Not so much in Germany.

They should study Lexus drivers also.

It may be true as a rule, but as my wife and I have been BMW owners for decades, I would like to submit that there are exceptions. The reason why we drive BMWs is precisely BECAUSE people in Germany drive like aggressive assholes (no matter WHAT kind of car they drive), and I want something that not only handles well, but will protect us if someone else acts like an asshole. My wife would have been dead now if she hadn't been driving a BMW station wagon (or something similarly sturdy) when a semi decided to turn right from the left lane while she was stopped at the light next to him in the right lane.

So hi from one of DU's assholes and his asshole wife.

Here in Japan, BMW drivers tend to be on the aggressive side, although probably not as bad as Mercedes-Benz drivers. But the worst ones seem to be Cadillac drivers.

But just about ALL German drivers are aggressive. They tailgate you at any speed, box you in at parking garages, and think it's a sin to let a chance go by to pass someone, regardless of speed or number of lanes. It's just the way they're taught to drive here.

This, of course, is a generalization, but driving here terrifies me, and I avoid it if at all possible. It is one of the reasons I drive a BMW and insist my wife drives one, or at least a car with similar protections. She would now be dead if I hadn't, and she knows it. The wreck she climbed out of when that truck ran her over was only good for the scrap heap, but she DID climb out of it. If she had been driving a Passat, the car wouldn't have been the only thing destroyed beyond repair that day.

I have to say, the BMW DOES handle like a dream, and there are eco-friendly models these days. Gas is "down" to about $5.90 a gallon these days, but it still matters to us if our cars are guzzlers or not. My wife's mom is 87, and it is about two and a half hours to drive to her village. She lives in a remote part of the northwestern farm country where her family has lived for a few centuries, and there is no public transportation in or out of there except for expensive taxis to take you to a town where there is train service.

At least around here, drivers are not particularly aggressive (with some of the aforementioned exceptions, as well as the exception of drivers of a type of car that looks like it came straight out of a video game that I used to play, where the object was to zap cars like that with bullets or even a grenade, before they zapped you )

I remember what it was like driving in Japan. Sometimes a little chaotic, but almost never intentionally aggressive.

Just like every other country!

not only that, he used to say "BMW spelled backwards is WMB: Wanted Mercedes-Benz."!

P.S. The article is clearly intended as humor.

I've driven a BMW since the late 90's. The worst a$$hole drivers I've encountered
seem to drive many different types of cars and trucks. But the truckers--in those big,
heavy rigs--who run right up on your tail are the worst.

So, hi from another one of DU's assholes! And I'm happy to be in the company of DFW and Mrs. DFW!

have their fair share of assholes as well... you can google it.

sP

and they are = especially insecure and in need of being told they are not superior beings or drivers .

In L.A. any driver of a M series Bimmer along with AMG Mercs or S serirs Audis are moving parasites .

As a matter of fact, most of us who live in Germany drive German cars. It's a LOT easier if you need service or parts. Wanting that convenience has never made me, my wife, or any of the other 80 million people who live there "special" as far as I know.

I can't even tell what a BMW looks like. I can see the monster pick-up trucks coming and I get the hell out of their way.

BMW, Lexus, Porsche, etc.

Not that you're likely to run into us any time soon unless you're driving in the Düsseldorf area. It's rare to see a Lexus in our part of the Rheinland, but you do see the occasional Porsche and plenty of Mercedes, of course.

I hope this doesn't mean we are expected to come up with some euphemism for Americans who diss us just because of the kind of car we drive. My best friend back in the States drives a car that cost over double what either of ours cost, but he liked the concept of an exhaust-free car, so he bought a Tesla, and he is in a position to afford it. I can't imagine how many quills you must think he has.

The difference between a porcupine and the driver of a BMW, etc. is that the prick's on the inside.

Seems rather arbitrary, even setting aside the obvious anatomical conflicts.......

If it bothers you that much mayber there's something to it.

To paraphrase Rodney Whitaker's Nicholai Hel, "any stupidity bothers me."

As for me, call me what you will. There are plenty of other reasons to drive a BMW than just to show off or to drive at 200 Kph, and here in Germany, assholes drive every brand of car sold.

"the driver of a BMW, etc. is that the prick's on the inside."

As we do not drive our cars from the outside, you refer to us.

As for driving, I avoid it in Germany as much as possible anyway. They are crazy compared to what I learned as driving habits in the States. I take public transportation whenever and wherever I can. My cars are 97% for the purpose of getting me to the train station, the airport or the tram. If I put 50,000 Km on a car on 10 years, it's a lot, so my driving habits, except when I'm in the States. are close to non-existent.

It seems this is some kind of thread to vilify those of us who drive a certain brand of car and show how noble those are who don't. I thought that kind of reverse snobbery died out in the States in 1970s, but apparently not.

One thing I haven't followed too closely ever since I've been in Europe is the what this week's PC behavior was. It ain't gonna make a change in my life one way of the other.

and I'm not the only one in this thread that made the statement. In my experience the pricier the car, the more arrogant the driver and that is what the OP was about.

Germany isn't near as crazy in driving than Napoli or Rome during rush hour back in the 70's when I was there. Ankara, Istanbul, Athens, the former Jugoslavia, and even Wien were far different than the US in driving.

I did that once. I was operated on for drastic heart problems a week later (some coincidence involved in the timing, I assume).

German drivers are not as chaotic, but makes up for it in aggressiveness.

I rarely get riled up over anything posted on DU, but the reverse snobbery routine is something I had to deal with back in the seventies, when I was going to college in Philadelphia, where you weren't cool unless you looked like a bum, but lived in a mansion in the suburbs. I did neither, and learned very quickly that I wasn't cool. It took me a year or two to figure out that it was just fine not to be cool. Anything that brings back even a whiff of those days is one of the few things that brings back those memories. The thing then was to display poverty, and the ultimate thing was to display poverty while masking ungodly wealth. As I was the product of neither true poverty nor ungodly wealth, it took me a while to understand that this was a club that I didn't need to belong to. My favorite song was a blues by John Hammond, Jr., whose refrain went: "Don't try to make me what I'm not/'Cause I just get by with what I've got." I couldn't believe how many of my "fellow Murkins" thought that the words to that song were nonsense. It's probably why I ended up marrying a European, and probably why she told me she would visit the States as often as I wanted, but that I should never ever ask her to live there.

My brother told me that one.

There was a 2012 BMW shown there that for what the dealer wanted one could buy between 2 and 5 new cars.

With the BMW, the pricks are on the inside.







um ... we own a BMW.

What's the difference between a BMW and a porcupine?