OK, is this really an issue?

[Occhidiangela]

Yes Occhi, but you are the exception rather than the rule.  Most parents down here are terrible drivers themselves and they end up teaching their bad driving to their kids.  And most people don't have training in how to teach people and certainly not flight instructor training.
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Change part of your statement to read "most people are bad drivers" and I will agree with you 100%!

Flip side, and I don't think he is that unusual a person, my dad is one of the best defensive drivers I have ever met. He has been driving cars since 1946, and has IIRC had two fender benders, one "slide off the road in the snow," and a few "avoid the idiot who darn near killed him." My mom has had one fender bender, but she never commuted any distance to work. I am not as good a defensive driver as my dad or mom: no injuries, but two "more than a fender bent" and three "bumped into something at slow speed due to low alertness to environment/getting cute/late to brake." I have only been driving since 1975. My Dad versus Occhi? PWNAGE in the driving game! :o

While those two set a high standard, which I have not been able to equal, I believe there are a lot of good defensive drivers out there, we just never hear of them. We also don't "see" them since they tend to fit into the traffic flow pretty well and don't come up on our own driving 'radar' as "a critical object that is a threat to my driving space and path."

Your concern that the "blind teach the blind" is valid. Driving is approached too casually by far too many of our fellow drivers. I have in the past been guilty of taking driving for granted, have driven intoxicated on more than one occasion (ah, the idiocy of youthful rogues) though I take driving seriously as a general rule. Partly due to what Dad and Mom taught me, partly from my experiences as an instructor (refining "what to look for when" senses) and partly what any of us learns over time as we encounter different driving challenges.

Occhi