Hands down, without a doubt, my mother.
When I was about five or six, I was sitting in the front seat of the car (unbelted, of course – it was the 1960s) with my father driving. Ahead of us, there was a car with curb feelers.
When I asked my father what the curb feelers were for, he replied “Those are for people who can’t drive.”
“You mean like mom?”
My dad looked over at me, took a drag off his cigarette and said “Your mother has no business behind the wheel of a car.”
That statement proved prophetic.
My mother got her driver’s license at the ripe old age of 26 after failing the NJ Driver’s test at least six times.
Her HS Driver’s Ed teacher, my grandfather, my uncle Tommy (who was a cop) and my father all gave up trying to teach my mother how to parallel park; finally she went to Taggart’s and got a woman instructor (who probably had the patience of the saints) who got her through her driving test. After she got her license, my mother probably never parallel parked again.
My mother never could figure out a manual transmission; she screwed up the clutch of my father’s ‘63 VW so bad it had to be replaced.
She wrecked her first car, a 1959 Ford station wagon, three weeks after my father bought it for her, after she ran a stop sign and got t-boned by a delivery truck.
She backed my father’s six-month-old Plymouth Duster into a light pole at the supermarket.
She nailed a deer with a 1973 VW Super Beetle. Two guys in a pick-up stopped, threw the deer carcass into the bed of the truck and left.
She ran her 1974 Maverick into a ditch because she missed a curve – in broad daylight.
She nearly caused a major accident on Rt 130 in Pennsauken NJ when she ran out of gas in the middle of the highway, because she wanted to fill up at a station that had a traffic light nearby.
She totalled her 1986 Buick Skylark when she made an illegal left turn.
And these are just the incidents I can recall.
The state of NJ finally revoked her license after he second DUI, when she drove the Cadillac of the guy she had met at a bar into a tree.
RIP Mom, the world is a much safer place without you behind the wheel.