Fortunately, I don't ride with him. I do all the driving as far as the commute as he is on the way in to work for me. He'd have to drive out to me. That's obviously to my advantage.
The reason I was a passenger in his car was when my car was finished being repaired from getting hit, I asked him if it was a problem to take me out to where the car was. I said it was a long drive, but he doesn't really have a good persepective of distance here in Washington so I don't think he realized it was an hour drive out to where my car was. I have other friends and had I known what I'm about to describe, I would have just asked them because they have reliable cars.
He picked me up in his Ford Taurus, and explained that the power steering wasn't working and must be doing so because it was low on fluid. Shortly thereafter as we were driving, I heard the fan belt squealing. My thought was that the fan belt was either not tight or something else was causing the belt to not work properly. He said he thought it was due to the power steering pump.
About 5 minutes away from the destination, he sees that the car is starting to overheat. We pull off and let the car cool down a bit (for about 1/2 hour). I've pretty much decided the water pump was bad was why everything else the belt was driving was failing or not working properly. We wait and finally make the short drive to the shop. The owner of the shop was really nice about it since I had just had $11,000 worth of work done, so he's ok with the guy leaving his Taurus there, though he did immediately wash the car because it has so much mold on it "out of principle" (LOL). And, the next day he let the guy come and do the repair, though he and another person in the shop had to help a lot in getting the water pump replaced. It had a bad bearing on the pulley, and had pretty much dumped all the water on the road.
So...THAT is why I found out how bad a driver he was...also not one to invest much money or time in his car
