Welcome to My New Substack—Driving in the Real World!
Rethinking a safer world, one road user at a time.
Hello!
This is Mi Ae Lipe, and I welcome you to my brand-new Substack newsletter, Driving in the Real World, a place to reimagine a world that’s safer and easier for all of us getting to where we need to go.
Many of you are familiar with my blog on my website, Driving in the Real World; my Twitter/X feed at @DrivingReal; and most recently, DrivingInTheRealWorld on Instagram. You may also know me from the many articles I’ve written for Brightmile; the monthly column I wrote for nearly six years in the BMW CCA’s Roundel magazine, my ebook The Sound of No Cars Crashing, or my efforts to improve driver training, testing, and licensing standards in the United States by co-leading a trip to the UK.
But for those of you who aren’t, let me fill you in on how this newsletter came to be—and why you might be interested in it.
Unlike many of my traffic safety colleagues, I’m not a researcher, academic, statistician, or an employee of any government or company. What I am is an ordinary citizen who fell in love with cars at the tender age of 11, wanted to be an automotive designer above all else, couldn’t wait to get my driver’s license in California, and when I did, immediately got a job driving for a living—and quickly realized that absolutely nothing I’d learned in high school driver training prepared me for what I’d encounter in the real world.
I’m also a professional book editor, author, and communicator. Although editors do catch grammar mistakes, misspellings, and typos, what we really do best is spot patterns, evaluate problems with writing and logic, and figure out what can be improved and how. It wasn’t long before I began seeing patterns in how driver training and traffic safety policies in the United States profoundly fail its citizens in the most elemental, tragic, and unnecessary ways. And, over the past 30 years, I, like the rest of you, have been witnessing the rise of smartphones and electronic distraction, the deterioration of driver behavior and conduct, and the evolution of advanced car technology and autonomous driving.
One day thirteen years ago, I simply got tired of all the bad driving I was seeing all around me, and I decided to do something about it. Exactly how I would accomplish this wasn’t completely clear, but still I knew I could do it. So, I started writing a blog, not knowing quite where this journey would lead. At first, I wanted to write a book about better street driving technique, but I quickly realized that many such books had already been written, only to sell poorly and end up relegated to the big literary graveyard in the sky (or landfill).
So, I decided it would be better to become a change agent—and be open to whatever that might entail.
In the ensuing years, I began researching the art of driving. I underwent intensive training, from racetrack and rally driving to the uniquely British advanced driving called Roadcraft. I went on daytime and nocturnal DUI ride-alongs with local Washington State Patrol officers, as well as participated in civilian roleplaying volunteering at their academy. I began attending national US traffic safety conferences such as Lifesavers, GHSA, AAMVA, and TRB, as well as regional Target Zero and DUI conferences in the Pacific Northwest.
A huge turning point arrived when I began to delve into how other countries (especially the UK and Australia) train new drivers, market road safety to the general public, and regulate vehicle safety equipment that saves lives. I also collaborated with another fellow citizen advocate, Mark Butcher, for nearly eight years on strengthening driver training, testing, and licensing standards in Washington State. This included co-organizing and co-leading a group of Washington State government traffic safety officials and private driving school owners on a fact-finding trip to the UK to get a glimpse of their traffic safety ecosystem in 2016—work that was later recognized by the NHTSA in 2017.
The more safety professionals, driving instructors, traffic safety psychologists, social science researchers, and citizen advocates I met from all around the globe, the more I learned how complicated this landscape is, but also how simple and universal it can be. I also saw more patterns in why we drive the way we do and how it truly reflects who we are as people. I was horrified—still am—that out of the top 20 developed countries in the world, the US consistently ranks among the most dangerous in terms of traffic safety fatalities.
I also began to realize that most crashes are not caused by deliberately reckless drivers (the ones who are the most visible and thus the most targeted and vilified), but by ordinary people making ordinary mistakes in ordinary situations every day out of ignorance, lack of training, and cultural conditioning, all the while lulled by environments, infrastructure, and vehicles that perpetuate and enable that oblivion through no fault of their own.
At the same time all this was going on, the uncomfortable truth began dawning on me that I had plenty of lessons to learn myself. Traveling hundreds of thousands of miles solo cross-country and in urban, congested environments in all seasons and conditions always kept things real. Since I was never one to let the grass grow under my tires (especially on open highways and interstates), I realized that getting more than two dozen speeding tickets in three decades of driving wasn’t deterring me as much as it should. The fact that I was receiving tickets but not getting into crashes also began making me wonder about the true role of speeding and how ineffective American law enforcement can be at controlling it—especially its punitive, scolding messages without context. Something felt missing.
It took three intensive multiple-day training sessions taught by an exceptional instructor over the course of five years in the fundamentals of Roadcraft, a British form of advanced street driver training, to help me finally start understanding the enormous landscape of hazard perception, begin deprogramming 25 years of bad habits, convert them into better ones, and make sense of the missing links in the driving and cognition process. I can’t begin to express how invaluable this foundation has been in helping me understand the relentless effort, self-awareness, and discipline that vigilant, careful driving—and navigation of all kinds—demands.
Since I became a traffic safety advocate so many years ago, we now have autonomous vehicles (AVs) and powerful driver-assistance technology (ADAS) that hold great promise to make us safer and increase environmental and workforce efficiency. But they’re also opening the doors to massive conundrums that are only just beginning.
Which brings me to why I’m starting this Driving in the Real World newsletter on Substack—to provide a top-quality resource to make your driving not only safer and better but also less stressful and more enjoyable. I’ll cover what makes a good driver (it might not be what you think it is!), how you can make your driving more protective (not defensive) for all road users (not just those in cars), and specific, practical tips on vision, cognition, and decision-making that you can start using the very next time you get behind the wheel. After all, this is driving in the real world.
I’ll cover technologies like ADAS and AVs, both in the vehicle currently in your driveway and those in the not-so-distant future. Stay tuned also for a special series on how to safely road-trip in every season under all road conditions—perfect for summer right now! I’ll also spotlight traffic safety professionals, influencers, and advocates who are doing incredible work around the world, channeling innovative ideas, compassion, and political support into solutions that save lives. And now and then I’ll throw in personal travel stories, reflections on life on the road, and other fun stuff.
And you can contribute too! I’d absolutely love to hear your traffic questions, comments, and conundrums, as well as suggestions for topics to cover.
This Substack newsletter replaces my blog on my Driving in the Real World website, so if you’re a blog subscriber, you will need to sign up here to receive new posts. I offer both free and paid subscriptions on Substack. Both versions feature terrific, high-quality articles, but, for less than the price of a latte a month, the paid version will come out twice as often with premium content. If you can afford only the free version, absolutely no worries. But if you are able to pay monthly, annually, or even at a one-time founder’s level, I truly appreciate it—as it takes a great deal of time and commitment to produce quality content.
My sincere hope is that Driving in the Real World will become a favorite resource, whether you’re teaching your teenager to drive, you work as a driving instructor, or are part of a traffic safety organization or agency looking for fresh insight on communication strategies.
Spread the word—there is so much work to be done in this space, and we can start today.
Stay safe, Mi Ae
So good to see you here Mi Ae. I, like you, am a guy who loves the thrill of driving and loves cars … but I also take a lot of pride in the fact that I’ve never caused an auto accident on the streets and have rarely been ticketed. Looking forward to seeing what you do with this.