Over time all of us can develop bad driving habits like tailgating, running red lights, and not getting up to highway speed before merging from an on-ramp. While none of those bad habits were revealed in a survey recently done by U.S. News & World Report, the results revealed by the publication are still interesting, especially since road rage was the top bad driving behavior respondents admitted to.
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That’s right, a full 64 percent of respondents said they “had road rage while driving.” Now we’re not entirely sure how they’re defining road rage. Some might think viciously commenting on the bad driving displayed by others on the road would qualify. Others believe it entails directly confronting other drivers through aggressive behavior like yelling at them, laying on your horn, making aggressive moves with your car towards theirs, etc.
Unsurprisingly, the next most popular habit among respondents was speeding at 51 percent. We’re actually shocked that number wasn’t much higher, so we’re seriously questioning how honest people were in their responses. After all, speeding technically is going even 1 mph above the legal limit and who never, ever has done that?
A shocking 37 percent saying they have “driven when they were too tired to be driving.” That’s a subjective measure, although we think most can agree that actually falling asleep while behind the wheel or almost falling asleep qualify. Evidently, 11 percent and 31 percent of respondents admitted to those actions, respectively. Get to bed earlier instead of watching Netflix, everyone!
Moving on, 30 percent of respondents said they don’t signal when changing lanes or turning, and 80 percent of those people drive BMWs. Seriously, this is one of our pet peeves, like drivers expect others to just know what they’re going to do. Just as annoying are the people who accelerate once they see your signal to try squeezing you out of “their” lane.
Even with all the annoying chimes and such in modern cars, 28 percent of drivers admit to not wearing their seatbelt. Worse, 27 percent say they text while driving, another habit we hate and have seen repeatedly as vehicles swerve around on the road as if the driver were drunk. Finally, 25 percent of respondents say they drive with a pet on their lap which might seem harmless but isn’t.
To see the full results of this survey, including how the pandemic/inflation has affected driving habits and what people believe about car insurance rates, click here.
Images via Cleyton Ewerton, Jesse Zheng, Hassan OUAJBIR
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