Today's story: Tuner cars and driver stereotypes

I've been riding all week, just been busy too. I've got a few little stories from previous days, but today was an interesting lesson in automotive people-watching.

Stereotypes certainly have a lot of bad applications, but on the road there are times when stereotypes about car owners can help you predict something ugly will happen, or at least help you focus on the cars that are more likely to cause trouble. They're usually only helpful if there's a very large set of people with a certain mentality who are drawn to a particular sort of car or have good reasons for owning one. For example, one warning that gets passed around on motorcycle forums is to beware of tuner cars, because they typically belong to young, aggressive drivers.

Well, today I come upon a white Honda Civic Si, one of the "breadvan" 2002-2005 models. It's got a loud exhaust, custom wheels, and it's being driven a bit on the aggressive side. One thing that I really chuckled at was that the owner had replaced the Civic badges with Odyssey emblems. I keep an eye on it, but figure that anyone who'd joke about his car that way may not feel too much like he has something to prove. That wasn't a particularly well loved Civic, and he wouldn't be the first to think it looks like a minivan with the center two doors removed.

He does drive a bit aggressively, but the real trouble starts when someone in a shiny new Nissan 350Z with sparkly blue paint pulls up behind him. As it turns out, this Civic / Odyssey has attracted a tuner car driver who evidently sees it as a challenge, passes the Civic and cuts it off. I stay back a little ways in the other lane, a couple car lengths behind the Civic. I don't see a real need to drop back too far, but I want to give myself a little distance in case the Nissan driver does anything crazy (and I definitely don't want to do anything that puts me alongside him).

Suddenly a different sort of stereotypical bad driver appears, and I didn't see him coming: A red Hyundai, its front fenders clearly painted with a rattle can, whips past me, does a "thread the needle" swerve between me and the Civic, and takes off at maybe 70 in a 45 zone.

The lessons you can draw from this about car stereotypes are a bit ambiguous. After all, the Hyundai is a perfect example of another sort of stereotypical bad driver's car, a cheap car with visible body damage. The perfect sort of car to own if you were prone to wrecking cars and were trying to keep the habbit from putting you in the poorhouse.

But the real lesson is to stay aware of all the cars in your area. The one you think may be the biggest threat often isn't.