Why are Front Range drivers so terrible? (Denver, Colorado Springs: transplants, credit)

[new2colo]

The constant disregard of the speed limit (slow or fast), speeding up and slowing down and vice versa on the freeway, never using turn signals, blatantly running red lights, speeding up and slowing, cutting people off, aggressive driving where the environment warrants none. These are all behaviors that I've witnessed in the Front Range. Why are drivers here, for the most part, so terrible?

I know that the 55 MPH speed limit on Denver area freeways is asinine to the point that almost everyone goes well over the speed limit, but I am talking about people going 90+ on the 75 MPH portions of I-25 north of the metro area. I am also talking about the drivers who are going 60 MPH in the passing lane on that same portion of the freeway. Why? It doesn't make any sense.

What's with the people on the freeways here who pass you and then slow down to a speed slower than you were traveling forcing you to pass them? What's with those same people speeding up when you try to pass them forcing you to either reduce your speed or speed up way faster than you were already traveling to get back in your lane?

What's with people passing you on the freeway and cutting five feet in front you with no turn signal when there is plenty of room ahead for them to safely pass you?

What's with people failing to realize how stop signs work by completely running them or going out of turn?

What's with people running up on your bumper at a stop light if you sit there more than half a second after the light turns green?

Also, what's with the red light running? It's seems that I almost see a car get t-boned on a daily basis making a left hand turn after the turn arrow has clearly gone out.

What's with the extreme speeding through work zones?

Honestly, the Front Range (including Denver) is not to the point in which people need to start driving like they're in a high-stress, high-pace environment. I am from Las Vegas. I have seen terrible drivers, but never such a high concentration of clueless zombies. I will not accept native Coloradans blaming the poor driving on transplants, as Las Vegas has a greater percentage of transplants than the Front Rnage without these ridiculous offenses.

[vegaspilgrim]

Go to ANY state or city forum on this website, and you'll find threads of people complaining about how bad the drivers are.

From my anecdoctal experiences, driving around Las Vegas, even with no snow and ice, is scarier than driving around Denver.

I think the people are the most critical of other drivers on the road to the point of working themselves up into an angry frenzy all the time are themselves the worst drivers out there.

[Pretzelogik]

Here is the deal....you move to a new city...then you say...why and how did those moron drivers follow me here?

[jazzlover]

Aside from metro driver stupidity and road rage, of which there is plenty, I ascribe it to two main factors:

1. It is way too easy to get and keep a driver's license in Colorado. You have to be real idiot or a habitual drunk to lose your license in this state--and even then, you probably won't be without it for long. Driver's license testing is too lax, and driver's education for young drivers is inadequate.

2. Lack of enforcement. I give law enforcement credit--they are trying, but law enforcement, especially the State Patrol, is badly undermanned. The population of Colorado has more than doubled in the last 30 years, but the number of State Troopers has barely grown at all.

As a native Coloradan, I freely admit that the lack of driving courtesy in this state--especially in the metro areas--is a disgrace. When I lived in Wyoming and I would see some driver doing some "stupid human trick" on the highways there, it was almost always a "greenie" (as Wyomingites call Coloradans because of the license plates). I loathe driving on the Front Range with the fools and idiots there, to the point that I now avoid going there if I possibly can. In decades of living in rural Colorado back when license plates were county-coded, if I saw some idiot driver in the rural areas of the state, about three-quarters of the time it would be a car with metro Denver or Colorado Springs plates. Even my buddies on the State Patrol would comment about that.

[suzco]

OP (new2colo) also complains about how Colorado law enforcement enforces traffic laws, in this post, in this thread:

Originally Posted by new2colo

Unfair ticketing. Accusing people of going faster than they really were traveling, accusing people of aggressive behavior toward them when there was no aggressive behavior displayed, stopping people for going 5 MPH over the speed limit... that sort of harrassment.

[Neditate]

Originally Posted by Pretzelogik

Here is the deal....you move to a new city...then you say...why and how did those moron drivers follow me here?

Exactly! My theory is that almost everyone here came from somewhere else. Every place I've lived has different "styles" of driving. CO is a mishmash of all of them. When I drive in TX it's freaky how closely people tailgate; they're almost in my backseat. I learned to drive in WI and when I visit there I definitely notice how differently people drive. I hardly ever drive in southern CA because it scares me half to death - and there are lots of Californians here.

[wanneroo]

I think up until the 1990's, Coloradans were nice drivers, but then the Californians started moving in en masse and they brought their bad habits with them.

If you want to see bad driving, on friday night in the winter, on I-70 to Summit County, everyone on there is in a race to see who can get to the resort first. I used to call them the "Friday Night Maniacs".

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by wanneroo

... If you want to see bad driving, on friday night in the winter, on I-70 to Summit County, everyone on there is in a race to see who can get to the resort first. I used to call them the "Friday Night Maniacs".

Friday's seem to be "stupid driving day" in most every large city. I saw it in DC for over 30 years. It starts on Friday morning commute, even at my drive time of 5:30AM, they had an attitude of "it's Friday, it's the weekend, I'm gonna get drunk and get laid tonight, yipeeeee." It was worse on Friday night, they'd drive like the Soviet Army was hot on their ass or something. IMO the cause of this is crowding, pure and simple; studies have shown that when rats are crowded into a lab cage they get both aggressive and territorial. Same for people; when I was out on the wide open roads, people signaled their lane changes and were courteous, but the closer I got to urban areas, the more territorial and aggressive the drivers got.

[new2colo]

Hmm, me thinks that some of the people responding to my post are the drivers who I'm talking about. I have lived in multiple locations and have yet to see the concentration of bad drivers that I see here.

[jazzlover]

Quite true, Mike. When I drive in the very rural parts of the Rocky Mountain West, including some places in Colorado, you will get the "single finger" wave when you meet someone on the road--this is the nice one, just a raised index finger from the steering wheel. Get to the metro areas and it becomes the middle finger insult.

You know you are in the rural Rocky Mountain West when you come up to two pickups going opposite directions on the county road and the drivers have stopped to talk to one another. When you pull up, they both wave to you, while they complete their conversation. They have your way blocked for a minute, but you are OK with that. Try that in the metro hellholes and see what happens.

Another way you tell the rural folks from city-slickers is when either gets stopped in rural Colorado by a flagman for road construction. The city folks usually sit in their cars, windows rolled up, and fume about the delay. The rural folks will frequently strike up a conversation with the flagman while waiting. If the delay is long enough, some of the folks (usually the rural ones) will get out of their cars and have a little informal roadside chat with one another while waiting.

Still occasionally used in rural road construction areas where one-way traffic through the construction is necessary (though flagpersons with radios have largely replaced the practice) is the old "baton" system. The driver of the last car going through one-way would be given a stick (and that was usually about all it was) to carry through to the flagman at the other side of the construction zone. The flagman would know that the person carrying the stick was the last car coming from the opposite direction. He would then let his traffic go through, stopping the last car to give that driver the stick to take back to the other end of the construction zone. A very simple system that worked quite well.