Customer Reviews

How to Drive into Accidents - And How Not to

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I love this book! Lots of books are full of good information, but what good are they if you can't stay awake reading them? That's NOT what "Accidents" is like -- it is jam-packed with great information about smart driving, and about how cars work in general, plus it is fun to read.

I got this book because I've read lots of magazine articles by Robert Pease and I knew he was a writer that could keep me interested in just about any topic. I wasn't especially looking for a book on driving, since I've been driving for over 20 years already. The author claims this book is for teen-agers, to help them to avoid accidents by teaching them to think while they are driving. Maybe so, but after reading only a few chapters, I found myself looking at the way I drive all in a brand new light.

If you were learning to drive all over again, who would you rather learn from -- the rule-spouting Drivers Ed teacher you had in high school, or that friend of your dad's who's good at spinning stories, plus has over 1 million driving miles under his belt? The author writes like he's your best buddy talking to you over a cup of coffee at the diner, sharing what he's picked up over the years.

It's no collection of rules to memorize. The book even recommends that you practice getting into skids (away from traffic) so you can learn how to handle them.

It's a good read. Plus the stuff in it makes sense. I might argue a couple points with him, such as whether it's better to back into a parking lot space or do it the "right" way, but overall I strongly recommend getting this book if you have a teen learning to drive, if you want to learn about smart driving, or just how cars work in general. It was worth every penny to me!

I've kept this book out in plain veiw. My teenager, who is about to start driving picked it up and started reading it. After a chapter or two, she said, "I like the way he writes." This has led to some good discussions about driving. Excellent. I couldn't ask for more.

Very helpful. It has been a very good review for me on driving techniques -- sometimes you forget.

I do disagree with him on two points. I would not ever get out of a car to pick up something on the freeway or get involved in dealing with an accident on a busy freeway that I was not a party to. Also, you should not get out of your car and approach the patrol car if an officer pulls you over -- the officer needs time to finish checking your plate on the radio and does NOT want to deal with you yet!

Yes, it does meander off-topic sometimes; yes, it is a very personal style; yes, it is VW-centric. But these aspects do not materially detract from the tremendous amount of thought and collected information in the book. And it is very readable.

Well worth the money. Thank you, Mr. Pease!

I cannot rate the book lower, even though I feel a sense of resistance to the writing style, simply because of the trouble Pease went to just to get it to print. If you have the book, you may pick up a bit of homespun advice about driving in general, such as the author's sketches of braking systems and what happens to a car in a skid. If you do not have the book, you should not feel that you are missing out. Self-publishing a driving book is a risky proposition, but Highliner pulls it off much better than Robert Pease's work here. See Highliner: The Nature, Philosophy and Science of Automobile Driving. The best driving book is one that includes a codified set of rules of the road and a code of conduct which everyone can believe in.

Pease's book is a detailed, personal perspective of what it's like to own a car, and all that goes along with it. The subtopics are many, the focus is non-existent, but the effort is surely there. Pease informs us that he felt eight publishers made a mistake by rejecting his book, so he decided to publish it himself. I did not find the book helpful only because I knew everything about which he was writing. Perhaps if this book was released twenty years earlier it might read better. Today's readers are probably two to three times more intelligent than before, due to the sheer volume and accessibility of driving knowledge and driving information today. The word "I" is used more times than can almost be counted, and when trying to teach drivers, regardless of the subject matter, "I" statements take the focus off the subject and onto the author. It is a mistake to let too many clothes into the wash, referring to the number of friends that Pease let review and edit his chapters. If I were to have edited this book, I could easily cut the number of words in half, and eliminate the multiple perspectives (e.g., first, second and third) and the overstatements of the obvious (e.g., everyone knows that brakes stop the car, whether he or she drives or not).

If you have a young person at home who is about to learn to drive, then I can partially recommend it, but Highliner is a much better drivers ed book that focuses on drivers education and helping to ace the driving test. A drivers bible is hard to come by, but Highliner outshines How to Drive into Accidents by a country mile. The best driving book or drivers ed book should have driving plays and driving pictures, covering residential zones and arterial zones, and if there is room, driving knowledge about hi-speed zones. There are over forty chapters in Pease's book and of them, perhaps five percent have to do with the book's title. This book would be better simply by changing the title to "Pease's Guide to Automobile Ownership," or "On Driving" or "Robert Pease: A Driver's Perspective." Driving psychology and driving philosophy are subjective, depending on the myriad of points of view, so a good driving book would be either Highliner or Timothy Smith's How to Crashproof your kids.

I really enjoyed the loose, yet engineer approach to this topic. Bob was a famous integrated circuit designer. Was because he was killed recently in a VW Beetle not wearing his seat belt. Take another look at the picture of the cover. Sorry Bob.

It is a sad coda that Bob Pease died in an auto accident this weekend (6-19-2011). Search for "Driver, 70, Dies in Saratoga Crash". No seatbelt, 40 year old car, ill health, winding road. He was an icon in his profession.

Saying this book is feces would be incorrect. At its hefty weight of 472 pages it's more like massive case of nuclear diarrhea. To put the page count in perspective, I own books on designing power generation systems that are shorter. I could not justify recommending this book instead of others to anyone that is a novice driver that interested in learning techniques to drive better.

While it is true that getting to know your car is important, the author's anecdotal crash course in automobile characteristics is just plain bad. It's too long, too hodgepodge, not focused enough, and just not informative to the person that is going to be climbing behind the drivers seat. In addition there are numerous errors that are outdated or just plain wrong such as the author's stance on ABS and the other ones noted in other reviews.
Also observant readers might question the author's authority of the subject after noting the lengthy section of the twelve car crashes he's been in; it's akin to a book by Custer on military strategy.

If you want to get a book on novice driving get a book like Crashproof Your Kids by Timothy Smith. If you want to avoid accidents (and avoid speeding tickets) by situational awareness get a book like Drive to Survive by Curt Rich. If you want a meandering, steaming pile of rubbish get this book.

I'm just glad I borrowed it from my local public library.

This book is a 450+ page diarhetic explosion, a mangled mishmash of fact and fantasy about driving, automobiles, airplanes and assorted inebriated meanderings through puerile philosophical observations in atrocious English that would better have remained in the author's subconscious rather than be foisted on unaware purchasers in need of a safe-driving manual.

The long-winded title of this book should be a warning sign, "DO NOT BUY." Another warning sign to me should have been the fact that none of my local libraries carries the book. The author informs us that at least eight publishers turned this monstrosity down - which did not persuade him that his book was unfit for publication. The fact that over forty of the author's friends reviewed each chapter and contributed to the final travesty simply shows that illiterate birds of a feather, etc.

Samples of gems; "Every driver has to learn to put on the brakes." "So, in general, be very careful what you are doing when the visibility goes to pot and you cannot see where you are going." "You already know that when you run out of gas, you don't go much further." "There are a LOT of straight roads."

The author states of his book that, "I do not think it will screw up the head of the non-driver, but it ain't going to do him a lot of help, either." I assure you that it will screw up the head of the person who buys it and it "ain't going to do HIM a lot of help, either."