This is something I’ve debated with my friends for some time. Down here in Arizona, we have some rotten drivers. ROTTEN. But there are always stereotypes about other states, and I’m sure we love to hyperbolize how bad our own drivers are. Back in Nebraska, we always thought the Iowa drivers (Iowegians) were the worst, but we pretty much made fun of them for everything anyway.
So my question is, what do people (who have wide-ranging experience, preferrably) think is the state with the absolute worst drivers? My choice would probably have to be Texas, from the few times I have driven there. The running opinion always seemed to be California, but now that I have driven there too, I have to say that that’s completely untrue; at least California drivers have some concept about actually driving correctly in traffic, unlike sunny AZ. And don’t get me started on what happens when it rains here. :mad:
I’m sorry, but here in Boston (Massachusetts) we have cornered the market on bad drivers. And by “bad” I mean “evil” and not necessarily incompetent (although there are plenty of those around as well).
Maybe it’s all the narrow streets, but people around here are always in a hurry and will do ANYTHING to get where they are going even a second earlier than the person in front of them. If that means cutting people off, so be it. If it means going in the right lane (where there is less traffic) in order to make a left turn, that’s all right, too. If it means staying in the far left lane of a highway until the very last second, and then cutting across 4 lanes of traffic to hit your exit at 50 mph, well, welcome to Boston.
Q: Whats the definition of a “split second” in Boston?
A: The time between the light in front of you turning green and the person behind you honking his horn.
“Green means go, yellow means go faster” is our state motto.
In fact, the only thing worse than a Boston driver is a Boston pedestrian…
Come to think of it, probably the worst drivers I ever had to be around (although I never drove there) were in Paris. Sound a lot like your Boston drivers, but with fewer freeways to ease traffic.
I hate Chicago drivers. Without a doubt. I’ve known 3 people who have been hit by a car here the past year… and I almost got my kneecap shaved off by some yuppy in a BMW driving like a maniac.
I’m an Iowa native, and they are not bad drivers, just considerate of one another. They take their time and usually aren’t in a hurry to get anywhere, so a lot of people think they are too damn slow.
I’ll second (third?) Boston drivers. Seriously, there are no cars in the Boston city limits without some sort of ding or dent or scrape. It’s not an easy city in which to get around, but moronic drivers don’t help the matter.
Massachusetts drivers in general are pretty bad - and my mom’s whole side of the family is there, so I know first hand.
I grew up in Pennsylvania, and everyone there though New Jersey drivers were pretty poor too.
But now that I live in Chicago, and have a 70 mile roundtrip commute, I can safely say I have seen some of the most egregious examples of asshattery on the roads here. And mostly they seem to happen right in front of me.
Boston. I live in New York (which some might nominate for this dubious honor), and have driven in almost every large city in the US and Canada, and I can honestly say that I have never had as bad a driving experience as I had in Boston.
Well it isn’t a state but the worst drivers I ever saw were in Turkey…Paris is pretty rough and Italians drive with wild abandon! I just close my eyes…
Yep. Boston without a doubt ( and I live and drive in Los Angeles ). To be fair, I don’t think it’s a reflection on the people who live there so much as how crappy their roads are. Many of the streets are unmarked or have their signs after the street itself. I imagine anyone driving in that fair city would lose their sanity and civility in pretty short order.
Northern Californians are horrible drivers. Southern Californians are better drivers because they tend to live in their cars. Major exception is when when a couple of raindrops hit the pavement, then they totally panic and all hell breaks loose.
Recent studies have shown… and I wish they hadn’t, that the worst drivers in the WORLD are in fact from Australia.
This has been the case for at least the last 5 years.
If you’ve ever been here you may agree!!!
I don’t notice it but i’m probably immune to it.
Wherever I have to drive and there are other cars on the road, basically. The following are purely my personal observations:
I agree with ace22, California gets a bad rap on driving, probably just because there are so many people and cars there. The driving here in Colorado is a lot worse than California, and there are less cars on the road. I don’t know how they do it. California, other than the occasional super-speeder doing 120 on the 101, really didn’t seem that bad in terms of rude drivers, running red lights, etc, in the five year I lived there.
I’ve driven a fair bit in Oregon too. The only really bad drivers I saw there almost always had Washington plates (again, just my personal experience). So I don’t know if that means Washington has bad drivers, or if they just drive poorly (poorly here equals swerving lane changes, cutting people off, etc) while they’re in Portland. Otherwise I think Oregon had the nicest drivers I’ve seen (maybe it’s because of the low speed limits everywhere, I don’t know).
I’ll have to agree with the majority on New England/Boston area taking the prize nationally though.
Yup. Another Bostonian, chiming in to say we are, by far, the most “evil” drivers, as Barry put it, in this country. I honestly think we’re probably the only drivers who could handle driving in Paris or Rome. Because, we drive just like they do.
The thing is, we aren’t “bad drivers”, in the sense of crashing all the time. We actually have a surprising low accident rate. We’re just bad in the sense that driving here is about as competitive as a chariot race.
I’ve driven across most of the country, including Chicago, New York, Atlanta, most of Florida (which is where I’ve seen the second worst drivers…probably transplanted Boston natives), and almost all of Arizona. My advice for you, Ace22, is, if you come here on vacation, take cabs or stay out of the city. 'Cause you guys down there are waaaaaay too nice to each other, on the road.
We basically only have two rules of the road. They aren’t the official ones, but they’re the ones that people who’ve survived the demolition derby that is downtown Boston for any length of time follow.
It’s my road! Get the f*ck off it!
If you don’t get caught, it isn’t illegal.
Of course, pedestrians, here, are even worse, but that’s another story.
While I could believe that Australia might lead the world in a category like, say, single-car accidents per capita (there are an awful lot of empty roads in Oz), I have a hard time accepting that Australians are the world’s worst drivers overall. Have you seen how they drive in India? (And I’ve been told by people whom I trust that Nigerian drivers make the Indians look like saints…)
I’ve done a lot of driving in Boston, and I know where these comments are coming from. But Boston drivers aren’t so much bad as different – there’s really a different driving idiom there. Once you learn it (takes some time) it is reasonably predictable and you can drive there efficiently and (fairly) safely.
An example is changing lanes – Boston drivers do this a lot, their skill at it is somewhat better than average, and they mind less about being “cut off” by someone else doing this.
But having said this I’ll note that I was run off the road by a Boston driver changing lanes (my car destroyed - his insurance paid) and Boston is the only place I’ve been honked at for failing to turn left on red.
If half of what my sister tells me is true about driving in Ghana, then I think we might be on to something here. We just need someone whose driven in Nigeria or Ghana, Boston, and Australia to chime in.
Here’s an article that lists Australia as the worst country for road rage, as determined by a Gallup poll. It helpfully lists the 15 nation EU as 2nd worst at 58%, and the U.S. third worst at 56%.
