We can’t all be saints on the road. Sometimes it’s gonna happen—we lose our cool, we freak out, we’re not our Best Selves.
Those occasional lapses of judgment are one thing. But certain drivers… well, their annoying quirks are baked into their automotive identity.
If any of the archetypes below seem familiar, you might want to take a long, hard look in the rearview mirror. It’s never too late to change!
PS—When we say “guy” or “man” here, know that we do so in a casual, gender-neutral kind of way. While a lot of bad driving behavior comes with stereotypical masculine baggage, those who identify as women can also have terrible habits on the road. True story.
Obnoxious Bumper Sticker Guy
Sometimes you want to add a bit of flair to a boring old sedan. And maybe you don’t want to commit to, like, getting flames and dragons airbrushed onto the side panels.
Bumper stickers might seem like the solution. After all, they’re cheap and easy ways to Express Yourself—sending a clear message to hundreds of total strangers every day!
For most people, giving into this impulse is pretty innocent. Maybe they’ve got a single ‘stick-figure family’ sticker. Maybe they’ve used their bumper space to support the ACLU, profess their love of cats, or brag about their honor student offspring (or how their offspring beat up your honor student).
But as is often the case, a small percentage of folks go way too far.
You may have crossed the line if you’ve considered plastering the following types of stickers onto your ride:
- Anything that uses a mention of hemorrhoids as a tailgating analogy
- An image of Calvin from Calvin & Hobbes urinating
- The expression “no free rides—ass or grass”
- Stickers that let the cops know about your love for alcohol, pot, or other drugs
- Messages that you read and ask yourself, however briefly, “is this racist or sexist?”
- Political bumper stickers for a campaign that ended more than 12 months ago
- The “mudflap girl“
- Absurdist humor that might not land, like a sticker that claims Ted Cruz ate your son
Changing-Lanes-For-No-Reason Impatient Guy
Picture this: Highway traffic is moving at a snail’s crawl.
Logic suggests that there isn’t one, magical lane that will be any faster than the others. Perhaps the fast lane creeps up for a minute, but then it stalls… allowing the slow lane to speed up… and so on. It’s frustrating, but that’s just life. Sometimes you have to stay put and let the frustration wash over you.
Unless you’re Changing-Lanes-For-No-Reason Impatient Guy, that is, in which case you know that weaving in and out of traffic might just get you to your destination a whole 12.5 seconds early.
Everyone will get where they’re going in the end. Take a deep breath, realize there’s really no way to hack traffic, and stay in your damn lane.
Road Rager
We get it: The world is insane and everyone is stupid. Especially on the road! All those other drivers are idiots and you’re the only one with any amount of common sense. It’s enough to make your 🤯.
But road rage can be a killer (sometimes quite literally). Tailgating someone is a recipe for disaster—and if you end up rear-ending them, you’ll be the at-fault driver. Giving in to rage while driving might feel cathartic in the moment… but later, that might morph into shame and regret.
Here are some savvy tips on how to avoid road rage in the first place, from setting the right driving environment to leaving ample time for your trip. Fun fact, according to that source: Your road rage, if really severe, could be a condition with the unfortunate name of Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED).
Competitive Parallel Parker
When the journalist P.E. Moskowitz bragged about his parallel-parking skills online, he didn’t expect to be the target of a bloodthirsty twitter mob.
“Some called me a shitty human being or an ableist; others told me they would key my car or pop my tires,” Moskowitz wrote, in an article unpacking the experience. “Several threatened to fight me. Some simply said I was lying—one person created an SAT-style geometry diagram to prove, based on the dimensions and angles seen in the photograph, that my parking job was mathematically impossible.”
Squeezing your car into a teeny-tiny space can indeed make you feel “sexy, like being able to handle a power tool,” as Moskowitz puts it. But have some perspective. Think about how you’d feel if your own vehicle was so tightly bookended by other cars that you could barely fit a finger between the bumpers on either side.
Loud Muffler Man
Ah, some people like to listen to music. Others prefer to walk through the park, enjoying the gentle sounds of birds chirping.
But a certain subset of the population (mercifully small) prefers a different type of audio enjoyment. For Loud Muffler Men, nothing is more thrilling than modifying a car’s exhaust so that it “sounds like an actual hurricane making landfall.”
If you’re a budding Loud Muffler Man, you might choose to modify your exhaust (or just drill a hole in it) for one of the following reasons:
- You think strangers will assume your car is faster or cooler than it actually is
- You’re anticipating future love interests jumping in front of your car to ask you “how you got that amazing sound” and “when can we Netflix and chill?”
- You’re sorta an insecure jerk, and you want to make sure that is obvious to anyone within a 1 mile radius
The Uninsured Driver
This isn’t just obnoxious, it’s illegal almost everywhere.
No one ever called uninsured driving “sexy,” and no one ever will. Do you think Matthew McConaughey is cruising around in his Lincoln, totally uninsured? Nah. Matthew is so calm and collected because he likely has full coverage, baby. His insurance has insurance.
And you could too! We’re, uh, a little biased, but Lemonade Car is a 21st-century car insurance option that you’ll probably love. Right now we’re only live in Illinois and Tennessee —with more states on the way— but if you live in the Prairie State you can get rolling by hitting the button below.
