QOTD: How's Your City Driving?
Two days ago we wrote about a study that tried to ascertain which cities had the best -- and worst -- drivers.
We also, of course, called out all the caveats involved.
The natural question is, how are the drivers where you live?
In my city, Chicago, it's a mixed bag. I see people driving too slow or too fast every day, people taking too long to make a right turn, people cutting others off...pretty much every aspect of bad driving.
Yet I've been in scarier places. Nashville and suburban Baltimore seem to feature the worst drivers I've seen, and L.A. is rough, too. NYC drivers are aggressive and selfish, though not necessarily bad.
On the other hand, I've seen good behavior in rural Michigan and rural central Tennessee.
Go ahead and sound off below.
[Image: David Tadevosian/Shutterstock.com]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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I refuse to comment until Tassos comments.
As crazy as the NE/Mid-Atlantic I-95 corridor drivers can be, for the most part they pay attention and there aren't too many stupid games. I think at times it's just too crowded for that stuff.
I've lived all over the US and the worst drivers are in parts of the Midwest. As I've mentioned before, Ohio drivers have ZERO lane discipline when it comes to cruising, merging, and exiting. And I've just seen it in this area (Louisville) where many drivers have literally no idea how to merge. I've never seen an area where drivers have no problems merging onto an interstate at 30 mph right in front of you. There are some gruesome wrecks at these merge points because it looks like drivers are just too timid to merge and speed up correctly. And the weaving and merging at cloverleaf exits (which in this day and age need to all go away) borders on comical in that no one has a bloody clue of let car merge in, you merge right to exit, and then someone repeats behind you. That way traffic moves. Not a chance here.
And for all of the ragging LA drivers get, I found them just fine. It's actually kind of funny watching them rearrange themselves like after a NASCAR caution flag once traffic eases up and they line up, speed up to 80 mph for a few miles, only to come to a dead halt again. I think they are just so used to the mess of freeways and drivers that it's kind of a "we'll get there when we get there..." kind of attitude.
Chicago at night is crazy traveling in and out from the 'burbs. Taking the Ike back home around midnight and you'll see racers swerving by at 100mph plus. Dangerous enough we rarely go down there anymore. I plan my city trips between 9:30AM and back out by 1PM to miss the worst traffic.
When we move out of the city (Greater Toronto Area) the predominant reason will be getting away from the traffic. A few weeks ago, my nephew was rear ended. When he got out of his car and walked back to the SUV that hit him, the SUV driver waited and then drove off. My nephew was not 'quick enough' to get the license plate, but called the police who explained that they get about two dozen such incidents every day.
Toronto used to be called 'New York City run by the Swiss'. It is now closer to the NYC of the 1970's-80's in regards to traffic laws.