On Twitter today, @thejustinbenson introduced us to this photo which he called “worst driver award.”

Yeah, that seems like a good name for it.

Incidentally, this guy is one of the way-too-many reasons we have a blog category called “Uh, don’t do this.”

Discussing this in the Comedy Guys office, we’ve decided that this guy
hit the concrete block holding the light pole because there was
literally nothing else to hit in the parking lot. If only there’d
been a Scion or two, that light pole would still be standing.

New Year’s weekend is a bad time for a lot of drivers.

There are more cars on the road than usual, and more drivers who are rushing to get somewhere by a certain time. And, sadly, more drivers on the road who’ve had too much to drink and aren’t as “good to go” as they think they are.

All across Texas this weekend, police officers and highway patrol officers will be out in force, protecting us all from stupidity and carelessness. Both our own and those of other drivers.

And for those of you who get pulled over who are tempted to get angry or frustrated, Comedy Guys Defensive Driving has two words of advice: grow up.

The men and women sitting by the side of the road in those patrol cars this weekend probably don’t want to be there. It’s a holiday weekend for them, too, and like the rest of us they’d rather be with their friends and family, having a good time and celebrating the beginning of another new year.

But instead, they’re at work, giving up yet another holiday to make the roads safer for the rest of us. Letting their families celebrate without them one more time so they can do their job. So instead of giving them some rude attitude, remember that they’re sacrificing their holiday for the benefit of you and everyone else on the road.

You might even want to say “thank you” for their service.

It’s an old argument: who are the safer drivers, men or women?

CBS Moneywatch.com recently reported some poll information that asked men and women drivers to rate themselves regarding how safe they are behind the wheel.

• In a survey conducted by Quality Planning for insurer MetLife, 51% of women said that women drive more safely, but only 39% of men claimed that male drivers were safer.
• And some evidence supports the women’s view of themselves. According to this study, men are 3.4 times more likely to get a ticket for reckless driving and 3.1 times more likely to be ticketed for drunk driving.
• Men are also more at risk for road-related deaths. According to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, more than 11,900 male drivers died in the USA from traffic accidents in 2009.Based on miles traveled, men died at a rate of 2.5 deaths per 100 million miles traveled, as opposed to 1.7 deaths for women.
• Apply the same question to teenage drivers and the numbers shoow upward: 9.2 deaths per 100 million miles for males 16 to 19 years old and 5.3 deaths for female of the same age.

You can read the complete article comparing men and women drivers here.

Here at Comedy Guys Defensive Driving, we’ve never done a study of whether there are more men or women in our defensive driving classes, but the question might be interesting.

When it comes to auto repairs, all of us are interested in the price and most of us are also a little worried that we’ll be taken advantage of. It’s hard for the average driver to know enough to see through deceptive practices and outright lies.

And there are enough disreputable repairmen out there, ready to take advantage of a customer’s ignorance, to make the entire profession look suspect.

Ted Olsen has written eight books and numerous articles on the automotive service industries. He has an ASE (Automotive Service Excellence) certification and numerous other certifications from auto manufacturers such as  Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, and General Motors.

He is also the author of an online article called 10 Things You Just Never Say to Your Mechanic, which is certainly worth reading. Like poker games and dating, getting your car worked on is one of those situations where a few badly considered words can be very expensive.

J Goods at CarGurus.com is also helping out on the subject of auto repairs with his article Car Repairs for Dummies. He offers good advice on finding a repairman that you can (probably) trust and provides several links to useful online resources.

What advice do you have for someone who wants to protect themselves from being taken advantage of when it comes to an auto repair job?

No driver wants to be in a crash, of course.

Okay, maybe demolition derby guys, but that’s more controlled and less dangerous than you might think. Certainly less dangerous than the surprise crashes that occur on the road every day.

When you’re faced with a collision on the road, get out of it if you can. And if you can’t,  find a way to minimize the damage.

Always have an “Out”

The most basic concept of defensive driving is to think about your driving as you drive: pay attention to what’s going on; keep a relatively clear space around your car, and be as prepared for surprises as you can be. And an important part of that is to plan an “out” or escape route in case of trouble ahead.

For example, if the car right in front of you were to rear-end the car ahead of it, what would you do to avoid becoming part of a multi-car collision. Could you stop in time, or would you veer to the right or the left? What’s your out?

Driving around a collision is certainly better than driving into it.

But this won’t be possible – especially in heavy traffic – unless you make it possible. As you drive, be aware of traffic and road conditions around you and keep adjusting your place in traffic to keep at least one “out” open to you if you can.

If a Crash is Unavoidable

If you don’t have a way to drive around the obstacles ahead of you. Maybe you do have to hit that other car. Or maybe you can steer around the car, but that just means that you’ll have to hit something else.

A safer driver can make both of these situations work to their advantage to minimize the damage to themselves, their car, and everyone else involved.

Slow Your Car Down

Get off of the gas and hit the brakes. Even if you won’t be able to stop completely, any reduction in speed is good for you.

The physics of a collision comes down to force of impact, which is basically a multiplication problem: speed times weight equals damage. If you have half a second before you hit that car, any reduction in speed can mean a big reduction in damage.

Aim Carefully

If you can’t escape hitting another car, do what you can to control where and how you hit it. Modern cars aren’t the heavy metal boxes that our grandparents drove around in. Construction-wise, they’re basically upholstered seats inside a concealed steel safety cage which is surrounded by “crumple zones.” These are front and back ends of cars that are designed to fold up accordian-style if they’re hit hard enough.

And it’s better to clip another car than hit it head on. If you’re forced into a situation where you have to rear-end someone, point your hood ornament at one of their tail lights instead of their license plate. Let the corner of their car absorb your force of impact: it will be a lot less damaging than throwing it at a stronger part of the car.

If you’re looking at a T-bone collision, where you’re headed straight into their car doors, steer a bit to the side and try to hit them in the trunk or engine compartment. You’ll both get less damage that way because the crumple zones will absorb so much of the impact force.

The deadliest kind of crash involving two cars is the head-on collision. If you’re forced into crashing into someone head on, your best option is to veer to the right – basically to aim your driver’s side headlight at their driver’s side headlight. This means that only some of your force-of-impact will collide with some of theirs, minimizing as much of the damage as possible. And by veering to the right instead of the left, you should be aiming yourself toward your side of the road, putting you at less risk from oncoming traffic.

Path of Least Resistance

If you can steer around the car but only by hitting something else, do it but make smart decisions about what to hit.

In our defensive driving classes, we call this “the path of least resistance.” The basic idea is simple: if you must hit something, pick the thing that will do the least damageTrash cans, mail boxes, and shrubs are all less of a danger to your car than another car would be, so aim at them if you can. If your only alternatives are brick walls or trees, you might be better off hitting the other car after all. Trees don’t come with crumple zones.

Giving Yourself More Time

Of course, all of this decision making has to be done in fractions of a second. But you even have some control over that aspect of driving.

By paying attention to your driving instead of your cell phone, you’ll see the danger earlier and have more time to react. In good driving conditions, a good driver will usually spot a need to stop in about three-quarters of a second. That’s not much time to react, of course, but it’s much more time than you’ll have if you’re looking at a text message or picking a radio station when the critical moment comes. If you’re not paying attention, you could actually kill someone before you even lay eyes on them.

By driving a bit more slowly and following at a safe distance, you will have more time to decide what to do and get it done before that nasty crashing sound takes your options away. The two-second-or-more rule is designed not so much to give you time to stop before a crash, but to give you time to steer around a crash.

There are a lot of reasons why teen drivers can be considered unsafe.

New to driving, they don’t have the experience that many older drivers do. Often the young feel invulnerable, so they make take chances that older drivers won’t. Typically sociable, they travel in small groups, making it more likely that they will have noisy, distracting friends with them in the car. And because the part of the brain that makes it possible to evaluate risks doesn’t fully kick in until about 26, teenage drivers may think things like driving while texting or punching in a phone number seem like good ideas.

(In the interest of fairness, I should mention that too many adults do all of this stuff, too. I think maybe that for some people, the risk evaluating part of the brain never fully kicks in.)

So, as a group, teenagers are among the most dangerous drivers. But teenagers, as a group, are also as smart, resourceful, and self-interested as any other groups of people, which means they can be taught the habits and attitudes that will make them safer drivers.

And that’s the entire idea behind National Teen Driver Safety Week.

Begun in 2007 by the US Congress, the third week in October is set aside as a time to bring more attention to the dangers faced by and often caused by teenage drivers. Through school programs and special events, groups across the country take this week as an opportunity to educate new drivers about the real risks of the road and to better prepare them to handle those risks.

This year’s theme is Reducing Distractions. Distracted driving is the number 1 cause of collisions involving younger drivers, and auto collisions is the number 1 cause of death among adolescents. According to Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) Fatality Facts 2008: Teenagers, the fatality rate for drivers ages 16 to 19, based on miles driven, is four times higher than for drivers ages 25 to 69.

Whether it’s texting or cell phone calls or finding a song that isn’t lame or just friends talking constantly from the back seat, distractions are especially dangerous to teenage drivers. Driving is a complicated set of actions and awarenesses, requiring a great deal of concentration. And the less experience a driver has, the more concentration is needed. This makes distracted driving, dangerous to all drivers, even more dangerous to inexperienced teenage drivers.

If you list the 20 Cities in the USA with the most drivers who have alcohol-related driving convictions on their records, one fourth of those cities will be in Texas.

But don’t bother with the statistics: Insurance.com has already compiled the list for you.

And in their article they ask a very important question: “Do these places have more partiers or better law enforcement?”

Having more drivers with drinking convictions on their records could mean there are more drinkers on the roads OR that police are working harder to catch them and see them convicted.

And the second explanation could explanation why Texas – the state where MADD was founded -  has more cities on the list than any other (California comes in second with 4). Since its founding in 1980, MADD has been pressuring courts and lawmakers, first here in Texas then quickly spreading across the USA, to strengthen and enforce the laws that get drunk drivers off of the roads.

Downshift, a podcast from Autoweek, recently had a discussion about young drivers. Starting with the new Young Driver sticker required by a New Jersey law, the conversation to driver training in general and the graduated licensing programs now in place in many states, including Texas.

The conversation also covered texting and cell phones in cars and the practicality of laws that ban them.

If you’re interested in cars and driving — or if you have a teenage driver in your house — this episode of Downshift is of interest to you.