Altima Drivers

ollinger

ollinger

G.O.A.T.
I've been studying this for a few years now, making a mental note when a driver gets on my rear bumper and has a murderous look on his face despite my doing sufficiently over the speed limit on a highway. I've noticed a remarkably high percentage of them are driving Nissan Altimas. I'm not sure what that's about, but I think it's because Nissan has always sort of positioned itself as the slightly more manly alternative to Toyota and Honda, a little more growl, having offered a V6 in their sedans long before Toyota and Honda got around to it. (Calling the Maxima a "4 Door Sports Car" has been another reflection of that image). Are you Nissan drivers all lunatics??
 
K

krz

Professional
First question would be were you in the left lane?




But, yes Altima/Maxima drivers are huge aholes. They are typically associated with the Jersey Shore types.

Additional cars typically associated with dbags.
3 Series
C-Class
IS300
G35
Neon SRT-4
Mustang
Any lifted Pickup
Obscenely large SUV's

Lots of entry-level (read: cheapest) luxury brand make the list.
 
tennismonkey

tennismonkey

Semi-Pro
krz said:
Additional cars typically associated with dbags.

Obscenely large SUV's
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+1. lots of tahoes and suburbans weaving through traffic and riding bumpers. maybe false sense of power/entitlement from elevated height and tank like build?
 
Polaris

Polaris

Hall of Fame
ollinger said:
I've been studying this for a few years now, making a mental note when a driver gets on my rear bumper and has a murderous look on his face despite my doing sufficiently over the speed limit on a highway. I've noticed a remarkably high percentage of them are driving Nissan Altimas. I'm not sure what that's about, but I think it's because Nissan has always sort of positioned itself as the slightly more manly alternative to Toyota and Honda, a little more growl, having offered a V6 in their sedans long before Toyota and Honda got around to it. (Calling the Maxima a "4 Door Sports Car" has been another reflection of that image). Are you Nissan drivers all lunatics??
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I don't own an Altima, but drove a new rented one recently in the Midwest. It is a powerful car, in the sense that the power comes on really readily. That said, I wouldn't say that the car would be anything special compared to similarly spec'ed cars from other manufacturers.

I would put your observations down to inadvertent sampling bias. I have no experience of driving Porches or Ferraris or big hulking Hummers, but I can safely say that the Altima just isn't "special" enough to affect (or amplify the effect of) its driver's personalities.
 
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A

acura9927

Semi-Pro
The only cars I stay clear of on the road are Dodge Neons. I swear 80% of people driving them have no insurance.
As for Altimas, the late 90s to early 2000s were the ones to get in the SE trim. Now its too big and bloated.
 
ollinger

ollinger

G.O.A.T.
^^ Dodge Neons were what we spent most of the time in at the Skip Barber School of High Performance Driving. On the last day, they let us each drive the Viper around the (Lime Rock) race track for a few laps.
 
Polaris

Polaris

Hall of Fame
ollinger said:
Sampling bias? What's the nature of the bias??
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As I understand it, the nature of the bias is as follows (I mean "bias" in purely statistical terms, not as a negative personal trait):

(1) By sheer coincidence, when you chose to observe carefully the car and driver behind you, it happened to be an Altima most of the time.

AND/OR

(2) By sheer coincidence, you actually did encounter a much larger concentration of bad Altima drivers. But, another person's experience might present a bias towards another car.

In other words, my conjecture is that

(3) The sample size, i.e., "the number of instances in which you encountered a bad driver" is too small to generate a reliable estimate of the correlation between a particular car and bad driving habits.
 
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Sentinel

Sentinel

Bionic Poster
^ Ollinger says he's been observing them for a few years. How many cars would this come to roughly... a dozen ? or less.

Have you done any "cultural" ;) profiling. Were they Asians mostly ? iirc, Asians tend to go for Japanese cars.
 
R

rommil

Legend
The suburban mom driving a minivan whilst talking on the phone are equally annoying, or out of state drivers driving slow on the left lane, especially Massachussetts plates:(
 
bad_call

bad_call

Legend
rommil said:
The suburban mom driving a minivan whilst talking on the phone are equally annoying, or out of state drivers driving slow on the left lane, especially Massachussetts plates:(
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how bout out-of-state (actually out of country tags) driver stops vehicle in middle of very busy intersection (multi-lane & 45 mph) during rush hour and causes rear end crash involving 2 braking vehicles. as luck would have it, the out-of-state visitor barely misses getting rear ended and drives off while the trailing crashed vehicles suffer the consequences.

true story...maybe time for this auto accessory?
police-equipment-push-bumper_max192w.jpg
 
diredesire

diredesire

Adjunct Moderator
bad_call said:
how bout out-of-state (actually out of country tags) driver stops vehicle in middle of very busy intersection (multi-lane & 45 mph) during rush hour and causes rear end crash involving 2 braking vehicles. as luck would have it, the out-of-state visitor barely misses getting rear ended and drives off while the trailing crashed vehicles suffer the consequences.

true story...maybe time for this auto accessory?
police-equipment-push-bumper_max192w.jpg
Click to expand...

Pretty sure that type of "auto accessory" would only lead to people driving aggravatingly slow around you at all times.
 
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