don't bite off more than you can chew but don't be afraid to put yourself in a better position (ie: safer, with more room around you) if you can do so safely and without cutting people off. Well...every now and then you gotta cut a mofo off haha...
 
That gap gets larger for me when I have the trailer on the back of the truck due to my increased stopping distance. Driving through the gta I have to be dangerously close to the guy in front so I dot get cut off
 
air horn...love it...use it...but yeah, depends where you are driving...in the city, forget it, on a bike, get where you need to be and forget about the cars, they have no mercy...in the suburbs, totally different scenario...
 
That gap gets larger for me when I have the trailer on the back of the truck due to my increased stopping distance. Driving through the gta I have to be dangerously close to the guy in front so I dot get cut off

yeah, what we need is hologram projection tech that allows us to project a couple cars in front of us so we can keep our distance...
 
Pretty normal situation for Ontario's roads.. In denser traffic you wanna close down the spacing and mind your blocking positions, even when goin' cajun.
 
Yep, people drive like jerk offs everywhere but especially in the GTA. Then I catch flack about how I am driving selfishly because I might be speeding or driving somewhat aggressively but I think there is a difference in drive aggressively and driving dangerously. Speeding a little and working through traffic using all signals and not cutting people off... generally driving in a way that other people are very unlikely to have to hit their brakes at all or avoid me but other people will make any move they can if they think the person they're affecting can stop in time. It's really retarded. I won't pull out if I think the guy coming is going to have to stop and I won't lane change if I don't have enough space to accelerate to the same speed as the lane. Then there's people that don't know how to merge properly (like actually get up to highway speed before merging). Drives me nuts.
 
I couldnt agree more....I was hauling 34 bundles of shingles with my Harbour Freight fold up trailer (read: above rated capacity for tires!) anywho, i was accelerating slowly, braking slowly, and driving under the speed limit with my 4 ways on.

The number of people who would merge into my lane at the last second was astonishing. I havent had to do so many hard braking EVER!

What? u see a Maxima with 4 ways driving 10km/h under the speed limit and you STILL manage to cut me off??!?!?!

And to all the jackasses who would ride my ***, then pass me aggressively and then cut me off merging back into my lane. Yea, u especially can go die in a fire. 'SCUSE ME for driving 60 in a 60...
 
No, Defensive is the new Defensive and Aggressive is the new Aggressive!
 
I'd have to say the GTA is the only **** hole I've been that is like that. I always like to ride / drive with a good double car length in front of me. What the OP is saying is true, soon as you get into the GTA it's everyone for themselves, squeezing into lanes half the size of there car and just assuming you are going to slam on your breaks so they can get in. I can say I've ridden to Nova Scotia and have never seen that aggressive style. I consider myself a good driver, but soon as you get into the GTA it feels like it has it's own laws of the road, and you better adapt quickly or someones gonna get smashed.
 
The way I see it is better driver training testing should be done here in Canada as in the UK where they teach you some skid pad and defensive driving....here if you can parallel park they hand you a license and your off on the 401.....in a car....not a camel or donkey...this is a scary thought! Oh well the government need the $$ so thats how it is
 
Too many selfish idiots on the road these days using any gap, off-ramp, on-ramp, or breakdown lane to move up through traffic. If they'd stop being so narcissistic, they'd get home faster.
 
Driving according to conditions. GTA=no need to cruise.
 
If I'm in front and I'm in the lead, then I am passing or pulling over to the right. So, I will pull up to prevent others from cutting around me.
If I'm in the right hand land and I see someone attempting to pass me and cut in, I slow down and let them in. That way I'm never cut off, and I seem to get there almost as quickly as when I tailgate people in the passing lane.
If I'm in the middle lane...well I am rarely in the middle lane; it is overcrowded with slow people who won't move right.
 
The Toronto government spends millions of tax dollars “while Highways are literally decomposing”, to build more useless traffic lights every few hundred metres in places where there is heavy flow of traffic, what they are doing is causing flow suffocation. Thus, even highways become more congested because people detour," since we are like nature, created to be in order, we are looking for orderly flow, so we will detour to find un-congestion" when people detour times many people, it causes flow entanglement, there is no flow, form nor order anymore, but chaos in travel, and nature resists anarchised disorder and tries to halt it and then correct it, “karma in lamest terms” , traffic caused by too many unnecessary traffic light junctions is due to the amount of extra traffic junctions above the required equilibrium needed to flow traffic effienctly vs variables (cars,bikes, public transportation e.g buses etc), the reality is they only real “serve a purpose” of getting 4 way traffic across somewhat safely, and not to reduce traffic congestion, in fact the more traffic lights go up the worse traffic will get, but that’s what you get when the human civilization has zero capacity to regulate itself without ego.


The Universe to the smallest insect in existence are a biological creation of order, and an existing substance of certain organic skill in essance to fulfill a purpose to a larger whole, most are confused as to their purpose by being in this dis-ordered environment (it is not in our created nature to be disorderly, if we are! it will cause us to malfunction, be it in personal lives to the infrastructure created around us with the same principals, we are beings of order to function unrestrictedly by our choice of free will, good or bad choices nature is there to keep us in order) , but then again they already know this, and they do it on purpose, because they want to get more money out of people, and if that is a lie, we wouldn’t have to pay taxes. By purposely building more useless traffic junctions and causing traffic jams they cause people to spend more at the pumps, they cause people to wait longer in traffic and get stressful so they drive more aggressively, which leads to more income for police when they catch more speeders and traffic law breakers trying to make up time on those open stretches, how surprising they then have police radars at these intervals, also they have only 5% or less police cruisers on the streets actually driving around to “serve and protect” between 11am to about 8pm these days, there are almost non-existence other then at their allotted radar spots so their cops don't waist gas by not being inefficient, the truth is the “machine” the government is efficient and civilians are not, yet the civilians feed the machine.


Notice after 8-9pm there are cops everywhere, now looking to unnecessarily harass people out cruising on their bikes or sport cars, then the police spends several thousand dollars an hour to call in back up and helicopters to search for a biker on a 200mph rocket that they were never going to catch in the first place, and since by day time there is so much traffic no one can really speed, they don’t need cars on the road cruising, but all that changes at night right! So the reason why this is happeneing is, that just like overfilled chicken farms, that are overfilled, our roads are becoming like that, and when majority of drivers are driving agressively the ones that arn't will feel the pressure, and visa versa, ever notice in the morning everyones in an agressive drive mode, to get to work, and 5pm 6 pm back home everyones driving so slow, and now the agressive drivers need to adjust to the majority of the slower traffic. This is simply balancing nature, people should realise we are not ment to work separate but together, just like in the traffic other wise we'll cut each others heads off.
 
Last edited:

Back
Top Bottom