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Rated E for Everyone's Gonna Die.

"My apologies, Haru, but I request you steer clear of the driver's seat from now on. I only have so many lives left..."
Yusuke Kitagawa, Persona 5 Strikers

  • This is the whole point of any Vehicular Combat game you care to name, and a lot of racing ones as well.
  • 1931: Scheherazade at the Library of Pergamum: The title character is a terrible driver, according to her best friend.
    Anna: Remember that time you borrowed your aunt's Model T? There are still pieces of the poor thing embedded in that orphanage's walls!
    Sadie: I still say that building jumped out at me.
  • Binary Domain has Cain, who managed to drift with a van.
  • Brütal Legend: Ophelia clearly has this opinion of Eddie's driving. It probably helps that she's never seen a car before the two of them used it to escape from the Tainted Coil's forces. And that Eddie was "escaping" by running over everything between them and the exit.
  • Burnout: This is part of the premise; it even gives you points for traffic checks (however, you can never win at a game of chicken). The more dangerous the driving, the better.
    • From Burnout 3: Takedown onward, most game modes in the series encourage you to run the other drivers off the road. Road Rage is a perennial favorite game type.
    • Then there are the modes where you have to cause as much carnage as possible. Oh, you'll die in the crash, no danger of that, how many innocent people can you take with you?
    • The old racing game Whiplash (or Fatal Racing in Europe) was based around this as well, rewarding you for totaling your rivals' cars.
  • Call of Duty:
    • From the series we have Private MacGregor. Despite his total lack of anything approaching driving skills in the African theatre, Captain Price still lets him drive a lorry full of prisoners in France. Much to everyone's horror.
    • The first game has Sgt. Moody, who manages to blast through half the German army in a clapped-out old peugeot by virtue of being completely insane.
  • Carmageddon: This is the whole point of the game. The first two were enhanced with the 'Prat Cam', a cutaway view of drivers Max Damage and Die Anna laughing, cussing, howling, and screaming like lunatics.
  • City Connection: Clarice, the player character, is traveling the world looking for a boyfriend, while also driving like a maniac and painting the streets. The latter two actions get the police to chase after her.
  • Clustertruck: You have to keep on top of trucks while dodging obstacles and navigating drops—and dealing with truckers who can't drive worth anything and so are always colliding with each other.
  • Crazy Taxi: The premise of the series. The driving style of the Crazy Taxi Delivery Service was once described by Tips and Tricks as "record time without road maps, speed limits, or a regard for anyone's personal safety". You get tips from your customers for doing tricks like jumps, drifts, and near-misses, and driving fast is essential to racking up high fares.
  • Deadly Premonition introduced the protagonist York while he's driving down a road in a heavy storm, smoking, typing on a laptop with one hand, and on the phone to his superiors discussing his theory that Tom and Jerry are in a codependent, sadomasochistic relationship. He's the poster child for distracted driving, and yet he only loses control of the car after someone darts in front of him. Throw in that you sometimes get "Agent Honor" (basically small amounts of money) when you run over fences or hit telephone phones, and the animated York's tie hanging down whenever he flips over, the player is practically encouraged to be bad at driving.
  • Destiny 2: Take a shot every time you see somebody spamming dance emotes while driving a Sparrow.note 
  • Detective Pikachu: Amanda has a boat license and is a good driver, but she likes to drive so fast that she makes both Tim and Pikachu nauseous.
  • Devil May Cry 5 has Nico, who drives her van aggressively, heedless of road condition, demons in the way, walls and floors.
  • Elite Beat Agents: An early mission centers around a taxi driver who compulsively rockets around town. He's threatened to have his license revoked, but a pregnant woman in labor hops in and demands he step on it. Unable to decide between rocketing to the hospital or obeying the law, he screams for help. That's where the EBA comes in and helps him out to the tune of Sk8er Boi.
  • EXTRAPOWER: Attack of Darkforce: Platinum apparently has this reputation, even going so far as firing a bazooka from her van. While it's moving. And she's actively driving it. Kurogane has gotten used to it but admits that Platinum is a pretty rough driver.
  • Final Fantasy XV: Dialogue indicates that Regis Lucis Caelum was a driver of this sort prior to the events of the game, at least when he was travelling Eos with companions. Cid Sophiar purports that the Regalia has been crashed on numerous occasions with Regis behind the wheel; by the time they parted ways, Cid had enough mechanical know-how to open an auto shop. When giving Noctis keys to the royal vessel in the Royal Edition, Cid assures that the party (who has ridden a boat all of once, immediately before the cutscene) should be fine at the wheel, because even Regis couldn't sink it.
  • Forza:
    • Forza Motorsport 3: The Italian driver, M. Rossi, will mash other racers off the starting line, floors the gas constantly, and will pass in zones that no sane driver would try to pass in.
    • Forza Horizon flat-out encourages you to do crazy stunts with your car to increase your in-game popularity rating, which helps unlock more races, more cars, and even award you money. Said stunts include zipping past oncoming traffic, jumping or bouncing, smashing objects, drifting etc. The game even has separate names for each stunt you do, such as Daredevil (zipping past multiple cars), Wrecking Ball (smashing a lot of objects), or even Kangaroo (bouncing your car). But you don't get any reward for directly crashing into cars or scenery.
  • F-Zero: Driving in this series is like driving in Aspen in the winter during a salt shortage, to put it lightly.
  • Grand Theft Auto: Very common, given traffic's general non-compliance with the speed the player often needs to get somewhere. It occasionally gets lampshaded:
    • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas: CJ has this reputation. And yet they always make him drive anyway...
      Ryder: I'm saying that the East Coast made you drive like an idiot, fool! Man, you always crashing cars and shit. And for some reason, now you back, all it is is, "CJ, drive" here, "CJ, drive" there. Bullshit!
    • In the quest "Puncture Wounds", CJ has to help Cesar steal a car from a woman who, as he puts it, "drives like the devil". Considering these guys are experienced street racers, it's quite an accomplishment for an ordinary person in an SUV to elude them for so long.
      Cesar: Too bad we can't involve the police, 'cause then we could pop her crazy bitch tires and bang her crazy bitch ass in jail for being a danger to my sanity!
    • Grand Theft Auto V: All three of the protagonists will keep yelling at and insulting other drivers even though you — the player — crashed into them. You can go down a busy road at break-neck speed, ignore the red light, and t-bone another car just for your character to yell "THIS ACCIDENT IS ENTIRELY YOUR FAULT!" at that car's driver... even when that driver didn't survive the impact. The game actually lampshades it by keeping track of your car crashes. You can check in how many crashes you've been involved with each character you play on the Social Club... some drive like crazy so much that they manage to drive fewer kilometers (the game also tracks the distance you drove) than they have car crashes.
  • Half-Life 2 gives us several moments in which Gordon (and by extension, the player) demonstrates that he is one of these:
    • Just before the chapter Water Hazard (terrific name, by the way), Gordon is given an airboat with which he must navigate a system of canals. Exaggerated later when it becomes equipped with a recharging mini-gun.
    • In the chapter Highway 17, Gordon is given a dune buggy equipped with the laser cannon you first encounter in Half-Life. Notice a pattern here?
    • In Episode 2, Gordon finally gets to try a real road monster: a two-seater with a souped-up engine that drives pretty darn fast on open stretches. There's an achievement for road killing a high number of enemies, and the crazier you drive, the more fun Alyx has riding shotgun.
    • By the way, in all of the above examples, Gordon is either dodging terrain features, mine-laying helicopters, CP units on patrol, or local fauna, while still going as fast as possible.
  • The Heist: Monaco has two of these as a potential Getaway Driver: Fabien Ahmad or Tillie Marshall. They get a chance to really show their skills in Chapter 12 where Fabien slides deftly between cars while Tillie goes through the bumpy "shortcut." Their driving gets even crazier for the final heist if you pay diamonds for a souped-up racecar.
  • Weaponised in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth where Eric Tomizawa's default Cabbie class has the "Essence of Buckle Up" Limit Break, in which he deliberately drives recklessly in his car while an enemy is in the back seat before he hits a ramp and bails before the car crashes and blows up.
  • LEGO City Undercover: It's not strictly necessary, but the tendency for most players to do this due to the complete lack of driving laws is Lampshaded by multiple characters including the protagonist.
    Moe: This car is for you. It belongs to my brother, who I don't get on with, so feel free to damage it.
    Chase: With my driving that's a guarantee.
  • Lollipop Chainsaw: Rosalind Starling is a sixteen-year-old girl who just got her driver's license. Given that she's also a Nightmare Fetishist who deeply enjoys being terrified, one has to agree with her older sister Juliet when she wonders what in the hell the DMV was thinking giving her a license. The third level has you chase after Rosalind as she crashes her school bus (yes, she drives a school bus) through the entirety of a farm.
  • Mass Effect:
    • The Mako APC handles superbly on flat terrain and in combat; however, there are very, very few sections of the game where flat terrain is present. The jagged mountains and very inhospitable terrain combined with little acceleration control results in somewhat... uneven driving. It's amazing permanent whiplash doesn't result. In addition, there is no such thing as fall damage while driving the Mako. This naturally leads to most players driving in straight lines towards their destination, regardless of what may lie in their way, i.e. canyons, mountains, buildings, geth armatures, very high cliffs... and that's when it's working properly. When it's glitched...well...
    • Mass Effect 2: The car chase in Lair of the Shadow Broker. For all of Liara's complaining whenever you almost-crash, she'll admit it's still better than the Mako. Since Shepard is the common variable between the two situations, it may be that s/he is a personal example of this trope.
      Liara: Truck!
      Shepard: I know.
      Liara: Truck!
      Shepard: I know!
      Liara: Yaaah!
      Shepard: Heh. There we go!
      Liara: You're enjoying this!
    • Mass Effect 3:
      • No-one lets James Vega forget about the incident on Mars, where his ingenious plan to take down an escaping enemy shuttle, was to crash their own shuttle into it. Even Shepard, whose own track record with vehicles isn't particularly spotless, gets in on it. This is probably because the shuttle he chose to crash into it with was armed.
      • Ironically, the Citadel DLC reveals that for all of Joker's talent at the helm of a warship, his skill in an actual car leaves a lot to be desired. Maya Brooks complains about Joker almost crashing the taxi they commandeered on the way to pick up Shepard, and Cortez is quite adamant that Joker not be the one to drive when they have to keep the Normandy from escaping.
    • Mass Effect: Andromeda:
      • Even without Shepard, Ryder is definitely a graduate from whatever driving school Shepard went to. Get a little too close to a cliff edge, and Drack (a 1400-year-old krogan who has survived dozens of wars) freaks out.note  It might not be a coincidence that Ryder's father was a graduate of the same special forces program as Shepard.
      • Liam Kosta has a habit of "borrowing" the car without permission when Ryder's not looking and shreds the tires repeatedly.
      • Subverted for humor whenever Jaal's on the Nomad, as he'll complain that Ryder doesn't drive crazy enough. A recurring joke is him falling asleep because Ryder's driving is so relaxing, and his snoring drives Peebee insane. Jaal at one point attempts to convince Gil to "fix" the Nomad to make the ride rougher, which gets vetoed by everyone else in the squad.
  • Mitsumete Knight: Gene Petromolla, one of the possible Love Interests, is a stagecoach driver who drives like this. Your first meet her when she almost runs over you.
  • Persona:
    • Persona 2: Maya Amano. In Innocent Sin, the party lets Maya drive the blimp from the Air Museum and she crashes it. She then tries to drive a boat in the last dungeon in and crashes into every rock along the way before the party asks Tatsuya to take over for her. She did so badly that its infamy persists across an Alternate Universe in the sequel Eternal Punishment, where Ulala outright tells her "Oh no, you don't! I've had enough of your driving!" And later in the game, Tatsuya insists that Jun drive the blimp instead, despite him being a high schooler. And when the time came for someone to drive a minisub, Tatsuya immediately volunteers so Maya won't even try. This is apparently due to Maya thinking her driving license applies to any vehicle, and her belief she's good enough to pull it off. The screams say otherwise.
    • Persona 5 Strikers: The original Persona 5 implies that Haru Okumura isn't a particularly great driver when the Phantom Thieves find her and a crashed Morgana, but she's revealed to be a terrifying speed demon when she has to take over from a fatigued Makoto and manages to drive from Fukuoka to Kyoto in, at most, five hours, leaving her passengers nauseous and traumatized when they reach point B. "I was just driving normally... I think," she says. No, Haru, people driving normally don't leave Fukuoka in the morning and reach a city nearly 400 miles and five prefectures away, while mistakenly taking a detour into Osaka, by 1pm.
  • Professor Layton: Emmy Altava doesn't give a crap about road laws. One wonders how she convinced Hershel to let her behind the wheel of the Laytonmobile in the movie.
  • Ratchet & Clank: It's heavily implied that Ratchet isn't a particularly skilled pilot (pre-Tools of Destruction, at least), given the fact that he's managed to perform a crash landing in most every (if not every) ship he's handled. Including the sentient one. This is lampshaded on the first page in the first issue of the comic, too:
    Ratchet: She's ready, I stake my pilot's license on it! [Gets glared at by Clank] Okay, I stake my theoretical pilot's license on it.
  • Real Racing 3: Even players may have a tendency to drive aggressively in tracks like Spa-Francorchamps and Le Mans and go off-track, hit the barriers, or inadvertently use a pit maneuver on other opponents. In "endless" Endurance races, it's possible for a bot to kamikaze the player just as before they slow down and fade into thin air.
  • Roundabout features a spinning limousine, complete disregard for any traffic laws, and you're encouraged to take out pedestrians; some missions even require it.
  • Saints Row series goes even further than its GTA roots by encouraging the player to drive on the wrong side of the road and avoid collisions as narrowly as possible by awarding XP for it. Taken even further by a more expansive shooting-while-driving system than GTA, which often results in you driving blind because you're shooting at a car behind you.
    • Saints Row 2: The Boss can also acknowledge his/her terrifying driving in a random quip during the "Thank you and Goodnight" mission. Everybody else does, too. That said, most of the motorists in Stillwater come under this trope, and the Boss will call other Saints on it if hitching a ride on a homie's vehicle.
    • Lampshaded in the first game by Benjamin King:
    • Saints Row: The Third: Pretty much everyone behind the wheel can qualify. It's not uncommon to see random cars suddenly swerve into oncoming traffic and cause a collision. And that doesn't even take into account the rival gangs or law enforcement when you have a high enough notoriety and they're actively trying to intercept you. Then there are the escort missions in which the hardest ones make having max notoriety look like a leisurely Sunday drive. The announcers for Genkibowl talk about it in one of the missions for the event, one of them noting the best way to get to work is by helicopter, and by that point, you're having a hard time trying to disagree with the statement.
  • Sam & Max Hit the Road: Sam's driving skills leave something to be desired on their own. Max's driving skills, on the other hand, terrify Sam. Might have something to do with him being too short to see properly. In their own words:
    Max: Mind if I drive?
    Sam: Not if you don't mind me clawing at the dash and shrieking like a cheerleader.
  • Scarface: The World Is Yours:
    • It gives bonuses to the player for near-misses.
    • And Tony can taunt drivers\pedestrians he hits.
    "Oh look. Look at his fucking shoes. His fucking shoes flew off."
  • Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed will have almost every driver turn into this just on the basis of, well, being a game about Wacky Racing that goes for 'wacky' in as large letters as the box will allow. Insofar as a explicitly crazy individual serving as a driver, The Pyro serves as the kart driver of the Team Fortress 2 trio, and is about as grossly irresponsible as might be expected from a pyromaniac with a very thin grasp of reality.
  • Sonic Adventure 2: The GUN Truck was already bad enough, keeping up with Sonic in the video game equivalent of San Francisco, but in Sonic Generations it chases Sonic up on buildings' walls. Just for good measure, the truck isn't just some standard-size semi, it's as wide as the street.
  • Sunless Skies gives us the Incautious Driver (their name might have clued you in). Your crew will complain whenever they take the wheel, and there is a special option for berating them if your hull's too low, which means they've been driving even more incautiously than usual. Some elements are retained when they develop into the Judicious Driver. Every risk is calculated, but sometimes they take it anyways for the hell of it, as they explain right before Tokyo-drifting through a debris field just to drive the point home. And if you allow things to go wrong, and they become the Reckless Driver, all that's left is a husk that drives almost psychotically on pure instinct.
    • Tackety Scouts, a common ship in The Reach area, are universally terrible drivers who will frequently lurch to one side, spin in a circle and/or engage in accidental ramming attacks on your own ship or landmasses. As this behaviour appears to be deliberately programmed, and the Tacketies are the local scrappy independence group, players speculate it's representing some combination of inexperienced drivers, barely-controllable locomotives held together with spit and tape, and being frequently mad or drunk off their asses. Notably, it's possible for these locomotives to be overtaken by an infestation of tentacular horrors that eat the crew then use it as a home, and they drive better.
  • Surgeon Simulator 2013: In the unlockable Ambulance operations, you perform surgery in the back of an ambulance. But whoever's driving is either blind or a maniac, as the ambulance will often violently jerk to the side, practically soar over a speed bump, or abruptly pick up speed or slow down, sending your tools (and whatever vital equipment you have) flying all over the place, sometimes straight into the patient's chest or face, or even worse, right out the back of the ambulance, lost forever.
  • SSX 3: Though Dangerous Dave never appears in person, he's mentioned often by DJ Atomika on RADIO BIG. Among other things, plans to build an airport in Big Mountain were canceled when it was learned that the only local with the qualifications to pilot any of the planes was Dangerous Dave. Oh, and his wrecked planes litter the backcountry; there are dozens. In fact, he crashes right into the Peak 3 backcountry just as you near the first checkpoint.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Luigi's Mansion 3: In the opening cutscene, Red Toad drives the bus that's carrying Luigi and co. swerving all the way to the hotel, partly hitting the entrance gate, running over the curb, and flooring a sign before stopping. The fact that he's so short that he can barely see over the steering wheel probably has something to do with it.
    • Mario Is Missing!: The taxi drivers drive like lunatics. For example, at 3:10 in the video.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge: The boss fight at the end of Episode 3 involves chasing after Bebop and Rocksteady, who are on a monster truck called the Turtle Tenderizer. Bebop is the one driving, but if you get close he'll swing a ball-and-chain at you before laughing, and then the truck immediately veers out of control. Needless to say, he doesn't waste time taking the steering wheel again when that happens. They also try to ram you by ricocheting all over the road.
  • Test Drive Unlimited 2 is similar to Forza Horizon above, although the number of stunts you can pull are fewer.
  • Unreal Tournament 2004: Vehicles don't suffer damage from falling. This results in behavior like driving a tank off a bridge to get to the bottom of a canyon quickly. And since Car Fu is a favorite tactic and Friendly Fireproof is in effect, there's no reason not to drive like crazy and run over anything that moves. There's even a Daredevil award for pulling aerial stunts with ground vehicles.
  • XCOM: Chimera Squad: The titular squad is driven around by an automated APC commanded by a retooled MEC's brain with integrated GPS. Said brain has no sense of what safe speed is, judging by how fast it takes corners — one side of the APC lifts from the ground.

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