08.20.05 Driving (me crazy)

This post is not an attack on anyone's race, gender or social background. It is just my observation of my life's situation. I will also add that I love my wife very much. She's a great friend, lover, companion, mother to our kids, she's a talented musicain, she puts up with me, not the best cook - see earlier post (OK, the disclaimer is out of the way). Her driving makes me nuts. I think it's safe to say that most of us feel we are better drivers than we actually are. You can also tell a lot about one's driving ability by how many tickets or accidents that they have had. My wife does not have too many speeding tickets (they can't seem to catch her), but during a 5 week span last fall, she managed to have 4 accidents, 1 speeding ticket, and knocked the rear window out of my Volvo 240 DL station wagon. The first occured when she was coming into the city to pick me up from the hospital. I can understand this one because I had been in the hospital for 16 days os she was a little stressed to day the least. She was driving down a side street looking for the hospital parking and she took off the passenger side mirror and scraped the entire side of the van. Ok, then 2 weeks later she was going to work on a Saturday morning. It was cold out and it rained the night before. I get a phone call. There was ice on the road and her, not being one of those cautious drivers, figured ice-schmice, I can still drive 70 mph so she hit the ice and did a few bounces off the median and the side retaining wall. Luckily, she was not hurt and no other cars were involved. Our van had two rear windows blown out and as it turned out, both axles bent. Cost to repair, over $5000. It is an 98 Villager and we don't have collision on it. Alrighty, that was 9 am. I drove down, with the 2 boys and my rather fresh staples in my gut while I was calling an autobody shop and a car rental place.We were able to drive it to the autobody shop, but she still wanted to get to work and there was something she had to do afterwards, so we went to Enterprise to rent a car for her. After about an hour or so, we got her a car. She went off to work, and I went home to take more percocet and valium. I get a call about 7 pm that night. She was in a gas station getting gas, and she opened the door without really checking and some guy was driving where he really should not have been and wham! The side of the door is dented and his mirror is history. She managed to drive home without another incident. So a week goes by, we still have the rental, she is out at a rehearsal, the phone rings. Yes, another accident. She was pulling into an empty (yes empty) parking lot and pulled up to park underneath the light and hits the bottom of the light post. I think it was between the last two accidents, she got a speeding ticket for going 68 in a 45 zone. I was so afraid to answer the phone, I never knew what it was going to be next. We returned the rental, our van was still in the shop and she started using our 89 Volvo wagon. She was getting something out of the back, and slammed the tailgate down and the rear window shattered and imploded.
Needless to say, we are banned from Enterprise car rental...