Dumb and Dumber Driving Mistakes

Imagine that you're driving on the highway and you notice something really strange about the car in front of you. Not only does the driver have her head tilted to one side to hold a cell phone in place, but she also has her bare right foot on the dash in order to—get this—paint her toenails! We're not making this up—a driving instructor from the AAA actually witnessed this event, and carefully avoided disturbing the concentration of this rolling cosmetologist.

We've All Seen It Give him a wide berth.
Just about every motorist can recall with vivid exasperation a whole litany of stupid moves. There's Stanley Searchlight, the lamebrain who keeps his high beams on all the time, despite oncoming cars frantically blinking at him. Maybe he has a new car and can't find the low beam stalk, or maybe he should just read the manual.


Then there's the geezer who keeps his feet on both the throttle and brakes at the same time, so you can't figure out from his taillights what he's planning to do. Give him a wide berth. You'll never figure him out.


Or how about the hothead consumed with road rage? He's so focused on getting even with an offending car—probably Stanley or the geezer—that he runs red lights while signaling with his middle finger.


Whatever similar incidents you may have encountered, though, the reality is that none of us can say we haven't ever done something dumb while driving. We know that nobody likes to hear safety lectures, so we'll just give you a quick rundown, er, list of frequent causes of accidents in the hopes that you might be able to learn from others' mistakes and prevent one of them from coming your way. Forewarned is forearmed, right?