When a passenger gives constant advice or orders to the person behind the wheel. The
Henpecked Husband's wife or mother-in-law will do this a LOT. The
Logical Extreme is a passenger who actually grabs for car controls (usually the wheel). In
Real Life, there
are legal consequences for this.
Examples
Anime
- Yusei constantly gives this to Crow in the 2008 Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds show. Which Yusei tends to always show that Big Brother Instinct attitude of his. And that he had more experience turbo dueling than his buddy; Crow.
Comic Books
- A severaly injured and distressed Dwight McCarthy becomes one in the Sin City story A Dame To Kill For. Subverted in that Marv, the driver, takes his advice.
Film
Live-Action TV
- Very prevalent and always Deconstructed in Canada's Worst Driver. At times, the nominator needs more rehab than the driver does.
- Perhaps the epitome of a Henpecked Husband, Richard Bucket (pronounced "Bouquet") suffers this from his wife in Keeping Up Appearances.
Hyacinth: "Mind the pedestrian, Richard."
Richard, panicked and braking: "Where?!"
Hyacinth: "On the pavement, Richard."
- As this is a British show, "the pavement" means the sidewalk.
- Happens all the time on The Amazing Race when teams are tasked with driving themselves. As a bonus, because of the way the camera crew positions themselves in the car, the non-driving teammate is always positioned directly behind the driver.
Literature
- The role can occasionally be played by the Guy In Back, reminding the Ace Pilot not to burn up all of their fuel, or warning him of enemies coming up on their six. Of course, this is part of his job, but too much implies a lack of trust between them, or a certain fresh inexperienced quality about the guy in back.
Radio
- A sketch on the British radio show Week Ending featured the car itself as this. The Austin Maestro featured a voice synthesiser to issue warnings to the driver - a supposedly amazingly futuristic innovation which was universally derided by the public. The sketch portrayed the synthesiser as a Backseat Driver which continually nagged and hassled the driver, annoying and distracting him so much that he ended up wrecking the car.
Video Games
- Grand Theft Auto IV The Ballad Of Gay Tony has Luis do jobs for various VIPs hanging around at the club. One of them is a drunken celebrity, Cloe Parker, who makes sexual advances on Luis by grabbing the wheel.
Western Animation
Real Life
- Implied — some vehicles, notably the Toyota Yaris, have the instrument cluster mounted in the center of the dashboard, between the driver and front passenger. While there's no proof that any manufacturer's implementation of this design is to explicitly support backseat drivers (though it does simplify manufacturing left and right hand drive models), there's no proof that it isn't either.
- The valid case of the trope is a driving instructor to assist new drivers. Their vehicles are equipped with passenger-side controls in case the inexperienced driver is about to make a collision.
