Bonus: Commenter Of Yesterday: We Love You Guys Edition
Murilee and I spend way too much time talking about you people. As you know, I get to ultimately pick the COTD, but often Ms. Martin helps out. Anyhow, she and I were going through yesterday's Worst. Driver. Ever. QOTD and just marveling at the quality of the writing you all put on display. As Murilee put it, "When you read that post and all the comments you get like a whole magazine's worth of quality writing, for free!" Totally agreed. Murilee also rightly points out that if today's winning Bonus comment was on any other car site, it would read, "dum biotch talked sh1t in sweedich n cars wrecked lololol." Also totally agreed.
Without further ado, here is the story of the worst driver captbob ever met:
Sweden, 1968: During a sailing excursion in the Baltic sea with some naval colleagues of my father's, we stopped at an island where an acquaintence of the captain who invited us to dinner at her place — a nice change up from the standard cheese and herring dinners we'd had so far. She arrives to pick us up in an Austin Mini Cooper (take a VW bug, reduce the interior space by 1/2, and you have an idea of how big those were inside). So 5 of us pile in – Capt Wikland and one of his daughters in the front; my dad, me, and one of the other daughters in the back. The female driver was about 75, and it turns out, nearly blind. She then floors the Cooper and proceeds down the road on the left side of the road while turning around to have a face to face conversation with my dad. He was white and couldn't respond. Capt. Wikland (in the front seat with his younger daughter) was trying to grab the wheel to get her over to the right side of the road, but she kept slapping his hand away (she was obviously forgetting that Sweden had just changed over to driving on the right-hand side of the road the year before). Meanwhile, I'm in the back watching the cars she was forcing off the road run into fields and trees. She kept up an animated and genteel half-Swedish/half-English conversation as the road behind us exploded into a mass of swerving and spinning cars. We made it to her house intact, (having driven about 20 minutes on the wrong side of the road). It took us a full two minutes to be able to stand without support. Capt. Wikland and my dad made sure she had plenty of wine at dinner and we had to call a taxi for the ride back.
Again, we love you guys.