[doggiebus]

This was interesting, I wonder why so many Florida cities ranked so high? I am a little surprised by the #1 ranking of Ft. Lauderdale.
15 Dangerous Cities for Driving - Yahoo! Autos

[psulions2007]

Originally Posted by doggiebus

This was interesting, I wonder why so many Florida cities ranked so high? I am a little surprised by the #1 ranking of Ft. Lauderdale.
15 Dangerous Cities for Driving - Yahoo! Autos

Orlando shouldn't be surprising at all.

People in Florida drive as if they are on a NASCAR race track. That... combined with the excessive suburban sprawl with lack of sufficient sidewalks and mass transit, plus all of the tourists that drive there, and it is a recipe for disaster.

I've driven in 40 states so far in my life. The worst two were Florida and Maryland.

[doggiebus]

I wasn't to surprised with St. Pete or Orlando either. I was surprised by Jacksonville and Ft.Lauderdale. But then someone just mentioned to me that Ft. Lauderdale has one of the most dangerous intersections in the country.

[user8]

st. pete being on there does not surprise me one bit.

[gypsychic]

Kind of surprised that Tampa wasn't on the list, but not surprised at all about so many Florida cities being bad, for all the reasons mentioned in the article. I would not have imagined Ft. Lauderdale being #1, though.

As much as I love my home state, I have to agree that this is one of the biggest negatives about living here - the bad drivers.

[Pretzelogik]

Originally Posted by doggiebus

This was interesting, I wonder why so many Florida cities ranked so high? I am a little surprised by the #1 ranking of Ft. Lauderdale.
15 Dangerous Cities for Driving - Yahoo! Autos

Whomever came up with these lists has been doing so serious tokin'.

[ChrisA70]

They should put Naples on the list, but that would be from October through Easter..... OOPS, did I say that out loud? I hate driving down here when the part timers come back to clog up the roads for a few months.....

[kyle19125]

Originally Posted by psulions2007

People in Florida drive as if they are on a NASCAR race track. That... combined with the excessive suburban sprawl with lack of sufficient sidewalks and mass transit, plus all of the tourists that drive there, and it is a recipe for disaster.

Exactly, not to mention the disconnect with using brakes. I always feel like a cat in a room full of rockers when I pull into a parking lot in the Orlando area because people don't want to slow down or stop when they're supposed to.

[FloridaHappy]

The Highway Patrol is not doing their job; if they were, we'd have so much money from tickets we wouldn't know what to do with it and it wouldn't be so dangerous to drive in this state.

As the Ocala Star Banner is so fond of pointing out, Marion County is the size of the state of Rhode Island. The Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal (traffic court) heard over 100,000 violations in 2010.

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:kaO-EC6tFJUJ:www.courts.ri.gov/Courts/rhodeislandtraffictribunal/PDF/AbouttheTrafficTribunal.pdf+rhode+island+traffic+v iolations+2010&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESggMR FRFdUKz-9O49ANgRwOzFlT_3KfWXwG-s99Nd9y9BsH-3FP1VvI3dR-pzXlamBK_YheIR_LZEw30i5lwSnSuTokpvm2GB004MyRk1yFXo SbJKPAp1NpUvFDM4mrYOCeCpa3&sig=AHIEtbTrt9nby7QSczV o78WVULjbjiM39w&pli=1

This doesn't include the people that just wrote a check and paid their tickets. These are the ones that contested the tickets. I couldn't quickly find the statistics for the total amount of tickets written in RI in 2010 which, again, is actually smaller than Marion County.

The Highway Patrol gave me statistics for 2010 for the whole state of Florida. In the whole state, "The Florida Highway Patrol utilizes marked, unmarked, and non-conventional vehicles to enforce the speed limits and other laws for both passenger and commercial truck traffic on Florida's highways. In addition to these vehicles, the patrol uses six aircraft statewide to detect speeders and aggressive drivers. As a result of these efforts, last year, FHP troopers issued 900,336 citations, 231,028 written warnings and 136,686 faulty equipment notices for violations of traffic laws in addition to investigating 206,169 motor vehicle crashes."

In the whole state, only 900,336 citations! And Florida is a darn big state. Rhode Island is 1214 square miles. Florida is 65,755 square miles. Based on the number of tickets written in Rhode Island (which, BTW, I assume has nowhere near the number of tourists as Florida since RI doesn't have DisneyWorld), the FHP should have written 5,400,000 tickets (just based on the number of contested tickets in RI, not including the ones that people just paid), and Marion County alone should have had over 100,000 tickets written. Add in the tourists zipping through and conceivably the FHP should have written double that number. We should have so much money the property tax could be discontinued.

[JM1822]

Originally Posted by FloridaHappy

The Highway Patrol is not doing their job; if they were, we'd have so much money from tickets we wouldn't know what to do with it and it wouldn't be so dangerous to drive in this state.

As the Ocala Star Banner is so fond of pointing out, Marion County is the size of the state of Rhode Island. The Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal (traffic court) heard over 100,000 violations in 2010.

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:kaO-EC6tFJUJ:www.courts.ri.gov/Courts/rhodeislandtraffictribunal/PDF/AbouttheTrafficTribunal.pdf+rhode+island+traffic+v iolations+2010&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESggMR FRFdUKz-9O49ANgRwOzFlT_3KfWXwG-s99Nd9y9BsH-3FP1VvI3dR-pzXlamBK_YheIR_LZEw30i5lwSnSuTokpvm2GB004MyRk1yFXo SbJKPAp1NpUvFDM4mrYOCeCpa3&sig=AHIEtbTrt9nby7QSczV o78WVULjbjiM39w&pli=1

This doesn't include the people that just wrote a check and paid their tickets. These are the ones that contested the tickets. I couldn't quickly find the statistics for the total amount of tickets written in RI in 2010 which, again, is actually smaller than Marion County.

The Highway Patrol gave me statistics for 2010 for the whole state of Florida. In the whole state, "The Florida Highway Patrol utilizes marked, unmarked, and non-conventional vehicles to enforce the speed limits and other laws for both passenger and commercial truck traffic on Florida's highways. In addition to these vehicles, the patrol uses six aircraft statewide to detect speeders and aggressive drivers. As a result of these efforts, last year, FHP troopers issued 900,336 citations, 231,028 written warnings and 136,686 faulty equipment notices for violations of traffic laws in addition to investigating 206,169 motor vehicle crashes."

In the whole state, only 900,336 citations! And Florida is a darn big state. Rhode Island is 1214 square miles. Florida is 65,755 square miles. Based on the number of tickets written in Rhode Island (which, BTW, I assume has nowhere near the number of tourists as Florida since RI doesn't have DisneyWorld), the FHP should have written 5,400,000 tickets (just based on the number of contested tickets in RI, not including the ones that people just paid), and Marion County alone should have had over 100,000 tickets written. Add in the tourists zipping through and conceivably the FHP should have written double that number. We should have so much money the property tax could be discontinued.

Your statistics are incorrect. You are assuming that the Florida Highway Patrol has the same staffing at the Rhode Island State Police. The Rhode Island State Police has 190 Troopers. The Florida Highway Patrol has no more than 15 Troopers assigned to Marion County, which, as you mentioned, is the same size as Rhode Island. And Marion County is a busy place to be a Trooper because there are a ton of crashes there. Being busy AND shorthanded doesn't leave much time to be out writing tickets.

The entire state of Florida, with the 4th highest population in the U.S., only has about 1500 Troopers to provide 24 hour coverage from Pensacola to Key West. Over the last few years, FHP's manpower has been cut by a couple hundred positions due to budget cuts. That means less time for proactive enforcement, and more time on calls for service.

And the stats you listed only accounted for the number of citations issued by Troopers. There are a lot of other police agencies in Florida that write tickets.