I’ve only been to LA once, and maybe I caught the city on a good few days, but the driving there wasn’t at all bad. Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio / Austin (for traffic purposes it’s one big city connected by an especially nasty section of I-35) are all a lot worse. LA was about as challenging as my hometown of Corpus Christi.
I have driven in all 50 states and every major city except San Diego.
While I agree they all have their share of rude, aggressive drivers, I found the density of traffic itself to be more of a factor there than the bad driving alone.
What you need to take into account is that I live and work in southeastern Wisconsin. So 90% or more of the “out of state” drivers I observe and pull over are from Illinois. Also, I find myself down in the flatlands at least twice a month and observed them on their own turf. I don’t even know if the ISP enforces speed limits. I’ve never seen them do it. I mean it. In 62 years of life I have never seen a speed set up on an Illinois freeway.
Wisconsin is not a member of the National Drivers License Compact. So many times an Ill-annoy driver won’t have a cite show up on their record. No demerit points, no insurance premium increase. Just pay the fine and it’s done. Good incentive to drive like a nut.
Can’t tell you how many of them have this shocked look on their face when they get pulled over going 68 in a 55. (I don’t have a 70 zone in my jurisdiction).
I have driven motorbikes in India and Indonesia, which have similar traffic styles. As you say, it is a dance… but more of a crowded rave party type dance. Totally scary but incredibly fluid.
A friend who rode a motorbike in Laos was told, firmly, do not use the rear view mirrors, concentrate on what is ahead, the guys behind will manage themselves.
Though, I think this is getting off topic…
I once got stopped in notoriously corrupt Zimbabwe with my 1 year old daughter in her car seat. I was speeding, but not by too much, about 10km/h over the limit. The policeman saw my out of country plates and certainly imagined a big bribe… but when he saw my tiny daughter he was much, much softer, and let me off with a cheery wave… not even a warning.
I believe your experience, but it does surprise me, as all the times I’ve been pulled over and gotten tickets or warnings in Illinois (almost always the former), it’s been for speeds less than 15 mph over the limit on a highway. I was taught not to exceed 10% over the speed limit. (When there’s no cops about, though, traffic as a whole can fly up to 90 mph if it’s clear, as you know.) I’ve never much worried about my speed in Wisconsin. Never got a ticket there and it’s my most-visited state. Ohio, on the other hand, I have to make sure I set the cruise or I’ll get pulled over in a second.
That said, all those tickets were from about a decade to two decades ago. It does feel like while I do see cops and pulled over vehicles here in Illinois, it’s not quite as common as before. I wonder if the numbers bear this out, though. I can’t imagine any state passing up revenue like that.
The best thing about driving in Wisconsin is that, for the most part, the drivers have a Germanic sense of lane discipline. Like they actually will use only the right lane in a two-lane-in-each-direction highway except to pass.
That drives me nuts. There’s this wide open left lane, but every time the cars approach an entrance ramp, every one of them needs to pull into the left to let drivers in, and then every one of them goes back to the right, blocking access.
If they spread out over both lanes, or heck, traveled in the left, the right lane would have enough room for cars wanting to enter and exit the highway.
They do this even when there are 3 lanes, and they could travel in the middle and leave the leftmost lane open for passing.
Weird. Never noticed any issue like that. And it’s standard driving discipline in much of Europe and I feel far more predictable and stress-free than the free-for-all lanes are here in the US, where some jackass always wants to park their ass in the left lane at the speed limit (or, worse, below) and refuses to move. And I hate people passing me on the right.
It’s a complex problem. Move right except to pass, except that the right lane is varying speed because cars don’t know how to merge properly…
I’ve had people scold me on this board because I talked about cruising in the center lane, “get to the right!” My thought is in that situation, with exits and entrances, the center lane is the proper through lane (unless passing).
Here I’ve got a much trickier stretch of freeway. The left lane is an HOV lane now, but it will be the left lane in one mile. That means the center lane is the “real” left lane, so drive in the right lane? Except the right lane is going to exit in two miles…
Lotta edge effects one we get lanes beginning and ending. Not really fair to tar the steady state cruising scenario with that brush.
Whether there are 2, 3, or 10 lanes, “slower traffic keep right” would be all the rule we needed if only all drivers would follow it. And if all entrance and exit lanes were long enough that speeds could equilibrate before people needed to merge because they’re running out of lane or needed to slow in a through lane to make the exit cornering maneuver safely.
“Keep right except to pass” is the dumbed-down and two-lanes-assumed version of “slower traffic keep right”. And by providing an easy enforcement criteria for the highway patrol, it make it more practical for them to slowly, ever so slowly, teach everyone what “Keep right except to pass” means.
Of course it doesn’t help that in the USA we have 50 sets of road laws. I lived my first 30 years before I saw my first “Keep right except to pass” sign. Which I assumed just was a weird way to say “slower traffic keep right”. A nice highway patrolman disabused me of that silly notion within my first 3 months in that benighted state.
Damn right!
Yeah, ever try getting on the Arroyo Seco Pkwy in South Pas? A real skill.
Me, too.
Not since 1981. But I knew exactly where you’re talking about. I love the old Pasadena freeway and the other “fun” much-too-short ramps in/around downtown from the 1950s.
Yeah. Those curves are so much fun. I always liked it with at least a few cars to slalom around. I had a bf in the area during the 70s and 80s, so I spent a lot of hours on that stretch.
The issue with the National Drivers License Compact is that if they tell your home state you have an outstanding ticket, you have no effective way to fight it. Errors occur, and about all you can do is pay up. Overall it is a good idea, but there are issues.
I’m not sure what you mean - as far as I know you can fight the ticket just like a resident of the state where you got the ticket. . It might be inconvenient , but it can be inconvenient to fight a ticket within your home state as well - I can drive to at least parts of eight other states in less time than it takes to drive across my state.
If only, but people would still find a way to cause problems. On my commute home there are two entrances where each have a mile long merge lane. People still insist on moving into the rightmost through lane immediately, often crossing a solid white line to do so. That causes drivers in the through lane to have to slowdown, which backs up everything.
The next possible thing to the left is the HOV entrance which is 4000 feet away for one 3500 feet away for the other.
And then there are roads like Philadelphia’s Schuykill (pronounced Sure Kill) Expressway. Everyone is driving insanely fast and exits pop up with little warning; sometimes exiting from the right and sometimes from the left. I remember situations where I had to enter the expressway on the right, merge, then exit a short distance later on the left.
Black drivers are less likely to be pulled over when it’s harder to see who is driving due to darkness, but other factors (e.g., time) are held.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0858-1
No doubt due to the lack of night vision goggles in other states.
Wow! It’s nothing but wide open desert, isn’t it? Wasn’t there a time when many of those miles were “cruise at your own leisure”?
Drive or fly across the county? Usually you have to file in person. Then you have to appear in person. Then, when the case if carried over, you have to stay another day or week.
Yes, but that’s not really any different from tickets in the same state - it depends on how far away from home you got the ticket, not whether you got the ticket on the other side of a state border. I live in NYC - it’s easier for me to fight a ticket in Jersey City ( about an hour’s drive) than it is to fight one in Buffalo (about 7 hours)
My perspective is based on learning to drive in a place where all the lanes need to be used to accommodate the traffic, and there are lots of entrances and exits to the interstates. You can’t dismiss sometimes as an edge effect if there’s always an edge, your have to consider that part of standard problem.
So in my ideal, all major highways would have (at least) 3 lanes, and people who just want to cruise along would stay out of the right lane unless they have just entered the road or are preparing to exit it. And in the other lanes faster traffic would stay to the left.
Of course, in my actual day-to-day driving, there’s one two-lane road where i stay to the right so i don’t get stuck behind cars trying to make a left-hand turn, and thus i break both my rules, cruising in the right hand lane and zipping past cars in the left. But that’s the real world.