Last night was the premiere of Canada's Worst Driver, a new "reality" show on the Discovery Channel.
The premise is simple(-ish): they took eight people from across Canada that were nominated by friends or loved ones as "the worst". These eight people, along with their nominators, will spend some time in a "driving rehabilitation center" where they will be evaluated and taught driving skills in an effort to make them better drivers.
I like the idea of the show. They have a good sample of different "bad" drivers, from a couple of speed demons to some very infrequent drivers, basically covering the range of the bad drivers we share the road with every day. In theory, the show is not just about singling one as THE worst, but doing so by making everybody improve their skills through coaching and practice -- that's a good idea to me. In application, the show is quite over-dramatic with the host going on long rants to blast these poor skill-less souls. I could live without that part, but short of that the show is quite a positive one.
Watching the show, now that is scary.
First of all, they introduce the drivers by mentioning their "rap sheet". You have people with more than 30 reported accidents (which excludes minor dents that nobody else saw). One has gone through 10 cars in the last 20 years. One has a paralyzing fear of left turns -- I'm not even kidding. Quite... mind boggling. All these people have their driver's license and most of them drive every day.
In the show, they set up some driving challenges, little obstacle courses they have to drive through, where the goal is, quite basically, to not trash the car. Luckily they are driving old cars used only for the show, because after the drivers go through the course the cars need some serious body work. The host, a regular actor and nothing particularly special behind the wheel, goes through the course first to set the bar. Every time he, and the car, comes out unscathed. Then the "contestants" go at it and side mirrors start flying off, cardboard pedestrians get run over and the sweet sound of metal-on-metal makes you cringe.
For most of the challenges, the host sets the bar at a decent height -- say 2 minutes here, 5 minutes there or 45 seconds to parallel park -- then you see the other drivers take 10, 15, 20 minutes -- one actually took an hour! -- and try to parallel park 17 times in 20 minutes...
They also had one where they showed the drivers five actual road signs and only one guy got all of them right. And they weren't particularly difficult, like two cars side by side with a red circle around and a bar across, which means "no passing". I mean, most of them couldn't answer that! And you should hear what they do answer!
The first two episodes were last night, with the other episodes scheduled, I believe, for every night this week. I think it's worth watching out of curiosity just like an accident on the highway is intriguing, though with this show you're not causing traffic by stopping to watch. Plus, it's quite likely that the highway accident was caused by, or involved, one of these drivers...
Check out the show's website, particularly the "drivers" section where they have a short description of each. Quite the interesting read...
