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The Worst Drivers
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I saw an article at Forbes that lists the large American cities with the worst drivers. @ekentgolding, you live in (or near, I guess) #3! Memphis is #2, and Albuquerque is ranked the very worst. Apparently Memphis has a lot of drunk driving and I know @davecarter has often talked about the frequency of drive-by shootings in Memphis.
I was kind of surprised that Chicago is not in the list. Maybe drivers there have improved, because if I had to name a big city I’ve driven in where I have seen discourteous drivers — and especially reckless taxi drivers — it would be Chicago.
What’s been your experience? Does the Forbes list seem about right to you? What are the worst behaviors you commonly see?
Published in General
Thirty years ago is when I was there.
Since you mentioned thirty year ago, I’ll say that my informal survey was Florida drivers thirty years ago. The worst drivers are the non-conforming drivers.
The fast drivers who changed lanes slowly were from New York, and were not particularly off-putting. The fastest drivers who required more attention because they changed lanes seemingly at random and accelerated as much as the clear road would allow, were from New England; I remember Connecticut and Massachusetts being the worst offenders. This group included (often women) drivers who kept their left turn signal on and drove like a bat out of hell in the fast lane and would only slow down to tailgate a slower speeder. The moderate drivers who everyone had to work around were from the Midwest who always drove the seed limit. I remember Kansas as being quite courteous. Then there were the old folks from New York and Pennsylvania who drove below the speed limit and generally held up traffic, which created even more aggressive lane changes from the others.
The only accident I witnessed was a big white Cadillac. He wanted to make a right turn out of a gas station and the on-coming driver in the first lane stopped to let him in. But the man pulled out into the second lane and into the path of an on-coming car. He was wearing a hat.
Dave Barry said the reason driving in Miami is so difficult is that everyone is driving according to the traffic laws of their country of origin.
The worst are yankees in TEXAS.
Boston. Of ourse, this was many moons ago. I was in the Navy, and I flew to Raleigh one weekend out of Logan. When I got back, it was snowing. As I slowly made my way up an on-ramp to get on the Interstate, a taxicab behind me passed me on the ramp at high speed, with millimeters to spare. There was another incident, but the cab stood out . . .
My experience too. I lived in the South Bay for a year.
We’re number one! We’re number one!
The parts I find worst about Albuquerque drivers are the line jumpers wait until the last minute to fly across a lane and try to squeeze in at the front of an exit line. I don’t find the drivers worse than other places I’ve lived or visited. Maybe it’s helping that I’m getting older and more accommodating on the road. Give people their space.
It also helped that when we moved back to Albuquerque that we were coming from San Pedro, California and the amount of traffic didn’t come close. There was a road rage incident in our first year back were someone was cutoff and then fired into the other vehicle. The bullet struck a four year-old sitting in the back seat. So sad.
I’m surprised Wichita wasn’t higher. They have very few traffic jams, so almost all of their accidents happen at 70 MPH.
In Southern California, Asian women are the worst ones.
They have mastered bad driving so there are fewer accidents?
Many years ago I was taught that when a Boston driver pointed to the left you’d better give way.
It’s been decades since I drove in Boston, but Mrs. Tabby still reminds me on occasion of the people turning left from the right-hand lane. But those sorts of things were done at speeds that wouldn’t result in a fatality.
Oh. I watched expecting a cow to saunter by. :)
This is moooving in an entirely different way.
Can’t believe I didn’t think of this one earlier…
I always thought the state of Florida had really bad drivers.
A cousin who often drove between DC and Orlando once remarked that “you know you’re back in Florida when half the women drivers have heads peeking out from just above the dashboard.”
Now that I am in the category of senior citizen myself, I should hold disdain for such an ageist remark. But I’m tall and I’d have to shrink a lot to be just above the dashboard.
And, of course…
It would be, but the metric is fatalities. And Boston, like other old cities, is so congested that fatality speeds are hard to achieve. But Boston drivers are both aggressive and insane, but at lower speeds.
Just another click bait article with a bogus metric, like “Best Retirement Cities” and the like.
I was told never to use turn signals in Boston. It only tells the other drivers where to cut you off . . .
One time while driving south from Sonoma county down to San Francisco, drivers were weaving around like crazy. Only one steady driver was centered in his lane and driving at a reasonable speed given the amount traffic on the road. (I’d say about 70mh.)
I said to my co pilot: Lets catch up to the good driver and see who he is!
I caught up to his vehicle and there in the driver’s seat sat a large dude, using his knees to steer his car, while he drank a Big Gulp and managed to shovel fries and a burger into his mouth, his eyes glued to the food and not on the road.
That guy had really well trained knees! Or else God was his co pilot.
I noticed the same thing in Los Angeles about 25 to 30 years ago. A resident told me that everybody there was afraid of road rage incidents and hence tried not to enrage other drivers.
Here in Cleveland, motorists rarely signal when they turn, change lanes, or enter highways. If you do signal a lane change, that alerts the other driver that you are going to get ahead of him, so he will speed-up in order to foil your plan!
Something similar was said to me when we rented a car in Panama: using the turn signals will let everyone know you’re a foreigner.
And hence a good choice for kidnapping…
The drivers that really worry me are the little old ladies. The kind of people who are so locked into their own world that they don’t notice the obvious things. Hold on a second, lemme pull up an intersection on Google Maps.
https://www.google.com/maps/@44.8214562,-91.467461,159m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
That’s River Prairie Drive as it becomes Birch Street in Eau Claire. I was travelling west. You’ve got a two lane road up until the stop light, then after the light you’ve got three white dashes of space before the right lane ends and you’re down to one lane. (Really they need to bite the bullet and build the road out to two lanes all through town, but I can understand how that’s difficult.) The other day I was stopped at the red light, stuck in the right lane.
Now, your objective from that position is to merge into the traffic in the left lane without crashing, and to do so quickly. You can either drag race with the guy in the left lane and get out ahead, or you can try and slide in politely behind him. The best option depends strongly on what he does. The light changes; the guy on my left takes off at a decent clip; he’s trying to let me in behind. That’s fine. I’ve got my blinker on and …
The little old lady behind him, she sees plenty of space up ahead and speeds up to get into it. She’s quite clearly camping in my blind spot, and forcing me to make a snap decision between unpleasant options. She finally noticed me (one of the few times in my life I had my blinker on for the textbook five seconds before a lane change) and allowed me to merge. But it could have gone badly from there.
Here’s the point: We three were all stopped at the same stoplight. She should have known I was there, and be looking for a way to safely let me merge. It’s not just that she was oblivious, it’s that she had the time to sit and evaluate the situation beforehand, to forsee the difficulty, and after that was still oblivious. That’s the mark of a lousy driver.
True, but a lot of women – and some men too, but mostly women – are like that long before they get old. Maybe you don’t notice because you’re noticing other qualities besides their driving. :-)
No, I’m pretty sure I can’t see their shoes way down there on the pedals and all.