Driving

I sometimes wonder whether a good way to get an early idea of someone's character would be to observe how that person drives. This could indicate such things as self-control, risk taking, patience, politeness, reliability, responsibility, and empathy.

An exception to this is that some bad driving habits might come more from not learning the right way. For example, I once met someone who grew up in China before driving was common there and learned from a friend in the US. She was unaware of the importance of a safe following distance because she had seen many others drive very close and thought that is what she was supposed to do.

One of the few articles that I found online about this topic is "How You Drive Reveals a Lot About Your Personality." I'm not sure if I agree with some of the connections the author draws. Tailgating might mainly reveal excessive risk taking and pushiness rather than lack of imagination. But I see his point that safe driving entails imagining--more like anticipating--what others might do and what could go wrong.  

Another possibile exception is that people can vary a lot in how they act--maybe because of setting or simply from differing over the course of a day. This has happened with people who seem to be very nice yet are abusive at home or who are going through a particularly bad day. 

Near the end of the article, the author concludes, "Based upon my years of experience, the best and easiest-to-get-along-with coworkers, colleagues and customers tend to be courteous when they drive and, when confronted with the bad driving of others, tend to shrug it off." 

I guess by "shrug it off" he means not react with anger or aggression. In some cases, though, I'm alarmed, which I don't think of as shrugging off. What I think can be scary is something hard to defend against, such as someone suddenly swerving head-on into the opposite lane. The wife and daughter of an assistant basketball coach at the University of Wisconsin recently died near Ann Arbor, Michigan, when a wrong-way driver hit his car head-on. He and his son survived. I wonder if they are now thinking and feeling over and over how their lives changed so much because of another driver's recklessness. 
https://madison.com/wsj/sports/college/basketball/men/badgers-assistant-howard-moore-seriously-injured-wife-and-daughter-killed/article_7c6bcd13-4ab2-5ed3-887e-37cdf751c1b0.html

My impression from walking a lot is that there's an increase in number of drivers who blatanly go through red lights. So I must keep reminding myself of that when driving.

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added May 28, evening
The main reason I posted this is because I'm thinking about whether I should have taken this more into account with one person I've gotten to know in recent years.  It's about predicting about a person so as not to be blindsided, similar to what I want to do with driving but with strangers.