The most fascinating sociology project ever attempted happens every day on the drive to and from work. I believe that driving on to the freeway is like entering a race, not necessarily to arrive first, but to be able to go as fast as I want in any lane I choose, so I closely observe the cars around me.

To live free on California’s highways means that you must understand your fellow drivers. What might they do that will infringe upon my right to change lanes and exceed the speed limit? Many drivers are hardwired to drive a certain car.

You should by now be familiar with my theory – scientific and refined over decades – that asserts that you can know just about everything you need to know about total strangers simply by the car they’ve decided to purchase, what they decided to spend their money on.

So many poor choices. Frankly, there’s no rational reason why any of the car brands I’m gonna mention should ever be purchased. So what gives? Well, quite simply these purchases get made because of human character flaws, gaps in human intelligence and the general miscalculation of what’s cool and smart. And if you’re gonna drive next to these knuckleheads you best have some insights into the mental defects that, well, drive them.

This is, of course, a partial list, the tip of the iceberg. Be aware that the lack of good judgment indicated by these car choices can be greatly magnified by the color and trim packages of these vehicles. (If the driver won this car in a contest or inherited the thing through his grandpa’s will, they may not actually be afflicted by the stupidity described.)

Store Brands
You know the plain-wrap stuff they sell at the grocery store, right? At Costco it’s Kirkland and at other stores it may be called something like Better Valu or Swell Choice or Plain Good. These are generic knock-offs of regular products that come in blah packages because, well, they’re for people who don’t give a shit. They sell cars like this too, in fact, most cars on the road today are store brands. Store brands – store brand cars – survive on the concept that “all cars are basically the same and this one is probably almost as good as a brand-name car and maybe I can save a few bucks, so what the fuck.”

These cars – Acura, Infiniti, Scion, Kia, Hyundai, Mitsubishi, Suzuki – to name a few don’t stand for anything, they’re not known for anything, they are the generic box of mac & cheese on wheels. Once in a while, they come up with a gimmick that a few people notice like a seventy-five-year warranty on everything but the engine or cup holders on the outside of the vehicle, but mostly they are the gray shapes moving about in a multi-color world.

The people who drive the store brand car may not necessarily be cheap or clueless, though they definitely skew this way, rather, they just don’t give a fuck about cars – don’t pay any attention to them.

So what you should know while driving next to them is that if they aren’t paying attention to the car they purchase, they sure as hell won’t be paying attention while they’re driving. They’ll do 35 MPH in the fast lane, slam on the brakes after they’ve missed their exit and mostly be looking in the glove box instead of at the road.

Military Vehicles
People that buy Jeeps, any kind of Jeep, have a view of the world that ended during the Second World War. They think that these cars are made by the government and that if they buy one they’ll meet a four-star general. They think that driving a Jeep puts them on the road to ruggedness. It doesn’t. They’re delusional, they’re watching war movies while the rest of us are moving on with our lives. They also own a Magnavox TV and they sit around the fuckin’ radio trying to make contact with ships at sea.

Jeep guy is out of touch and since he thinks he’s driving a military vehicle, that he’s driving medical supplies to the battlefield, he’s bound to hear voices and take evasive action at any moment … Best just to salute him and let him pass.

Golf Carts
You wouldn’t want to sit next to a guy that drives an electric car at a ballgame or in a restaurant, so why would you want to share the road with him? Some people think people own electric cars because they want to save money on gas, but that’s a falsehood. The main motivating factor, the real reason a dude buys an electric car is because he wants the rest of the world to believe he is socially conscious and earth-friendly and therefore he is a more tuned-in and compassionate human.

He’s a socialist, a paper straw guy, he has a hummingbird feeder, he owns clothes made of hemp, he has an app on his phone that sends him alerts on the depth of the snowpack, he has Tupperware in every conceivable size and he doesn’t eat bacon – in other words, he’s dangerous, and he’s on the road in increasing numbers.

Plug-in car dude cares more about the spotted owl than he will ever care about his fellow drivers. He’s a militant, live-off-the-land type and you probably could kick his ass, but he drives a little car that doesn’t make any sound so beware of him in parking structures and shopping mall lots.

Transportation Engineers
The people who drive Volvos and Audis are gearheads and their analytical minds tell them they should drive something the looks like a rectangle and be manufactured in Scandinavia. They typically have no social skills or any sense of imagination so they tend to be very deliberate drivers waiting for a phone app to tell them when to speed up, exit the freeway or change lanes. They are known to be chronic rear-enders because they are watching a smartphone, a computer tablet and possibly tracking a satellite while driving. Now you know.

Fake Luxury
A Mercedes and a Lexus used to be luxury vehicles, but they’re not anymore and that creates a dangerous driver profile – a person who is in pursuit of status but not smart enough to know what it actually looks like. There are so many Mercedes on the road now that there is no longer any cachet associated with the brand. Tons of Mercedes on the road are the small, generic type and those all look dangerously like, holy shit, a store brand. Same with a Lexus. Let’s face it a Lexus is just a Toyota with a push-up bra. So what you have in the Mercedes/Lexus driver is a person not afraid to waste money, who wants to be viewed as bigshot, but he’s new money, meaning he doesn’t want to earn anything just wants to buy his way into the Big-Boy Club. He thinks he has game and rights he doesn’t have. He’s a poseur and he’ll drive like one. He’ll be a gutterball guy, driving the shoulder and trying to cut-in at the last minute when there’s heavy traffic. He may drive with the seat reclined and all the windows down.

The Road’s Most Feared
If you take all the flaws and insecurities and phobias and antisocial behavior and irritating characteristics of all the drivers on the road and rolled them into one mega dysfunctional driver, that person will be driving a Tesla. The guy that buys the Tesla is the same guy who pitches a tent in front of the Apple Store two weeks before the launch of the iPhone 19. He wants attention and will pay any price to have it. He has all the same socialist tendencies as electric car guy plus the genetic predisposition to buy anything with a high-society logo. He only talks about himself at parties and he hangs out with cosmetic surgeons. He can’t throw a ball and he’s never been camping, but he runs an internet dating website so he has the personal information and a lot of dirt on a bunch of rich white guys. He’s better than you in every way and he’ll enter the carpool lane any time he chooses, park in a loading zone and when the battery runs low on his dressed-up little golf cart he just buys a new one.

It takes all kinds. Be careful. Profile everyone.