It’s just one of the rules of life; the bad drivers are always people who live elsewhere.
Confused driving is, disproportionately speaking, the mark of a person who’s not from the area. Safe and predictable driving is to a large part a product of planning ahead; you don’t realize just how much planning you do on roads you’re familiar with in terms of making early lane changes, adjusting your speed, stuff like that. Tourists can’t plan ahead because they don’t know where they’re going. The thing is. if they’re from another part of your state/province, you just assume they’re an idiot. If they’re from another place entirely, you’re likelier to notice, incurring confirmation bias.
The moron who nearly hit me today had Ontario plates so I just assumed he was a moron, but he might also have been a rube from some rural part of Ontario confused by the sheer volume of horseless carriages we have here, or the fact that soime roads are paved. However, if he’d had New York plates I would have thought what shitty drivers Buffalo keeps sending us.
Some time ago, I drove to Ontario. My Alberta plates (actually, “plate,” because we only have a rear plate) served to keep most Ontario drivers away from me.
The ironic part is that I am originally from Ontario, and have driven in and around Toronto many, many, times. I know where I’m going, I know what lanes to get into on the freeways in order to make my exit. But I had this “force field” around me, as an out-of-town driver. It was the easiest rush-hour trip I’ve ever made in Toronto!
I’m not 100% sure, but I get the feeling the use of the term “suicide lane” for the shared-left-turn lanes migrated over from the variable-one-way lanes. We have the variable one-way lanes on E. Houston St., approaching the Freeman Coliseum and AT&T Center. The direction of the lane is indicated by illuminated signs over each lane which show either a red “X” or a downward-pointing green arrow.
Example: enter this address in Google Maps: 2219 East Houston Street, San Antonio, Texas. Click on “street view”. Use the left/right/forward/back/up/down navigation tools. You’ll see that E. Houston normally runs two lanes east-bound and one west-bound. The lane-changer sign’s base pole is located on the south side of the street, with a cross-bar arching over it. The signs change so that traffic leaving the coliseum area can flow more easily.
Vancouver area checking in. There are plenty of left turn lanes all over the place. However, as a transplant, when I first moved here I was pretty horrified by the driving practices.
Dedicated one direction left turn lanes are common as dirt up here. Suicide lanes much less so. In fact, the first time I encountered one in rural Nevada, I thought it was a painted-on divider / median for emergency stopping only. I clued in after I saw people using it as a turning lane. Perhaps the people you saw made the same mistake?