The Rudest Drivers Tend To Drive These Car Brands, Which AI Self-Driving Cars Ought To ‘Keep In Mind’

What kind of car do you drive?

I don’t mean whether it is a four-door or two-door, nor whether it is red in color or blue.

Specifically, what brand of car do you drive?

According to various studies (cited in a moment herein), supposedly the brand of car is a telltale indicator of how rude a driver sits behind the wheel of the vehicle.

In other words, it is believed that the rudest drivers tend to drive certain brands of cars. That being said, it is perhaps one of those chicken-or-the-egg dilemmas, in the sense that does a rude driver opt to drive a particular brand or does a specific brand of car perchance attract rude drivers? Nobody can say for sure.

Some even go so far as to suggest that a driver becomes “corrupted” into being a rude driver by the simple act of being in the driver’s seat of certain brands of cars.

Maybe on an everyday basis, you are the most civil of drivers, and yet magically you transform once you grasp the steering wheel and put your foot on the gas pedal of these adverse-transformational car brands.

Your honor, the car I was driving made me drive fast and furiously (not sure if a judge will let you get away with that excuse).

Which brands seem to provoke this rudeness in driving?

One study of UK drivers listed Audi drivers as the rudest drivers, followed by BMW, Range Rover, Mercedes, VW, and other brands.

Another wider survey found that BMW drivers were perceived as the rudest drivers, followed closely by Ford, Audi, and others.

Yet another study that was based on incidents of alleged reckless driving (per an insurance firm’s records), listed brands and specific makes as the Top 10 “most reckless”:

1.      Mazda MX-5 Miata

2.      Hyundai Genesis Coupe

3.      Isuzu Rodeo

4.      Nissan 370Z

5.      Chevrolet K1500

6.      Cadillac ATS

7.      VW CC

8.      RAM 1500

9.      Saturn L200

10.  Dodge Challenger

I realize that some of you will be quite upset about being stereotyped as a rude driver simply due to the brand of car that you drive.

It’s those other idiots driving around that are the dolts, and you are merely reacting to their foolhardy ways of driving.

Or, possibly you are the exception to the rule, namely that you drive a car that normally is one cast as a rudeness driver magnet, but you don’t drive that way. You are a kind and courteous driver.

Come to think of it, the entire topic might be faulty.

Suppose that all car drivers are about equal in rudeness, and we are sensitized by the media to perceive that certain car brands attract rude drivers. As such, you might especially note a rude act when it is done by one of those media-tainted brands, while you ignore or discount rudeness when it is done while a driver is in some other nondescript brand.

Of course, the whole topic could seem overly academic since you might wonder what difference it makes anyway.

Drivers will drive as they opt to drive.

Does it matter if specific brands happen to also tend to have rude drivers?

Well, it could.

When teaching a novice teenager how to drive, some parents will offer a cautionary warning to the youthful pupil on being guarded when getting near certain brands of cars. The novice learns that the odds of getting cutoff or having a rude driver ride on their bumper are heightened when certain brands of cars get nearby to them.

Right or wrong, this does appear to be a helpful rule-of-thumb.

Here’s today’s intriguing question: Should AI-based true self-driving cars be aware of which brands tend to have rude human-drivers, and if so, will it be a help or hindrance to self-driving actions?

Let’s unpack the matter and see.

The Levels Of Self-Driving Cars

It is important to clarify what I mean when referring to true self-driving cars.

True self-driving cars are ones that the AI drives the car entirely on its own and there isn’t any human assistance during the driving task.

These driverless vehicles are considered a Level 4 and Level 5, while a car that requires a human driver to co-share the driving effort is usually considered at a Level 2 or Level 3. The cars that co-share the driving task are described as being semi-autonomous, and typically contain a variety of automated add-on’s that are referred to as ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems).

There is not yet a true self-driving car at Level 5, which we don’t yet even know if this will be possible to achieve, and nor how long it will take to get there.

Meanwhile, the Level 4 efforts are gradually trying to get some traction by undergoing very narrow and selective public roadway trials, though there is controversy over whether this testing should be allowed per se (we are all life-or-death guinea pigs in an experiment taking place on our highways and byways, some point out).

Since semi-autonomous cars require a human driver, the adoption of those types of cars won’t be markedly different than driving conventional vehicles, so there’s not much new per se to cover about them on this topic (though, as you’ll see in a moment, the points next made are generally applicable).

For semi-autonomous cars, it is important that the public be forewarned about a disturbing aspect that’s been arising lately, namely that in spite of those human drivers that keep posting videos of themselves falling asleep at the wheel of a Level 2 or Level 3 car, we all need to avoid being misled into believing that the driver can take away their attention from the driving task while driving a semi-autonomous car.

You are the responsible party for the driving actions of the vehicle, regardless of how much automation might be tossed into a Level 2 or Level 3.

Self-Driving Cars And Rude Drivers

For Level 4 and Level 5 true self-driving vehicles, there won’t be a human driver involved in the driving task.

All occupants will be passengers.

The AI is doing the driving.

First, let’s tackle a question that some assume is already resolved, but for which it actually remains somewhat open.

Will AI-based true self-driving cars be rude drivers?

Your initial reaction would be that there should never be a cause for a driverless car to act rudely. Thus, without any doubt, there will never be a rude self-driving car, you so assume.

Not so sure about that.

Start with the reaction that some human drivers are having to today’s self-driving car tryouts on our public roads.

In most cases, the driverless cars are moving at the posted speed limit, or less so, and driving in an extremely cautionary manner.

As a result, human drivers that encounter self-driving cars are at times getting frustrated and upset at this kind of timidity in driving. Those human drivers will sometimes scoot around the driverless car, dangerously so, and on other occasions will show their displeasure by getting in front of the plodding self-driving car and tap on their brakes to make the driverless car react.

Who is being rude in these circumstances?

You might say that human drivers are being rude.

On the other hand, those alleged “rude” drivers say they are frustrated by the driverless car stiltedness and would claim that the self-driving car is being rude.

The rudeness of the AI-based driving actions is intolerable and a hazard to traffic, they would contend, and though their own rudeness in the reaction is perhaps not laudable, it is solely based on the rudeness of the driverless car to begin with.

Do you buy into that logic?

Some do, many do not.

Anyway, there are pundits that argue that rudeness is simply in the eye of the beholder.

Yet another factor about the potential rudeness of self-driving cars involves our everyday driving practices as humans.

Humans nudge toward other cars to showcase that they want to merge into their lane.

Is this an act of rudeness or an act of subtly indicating your upcoming driving action to other drivers?

If we want self-driving cars to drive similarly to how humans drive, presumably the AI-based driving systems should likewise use the nudging technique for getting into another lane. Without a mimicking action, human drivers might be at a loss for understanding what the driverless car is trying to do.

As such, it could be that we would actively want self-driving cars to be “rude” to the degree that human drivers perform telling micro-maneuvers as they drive.

Though, at some point, there might be a rudeness spectrum level upon which we don’t want a self-driving car to end-up. In essence, maybe a little bit of rudeness is fine, but once the rudeness rises above a certain threshold, it’s gotten out-of-hand.

Who will decide what the rudeness threshold ought to be?

Should it be the maker of the driverless car, or owner of the self-driving car, or the passengers, or a governmental agency, or whom?

The answer is complicated too by the cultural driving practices of each locale.

Human drivers in New York City are known for being extremely aggressive. In theory, the rudeness factor of a driverless car that’s driving in NYC could be a lot higher than if that self-driving car was driving in say hometown Iowa.

Perhaps the AI system should automatically re-calibrate its rudeness levels for wherever it might be driving at the time.

Indeed, via OTA (Over-The-Air) electronic updating of the on-board AI system, some suggest that driverless cars will load-in a specialized driving template depending upon the locale being driven. A self-driving car that you use to drive across the United States might end-up loading various driving preferences and parameters that are suitable to the myriad of towns and cities that the driving journey traverses.

Even the time of day and day of the week could make a difference.

In Los Angeles traffic, the morning commute and late afternoon commutes tend to involve lots of rudeness encounters during the weekdays. Late at night, the rudeness often is not as extensive, and somewhat the same on the weekends.

Presumably, the volume of traffic and the urgency of the drivers are instrumental to the rudeness expressions, all of which can vary depending upon the time of day, day of the week, and likely time of the year.

In short, since we are going to have a mixture of human-driven cars and a gradually rising number of self-driving cars, it will be a mixture that inexorably is going to encompass rudeness, likely for many decades to come.

Those that hope for a world in which there are only self-driving cars on the roadways are going to have to hold their breaths for a long time, and indeed it might never be the case that we have only driverless cars (well, today, there are some that say they will cling to being able to drive and you’ll only get them out by prying their dead cold hands from the steering wheel).

If the far future does consist of exclusively having driverless cars on our roadways, yes, they could all be civil toward each other and perhaps we could abandon or obliterate any rudeness in driving, though that day is a starry-eyed dream right now.

Ascertaining the Potential For Rudeness

The preceding jaunt covered the aspects of having driverless cars that might or might not exhibit rudeness in driving.

There’s another angle to the topic.

An important element to driving involves being able to anticipate the driving actions of others.

Each time that you get behind the wheel, you begin immediately to watch the traffic scene and try to predict what might happen around you.

Will that pedestrian standing at the curb opt to suddenly step into the street in front of your car?

Will the driver ahead of you decide to surprisingly hit their brakes rather than gradually slowing down?

And so on.

Human drivers’ size-up the driving situation and make decisions about their own driving accordingly.

Do you glance at other cars and note the brands of cars?

If so, perhaps you are doing so to anticipate that certain brands of cars are most likely being driven by rude drivers, and therefore you need to be on top of your game for a sudden rude action by those drivers.

It can be a crucial split-second difference between being ready for what another driver might do.

Let’s return to the topic of driverless cars and consider how we want the AI-based driving systems to act.

A driverless car that does not appropriately anticipate the driving actions of human drivers is going to find itself getting into driving troubles. One way or another, the odds are that the self-driving car will at some point in time hit a human-driven car, or a human-driven car will hit the self-driving car.

Some pundits keep saying that we’ll never have any car accidents again, once we have driverless cars.

This is just crazy talk.

We are going to have car accidents that involve self-driving cars and human-driven cars, and as I’ve already mentioned, the mixing of driverless cars on our roadways and human-driven cars is going to occur for a long time to come.

I might also add that even if we someday have only self-driving cars on the roadways, there are still opportunities for car accidents to occur, such as a pedestrian that darts into the street in front of a self-driving car, and for which the physics of the moment belies the chances of the driverless car stopping in time (we hopefully will have much fewer car accidents, but it decidedly won’t become zero, a nice goal but unachievable per se).

Overall, the key point is that we would certainly want self-driving cars to be able to anticipate the actions of other cars, especially human-driven cars.

Statistically, if it were true that certain brands of cars that are being driven by humans were more likely to drive in a rude and abrupt manner, we would likely want to have the driverless cars be aware of this predilection.

As such, the AI-based system could be on its toes, so to speak, ready to cope with an otherwise unexpected driving action by those drivers.

For those that drive those brands of cars, you might be disturbed to think that the AI is sizing up your driving by the mere act of detecting the brand or make/model of the car you are driving.

But, humans seem to do so, and thus why not have the self-driving car do likewise?

Some might say that if the shoe fits, so be it, since you chose the shoe you are wearing.

Others are worried that the AI system is unfairly categorizing other drivers, doing so not by their overt actions, and instead merely by the type of car.

And, it could be a slippery slope, namely that driverless cars would use other criteria, perhaps racially-biased, or gender-based, or age-based, and begin anticipating driving behaviors on a discriminatory basis.

Conclusion

Believe it or not, some drivers that do drive the “rudeness brands” are proud to do so.

They relish that other drivers believe them to be rude drivers.

In fact, their viewpoint is that if other drivers stay out of their way, solely as a result of the brand of a car being driven, it is a blessing and they are happy to derive the benefits thereof.

This adds yet another twist to the self-driving car topic.

Suppose that self-driving cars are more apt to give driving advantages to “rude” categorized human-driven cars, allowing those cars to more readily cut into a lane or make that upcoming left turn.

Wouldn’t the rudeness categorization be rewarding those that happen to buy or use a car that fits within the alleged rudeness driving brands?

People that figured out that the AI was doing this might be tempted to purposely buy or rent a “rudeness” brand of car, figuring they would then be able to speed along and get away with annoying driving behavior, at least as far as the self-driving cars on the roadways were concerned.

Backing up for a moment on the topic, another facet that needs to be considered involves the use of Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) as it relates to driving behaviors.

Many of the automakers and self-driving tech firms are collecting vast amounts of traffic driving data to use for AI ML/DL to figure out how to best drive on our roads (identifying patterns in how we drive).

In theory, if we as humans are currently driving in a manner that lets rude drivers get away with rude driving, presumably any collected traffic-driving data would silently have such patterns contained within it.

The AI ML/DL might pick-up on those patterns, and then guide the AI driving systems accordingly, meaning that they would inherently be anticipating rude driving behavior, and might well do so on the basis of car brands (if that’s an identified factor during the ML/DL mathematical computations).

Yikes!

In that case, perhaps we might want to declare that simply because things have been done that way (in terms of societal acceptance of rude driving), it does not mean they should be continued or further promulgated in that way.

Would we want the emerging crop of self-driving cars to set a new tone and try to reduce or undercut the prevalence of human-driven rudeness in driving?

For those of you that say yes, of course, keep in mind that some argue that once we start to use self-driving cars to shape human driving behavior, perhaps it is a stepping stone toward having AI guide overall human behavior, and on that slippery slope we might ultimately all end-up as slaves of AI (for more about conspiracy theories about AI, see my piece here).

And to think it all started by the mere act of trying to cope with rude drivers.