People seem to have gone “feral”.

Animals in the store?

No shoes/shirt?

Waiting your turn?

Treating other people (especially service workers)?

Nope. Just a feral return to “mine mine mine, me me me”

And I swear SOOOO many fucking people on their phones. Bitch, you aren't that important. Put it the fuck down and drive.

Yes! A TON of people have brain damage from COVID and have no idea they have brain damage from COVID.
https://twitter.com/yash25571056/status/1745048307335119358

A lot of people only go the speed limit because there are cars in the way

Yes. Covid unleashed a lot of people’s inner narcissism. Bunch of fucking me-mes.

They need to mandate that headlights cannot be installed > 2-2.5 feet off the ground. Putting them higher than that does not benefit you in any way, it just fucks with other drivers.

No joke, my MIL hit a dear the other day because she couldn't see it due to a truck blinding her as it drove the opposite direction. Luckily she was only going 30 so the damage was minimal but it's crazy they are allowed to blind drivers like that.

With you on that.

I live in a rural area with no street lights, and a lot of these redneck asshole trucks have two sets of headlights vertically, guaranteeing that you will be blinded

For the most part, it has nothing to do with people's general driving competency. It has to do with their anger issues. People really just don't care about others anymore. Defensive driving is virtually nonexistent for the majority of drivers, because everyone's mentality is entirely selfish. Most days, many people are just giving in to their rage. And it's not just behind the wheel either. All aspects of life are being swallowed by people's indifference and anger.

Someone I knew got their license as an adult recently, and they were terrified at the lack of an actual "test" in the driving test. They drove around the block, never got above 35mph, and encountered a couple other cars.

And once you pass that, as long as you renew it and don't have any violations, you can drive until you can't see the gauges or hold the steering wheel.

We should have driving tests like the Finns have.

same, why? i didnt see any cops during xmas new year, then this morning i see 3 highway patrols, probably on their way to an accident

Same in mine, in Canberra, Australia. Maybe I'm just not driving at the times they're doing drink driving enforcement. I recall when I was a youth the breathalyzers were set up randomly midnight to 4am

We do have camera enforcement of speed, red lights, and mobile phones

And because the roads are not designed to keep traffic at safe speeds, and don't separate traffic from pedestrians and cyclists sufficiently, when those morons do something moronic they kill someone

Infrastructure can fix a lot of this problem - Australia is like mini-America in so many ways, but we allow speed cameras and red light cameras which reduce speeding marvelously, though I have been tailgated by someone offended I was only going 80km/h* in the 80 zone. They passed me illegally and unsafely

Even the fixed cameras do good work, even when everyone knows where they are as it's hard to speed right after them as slow cars move into the fast lane to pass glacial traffic

I point at the bike I ride as a reason cars give me space, it's a carbon fibre recumbent. Since it looks odd, people see it. But the bike lane is protected by paint on the route I mostly ride, and one driver was so busy looking at my odd bike that they went out of their lane into the bike lane. Luckily there was no cyclist just that distance in front of me - that's a pretty regular person, driving mostly safely, but screwing up. If the bike lane was protected by a kerb the car would've been deflected.

*I calibrate my speedometer to GPS speed, so it's accurate

People just went batshit over the pandemic for some reason. I don't know if it was a nihilistic embrace of the void in the face of plague and death, or what, but in addition to garden-variety street racing and dangerous driving ballooning while the roads were lightly used, there's been a huge increase in sideshows shutting down intersections, people just deciding not to pay for license plates or annual inspections, and generally making the roads more dangerous for everybody else.

I suspect that the anomaly in the US might be reflective of the way that social cohesion has corroded in the last decade or so. The pandemic broke us, but adhesion to the social contract has been getting weaker for a long time. People suddenly driving like maniacs is, in a sense, just a symptom of that breakdown.

You don't need to make the cars bigger to meet fuel economy requirements; it's a decision by vehicle makers to make them bigger rather than take advantage of the more efficient engine designs available to produce a vehicle which uses less fuel.

But also much safer and way more stopping power. But the best car is useless when the driver is browsing tiktok

I'm no linguistics expert but these are the definitions from Webster

lethal applies to something that is bound to cause death or exists for the destruction of life. lethal gas

deadly applies to an established or very likely cause of death. a deadly disease

They are synonyms and most people would probably use them interchangeably. I guess the biggest difference is lethal applies to something that is about to cause death, whereas deadly applies to death that has moreso already happened.

lethal weapons, deadly accident, etc ...

Hmm, they're pretty synonymous, but I think you're noticing this slight, occasional difference in use: Lethal is active, deadly is passive. A thing can actively be lethal when used by you, but when it's something that happens to you, it's deadly. An accident is something that's considered to have happened to you, despite the fact that it's typically your fault to some extent.