Bad Drivers
 

We all know on an instinctive level that drivers from other states drive poorly.

As a Pennsylvania driver, I am well aware that people from New Jersey and Maryland bribed someone to pass their licensing exams, and I am prepared to deal with them passing on the right, making a right hand turn from the left hand lane, and generally behaving badly.

I was wondering what the experience of folks from other states was ... who do you blame for causing a moving roadway hazard on your interstates?

here in arizona it is a nightmare. we have people from all over the country and each region has different accepted driving methods, such as CA's lane change method - turn signal flashes 3 times, move without looking because they assume everyone saw their flasher and moved. folks from mexico drive in the left hand lane at any speed they decide, ignoring traffic piling up behind them.

anyway - you probably see we have everyone's bad habits coming together to create a wonderful adventure we call arizona traffic.

Is it possible they are driving badly because they are unfamiliar with the area? They are looking for and seeing signs at the last minute, leaving them with the option of veering across lanes of traffic to get their turn, or missing thier turn and getting really lost.

I'm a better driver in my own neck of the woods than in some strange city.

Re: Bad Drivers
 

I have to disagree... as a group PA drivers are just as bad in my experience. I have many driving-related peeves, so I'll only share a couple.

1. Driving too slowly. I am not a fast driver. (This is all contextual--it depends on the road, the conditions, and what everybody else is doing. For example, on Lincoln Drive during rush hour, I'm usually doing 40-45 in a posted 25 zone, because, based on what the other traffic is doing, running at 25 is acually less safe.) So when I run into (figuratively speaking) somebody whom I feel is driving too slow, they're probably going REALLY FUCKING SLOW.

2. Stay in your damn lane. Enough said. Corollary: use the turning lanes properly. My favorite example of this is the turn from northbound Lincoln Drive onto Mt. Pleasant. There are individual lanes to turn left, go straight, and turn right. For some reason approximately half the people making right turns are unable to fathom that they need to be COMPLETELY in the right turn lane.

3. If you're backing up, you really do need to look and see if there's a person and/or car behind you. That goes double for parking lots.

4. Useless passing & indiscriminate lane changing: these only slow traffic down when enough people start doing them. If you are behind a slowpoke who is going considerably slower than everybody else, feel free to pass. But guess what? If everybody in the right lane is doing about 45 (for example), and everybody in the left lane is doing about 45, you're just going to have to suck it up and go about 45. No amount of weaving and hair-splitting lane changes on a dime will get you there any faster.

I, of course, am a perfect driver who is a joy for other people to share hte road with. :angel:

In Utah, it's not the drivers from other states who create a roadway menace, but the locals. It's mostly just a general unpredictable stupidity a work, and it makes even a short journey a bit like tiptoeing through a minefield.

Firstly, there is a relatively large number of elderly drivers on the roads. Secondly, the ratio of Prozac-infused soccer moms in minivans is approaching 1:1 at an alarming rate.

When entering a freeway (65-75 MPH), people around here don't accelerate beyond 40 MPH until they are on the freeway itself. The left lane is always littered with slow-movers. In the city, if someone misses a turn, they'll stop in traffic, blocking a dozen other cars, calmly waiting to turn illegally, and avoid the 30 seconds it would require to correct the mis-navigation at the next block. 4-way stops are a fascinating mystery to these people. If you try and pass someone, even if they have been cruising under the speed limit for several miles, they will accelerate once you are alongside them, and try to prevent your passing. Once the passing lane is gone, they will decellerate to their previous speed. Similarly, if you signal to get in front of someone, even if you have plenty of room, they will speed up and close the gap.

I wish I could say that these were the exceptions rather than the norm around here. I also wish I had a solid gold house and a rocket car. But we can't have everything.

Don't you also, like Florida, get an overly large percentage of the nation's old people who shouldn't be driving because they can't see over the steering wheel?

In Austin it's most popular to blame immigrants from Mexico (they drive so slowly because they're afraid of being pulled over and caught by the INS, don't you know), California, Houston and Dallas.

Austinites in general are the WORST rubberneckers I have ever seen, though.

I'm a jersey driver who just got his lisence. And ghoddamnit, if youre in my way on Rt. 1, youre gonna know it. :mad:

Try riding, the urge to cause some people serious bodily harm grows quickly.

One of the reasons I hate living in Jersey. Not a single good place to ride.

Thing is, though, when youre looking around to see whats happening, its pretty damn easy to not see a motorcycle, but see the huge truck behind it. Buy youre right, i think its 50/50 with people being inconsiderate and just not noticing them.

Rotten traffic signs are another pet peeve of mine. (Most new signs are getting better, and the practice of having the street sign hung in the middle of the intersection where possible is a great one. But some of the signage around Delaware County seems designed on the premise of "if you don't know where you're going, we don't want you here." Which is probably true in many communities.) But it doesn't matter how lost people are, they shouldn't do things in traffic that can get themselves &/or other people killed.

Re: Bad Drivers
 

Funny you mention Maryland (my home state). I think that PA drivers are horrible. They speed like their life depended on it on every major highway, they do rolling stops at stop signs and jump red lights (oooo, can't WAIT for those red light cameras..baaahahah), and love to cut you off. Sheesh! Didn't have that problem in MD, that's for sure.

i'm talking about people that live in arizona, now. no one is from here, everyone moves here from out of state and bring there regionally accepted practices with them. i liken it to an accent. it's pretty easy to pick out where some drivers are from.

i try not to pick on the elderly, but yes. with our freeway system, more than half of any drive in the city can be done on the freeway. when you are clipping along at 65-70 and come up behind granny doing 45-50, it is not a good thing.

I have driven all over the country and in my opinion, Boston drivers are the worst. They all drive as though they are the only car in the state.

Re: Motorcycles: Ride as though you have a fully functional cloaking device aboard and you'll be all right. As long as you assume that the cagers can't see you and adjust your habits accordingly, you'll get there alive. I have had drivers turn into me and only by dint of fancy riding tricks fit for the circus did I get out alive, but I WAS able to bang on her hood as I escaped...I was THAT close. And the banging was what alerted her to the fact that there was a motorcycle in front of her!

Florida does indeed have a high proportion of elderly drivers that use a periscope to see over the wheel. I saw one once that appeared to have NO driver, moving at no more than 15 mph, weaving, and paying no attention to signs. No one seemed to take particular notice of this and simply drove around the Caddy in question. I found out later that there was indeed no driver...it slipped into gear at a gas station and drove itself nearly four miles before wandering into a ditch and finally coming to a stop. Reminds me of the old stories of a horse bringing it's passed out rider (or dead rider in some) home from a distance without direction.

Brian

Boston is #1. I've had a couple people comment that I drive differently there. You have to in order to survive.
I quit riding motorcycles because it's just too damn dangerous now, between the condition of the roads, and people buttoned up in their cocoons on wheels, Hell, they don't even hear police sirens right behind them.
PA ranks #2 right behind FL in Social Security checks and probably elderly drivers.;)

In St. Louis, Illinois drivers were pretty bad, but the elderly and those with handicapped plates were particularly atrocious.

In the MD suburbs of DC, the people with the Icthuses on their cars were horrible. And drivers from the District itself.

Here, the Jersey drivers are a tad worse than PA drivers, but I would say that city drivers are the worst (though you won't be able to distinguish city drivers from suburban drivers after this year).

a huge pet peeve of mine is when your entering the freeway behind someone who doesn't speed up to get on the freeway. it's a freeway for crying out loud!!! speed up, or we're gonna get run over by an 18-wheeler or wind up on the receiving end of some motor-mouthed jackass with a gun stewing up on all his built up road rage! road rage is a HUGE problem here.

According to the bicyclist in Zodiac by Neal Stephenson, while on a long ride through the country, explaining why he wouldn't wear bright flourescent clothing: "If they can see you, then you're already dead."

One of my personal rules of thumb is that people who drive Volvos do so because they need the crash protection equipment.

Oh man, if you want adventure on the highway, come to "Colorful Colorado." Just nothing beats "ma and pa Kettle" from Kansas (or Texas) driving their monster RV over one of Colorado's mountain roads. The moment they notice they're on a road grade of over 1.5% they freeze. Its 25mph from then on because they're in the MOUNTAINS, and it sure don't look like Kansas to them. Now, most of the roads in Colorado are two lane highways with the exception of I-25 and I-70, so you ARE going to meet "Ma and Pa" on a road near you - "meet" as in glimpsing the top of their RV 20 cars ahead of you as they force everyone to travel 25mph across open country on highway 160 or 50. Sooner or later "Ma and Pa" will encounter that most dreaded of Colorado phenomena - the raindrop! ACK! We're in the mountains and a raindrop hit our windshield and I bet it was really a snowflake and you know what happened to the Donner party (who cares that they were in California?), so NOW we're all cruising along at 15mph just to be on the safe side, don't you know?

"Ma and Pa" have inspired me to feats of highway daring and adrenelin rushes inspired by a combination of fear and rage as I finally pull out of the parade and pass 15 cars at once on a blind curve with no guardrails and 1,000 foot drop off's on either side. Hell, even death is preferable to even one more mile of this! On the next blind curve I pass the final 5 cars including Ma and Pa in their RV and I turn round in the driver's seat to flip them the bird and pull back into my lane just in time to avoid annilation by a semi going 70 mph in the other lane. I then spend the rest of my drive taking mountain curves at 80 mph, glorying in my freedom. AS for the rest of you, please vacation somewhere else. You REALLY don't want to take the chance of encountering ME on the road.;)

The worst drivers I have ever encountered were in Italy. And they have the crashes to prove it. Example: on a 2 lane road leaving the montains on a Sunday afternoon, a car is passing us on the left when another car starts to pass him, and on the paved shoulder on the far left, a motorcycle proceeds to pass all of us! They just assume that no one is driving into the mountains on a Sunday afternoon so that the road is all theirs.

I have also seen some really dangerous moves by speeding trucks on 81 and on the turnpike in western PA.

And I can agree with the D.C. area drivers who are into that high speed lane changing. I've never seen them use a turn signal however. And in Boston, I thought I was not going to make it one rainy night with poor visibility with everyone speeding as usual and having to merge onto the highway from the left. The rain was pouring onto the mirrors so that it was really hard to judge the distance. I remember thinking that the Italians get away with it .

As far as cities, Boston has the worst drivers I've ever seen. They drive like a pack of starving misquitos. Philly wasn't all that bad and I actually thought New Yorkers drove pretty well. The city with best drivers I've seen though is Atlanta.

But the distinction of the Worst Drivers On Planet Earth belongs to the Chinese with no one close enough to qualify for "distant second."

I left out foreign drivers because their road rules are different than ours and not everyone has had or will ever have the heart-stopping adventure that is driving in a foreign country.

I've done it. In Italy, Egypt, Spain, US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Bahamas and Bahrain. Italy is indeed scary, can't speak for China.

Brian

Originally posted by BrianR I was talking about San Francisco. :)

Also, after re-reviewing this thread, it looks like Boston got three first-place votes for the worst drivers in America.

Make that four. Boston drivers are amazing, they seriously don't think the basic laws of physics apply if you're wearing a seatbelt. It's bad enough in Boston but apparently through some misguided Federalism Mass drivers are allowed to drive on NY and PA roads.

Another Boston vote here. I was commuting up to Tewksbury, MA every week for six months last year. I took little puddlehoppers from Trenton to Bedford to avoid flying into Logan and dealing with Baaah-stan traffic.

Thank god that's over.

- Pie

You know, I've been told this exact thing by some of the people who work here with me (native Austinites).

In Missouri, we blame the Kansans (mostly those from Johnson County - one of the wealthiest counties in the US - because their giant SUVs and luxury cars take up too much space, and are operated by people with some sort of sense of entitlement).

In Kansas, people just tend to look around and go, "Wha' Hoppened?"

I grew up in Vegas, and all I've got to say is it's full of old retired people, 24-hour alcohol, tourists who get drunk and walk right into the street, and a freeway system that was designed for a maximum of 300,000 people when they've got well over 1.5 million now.

The people in Vegas and LA lose thier minds when it rains.

But the very worst drivers I've ever seen are from Oklahoma.

Worst drivers tailgate. They have not a clue why the car in front is going so slow. So they get angry, tailgate closer, and only end up going slower. If you cannot see where the rear wheels touch the road when driving or stopped behind another vehicle, then you are tailgating agressively - and don't have a clue as to what a bad driver really is.

I agree with your sentiment, but following distance does depend on speed. The slower traffic is going, the closer you can get to the car in front of you without compromising safety.

Yeah, in the case of "ma and Pa Kettle" in their RV that I cited above, 3 inches is a nice safe following distance.:D

tw please see traffic waves thread.

http://cellar.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6044