| Interesting points. My driving experience is that things are no
| different on the road now then they ever were in the past as far as
| the general competency and driving behavior of other drivers.

I wonder if my mostly urban/suburban driving might
be a factor. I see *a lot* of people on the phone,
and it's not kids. Occasionally I might see a teenager
texting at 60 mph, but mostly I see adults, of all kinds,
yapping away.

The man who sideswiped me veering into
my lane was probably 35-40 y.o. He was talking to his
friend, who in turn was dropping off her car at a repair
shop. He was engrossed in trying to follow her instructions
on which street to turn at when he hit me. A few years
earlier he would have figured out the directions before
he'd left the house. But this was about 2004 and he was
a "yuppie" on the go, with a phone glued to his ear.

When he pulled over after the accident he wouldn't
even talk to me. He called the police, then his insurance
company. I never saw him off the phone until the police
arrived. He was so much out to lunch that he'd called
the police, convinced that I'd hit him! In my experience
that's typical. As a taxpaying consumer he doesn't
feel he has to relate to the world around him, thus that
world has no business "relating" to him.

A very big change is that people don't signal anymore.
Maybe 30-50% of the time. It's crazy. They're just not
paying attention. In MA it's illegal not to signal, and it's
irritating to be behind someone and get no notice of
why they suddenly stepped on the brakes. That used to
be unheard of. Now it's almost the norm. Again, it has
nothing to do with young drivers. But it does have a lot to
do with phoners only having one freee hand.

A couple of weeks ago I was pulling out of a supermarket
and was going straight across the street, up a sidestreet.
Traffic was stopping in both directions in front of me. The
near side traffic had left a gap. A man driving on the far side,
heading toward my left, slowed down and seemed to be leaving
a gap. I started to pull out. He then turned into the supermarket
and almost hit me. I beeped. We both put down our windows.
He looked at me with a condescending smile and said, "I'm
turning in here", as though I must be an idiot. I said, "how
about a signal?!" His face dropped. It had never occurred to
him to signal. To his credit, though, he apologized.

I see the phones and the anti-social behavior as
related. For instance, where I live it's always been
customary, on a narrow road with a parked car, to
wait for an oncoming car if the parked car is on your
side. The oncoming driver then waves a thankyou. Now
it's usually a game of chicken. That's a very clear
difference in driver behavior. It's not related to phones,
but phones seem to be related to the general social
disconnection. People are no longer experiencing
themselves as being where they are.

The same is true of people walking across streets,
on cellphones or not. People used to *always* look
before crossing. Now it's common to see people cross
without breaking step, trusting that the universe is
looking out for them. Maybe many of them are the
children of "helicopter moms". At first I thought it was a
kind of passive-aggressive entitlement, but the more
it's happened, the more I'm thinking that these people
are actually entitled to the core. They're not trying to
show me who's boss. They don't even know I'm there.
It hasn't occurred to them that they could actually
suffer the indignity of being run over by a car! Maybe
that's because they've spent their lives getting trophies
for showing up? I'm not sure. It's actually a very intriguing
pattern to me.

(A friend who tutors gradeschool children recently told
me that helicopter moms have been replaced by "snowplow
moms". The kids are pushed through endless achievements,
with no breaks to just sit, reflect, get bored, discover a
bug, or even think about what they might *want* to do.)

Do you really not see any changes? When I was growing
up, kids behaved and anyone nearby was a parent. Today,
when I see kids running and shrieking in a store I don't
dare say anything. The parents are likely to be outraged.
And often as not, they're standing there proudly as their
kids act out. In a nutshell, being considerate has become
a sucker's pastime, while "self-empowerment" is considered
an important goal.

I think my own generation, the baby boomers, actually
started with being entitled. Not all of us, but many. In
the 50s life was about kids. Baby boomers then grew up
feeling they needed to be special. They had kids. Their
kids were very special accomplishments, so many of those
kids are now hyper-spoiled and entitled. That's a unique
situation. (It's not so long ago that child labor was
considered OK and that people had kids to save money.
The kids could work the farm. They weren't cherished
possessions. They were low paid workers.)

It's certainly true that young people are more selfish
and old people are less tolerant. That's timeless. But I'm
surprised that anyone, say, over 50 doesn't see some
dramatic changes in American culture during the past
decades, which have nothing to do with young vs old.
But those changes may be less pronounced in small towns
and rural areas.