[Spring Hillian]

With defensive driving and keeping your head out of your arse you can safely drive anywhere.

[smarino]

EVERYTHING contributes to our plethora of suicidal and homicidal drivers. There's multiple reasons why Florida leads the nation in pedestrian and cyclist deaths, along w/ people who crash and drown in their cars. I am pretty skeered riding my bike, and use the bus a lot more often that anywhere else we've lived. Thank goodness my particular city has good public transportation. These are hands down the deadliest drivers I have ever seen. It doesn't help that the cops don't want to run tourists away, and often cite people for small charges when other areas would have them coming up for negligent homicide or worse. Never saw so many hit and runs anywhere else either. They should pull someone's license for life for doing that.

[Enigma777]

Originally Posted by ExNooYawk2

In many threads where the discussion is the 'Best of...' and 'Worse of...' in Florida, there are frequent mentions of 'bad drivers'. I don't live in Florida at present but am considering a move in the future, which is why I'm poking around on the forums.

Florida is known for its large number of retirees. Without wanting to start a conflagration on the level of WW3, I am wondering if hearing loss contributes to some of the problems drivers face. There don't seem to be any limits on hearing-impaired drivers anywhere; visually-impaired yes. A friend of mine told me that her husband is almost completely deaf, yet drives everywhere. She said it was 'scary'.

My question is, how can a driver be considered a 'safe driver' if the crucial auditory sense is not working? Or is it possible to drive safely when you can't hear anything?

I see people with Ipod earbuds driving all the time. They are not old.

Worry more about the ones who cannot see, have no peripheral vision, cannot judge how close a car is before pulling out right in front of it, who have incredibly slow reaction time and who cannot really turn their heads due to arthritic problems in their necks.

And I know for a fact, an 85-year-old who is disabled and can barely lift his head or turn it will be given a driver's license that is good for 8 years. The people who work in the DMV are also very old and seem to have no common sense whatsoever.

[Jimrob1]

Originally Posted by smarino

EVERYTHING contributes to our plethora of suicidal and homicidal drivers. There's multiple reasons why Florida leads the nation in pedestrian and cyclist deaths, along w/ people who crash and drown in their cars. I am pretty skeered riding my bike, and use the bus a lot more often that I ever have. Thank goodness my particular city has good public transportation.

I'm doing the same taking the bus quite alot. Of course no one in Lakeland understands why anyone would take a bus. Pretty sad I think. Yes most definitely there are reasons why driving is so bad here. It is terrifying to walk here, especially crossing wide surface streets. I do walk alot here. I can't let the ignorance here impact my life here. I want and need to walk. I do think the state needs to grow up and take responsibility. Crack down on the driver's here. Instead of making it so obvious. Only the revenue from traffic cameras tickets seems to be important to this state. Driving here is very dangerous. I actually find driving in LA easier. Perhaps because traffic flows better, and much better fwy and surface Street system.

[BucFan]

I watched a woman almost get hit by a car while she was walking across the street with her phone plastered to her ear......no lie, later in the day, I had to avoid the same phone lady. I think she's on a death wish with that phone.

I spend a lot of time in ST Pete and take my time going through downtown intersections as I've seen skateboarders, pedestrians, bicyclists, and chairscooters all going against red lights. Nearly hit a motorscooter. Opened my window and asked him if he was trying to get killed. I think he was under the influence of some sort of pain med and his judgement was impaired.

The bike fatality rate is skewed since year round we have biking weather. Other places you can't ride for half the year.

St Pete is trying to make the roads safe for bikes, but drivers aren't too obliging from what I hear from the bikers.

[Famalam]

Originally Posted by smarino

EVERYTHING contributes to our plethora of suicidal and homicidal drivers. There's multiple reasons why Florida leads the nation in pedestrian and cyclist deaths, along w/ people who crash and drown in their cars. I am pretty skeered riding my bike, and use the bus a lot more often that anywhere else we've lived. Thank goodness my particular city has good public transportation. These are hands down the deadliest drivers I have ever seen. It doesn't help that the cops don't want to run tourists away, and often cite people for small charges when other areas would have them coming up for negligent homicide or worse. Never saw so many hit and runs anywhere else either. They should pull someone's license for life for doing that.

Alot of the hit and runs are due to the fact that 1/4 drivers on the road are UNINSURED. Thats right if you are insured, next time you stop at a red light in FL and see three other cars, one of those statistically will be uninsured EVERYTIME. Let that one sink in for a minute.

[Jimrob1]

Originally Posted by Famalam

Alot of the hit and runs are due to the fact that 1/4 drivers on the road are UNINSURED. Thats right if you are insured, next time you stop at a red light in FL and see three other cars, one of those statistically will be uninsured EVERYTIME. Let that one sink in for a minute.

I'm trying to understand when people canx their insurance. Why does this state not require the ins CO, to notify the motor vehicle people.? That's what other states do to deal with this problem. In Massachusetts when the ins is canx, the registration is canx and the plate turned into the DMV. Threre is no excuse for Fla to allow this to go on. It is part of the reason why ins is so high here. Why should we be paying insurance, because people are driving illegally. When an easy fix could be put in place. What kind of a population allows a state to operate like this?

[OpinionInOcala]

In my experience it's a confluence of many factors (or at least their combined pervasiveness) that make for dangerous outings:

• Roadway and stoplight design that lends itself to creating dangerous situations.
  • Lots of highways, for example, with medians that have gaps for turning purposes but either a shortage of or complete lack of actual turning lanes for such.
  • Stoplights at busy intersections that last only five or less seconds; especially stoplights with turning arrows.
  • Outside of big city areas, counties are quick to approve huge planned communities and shopping centers without due consideration of their impact upon existing traffic patterns (read: adding hundreds/thousands of homes along one and two-lane, 45+mph State and County roads). This creates not only congestion, but road rage situations as there are folks who frequently travel at 10-30mph [under] the speed limit.
• A significant increase in the number of unfamiliar drivers during holiday, summer, and winter breaks; also during snowbird season in general. Tourist-heavy destinations can expect problems virtually all year.
• Entitled transplants and wealthy locals who believe they're owed the right of way because they drive a luxury auto or tow a horse trailer.
  • They'll even try to run pedestrians over in parking lots and they often take up multiple spaces when parking.
• Aggressive, undereducated natives.
• Foreign transplants, legal and otherwise -- largely spanish-speaking -- and their second and third-generation offspring who refuse to fully assimilate.
  • No offense intended, but the ones with the little Puerto Rican flag hanging from the rear-view mirror tend to be reliably poor drivers.
• In areas with a significant retirement-aged population: error-prone and oblivious seniors.
• Careless and inexperienced young drivers due to Florida's ridiculously lax licensing requirements coupled with questionable education quality and pervasively negative social culture.
  • Young FL drivers make up 7% of the driving population but are involved in 25% of accidents.
• Oblivious and error-prone senior citizens, especially in communities with significant densities of retirement-aged (and up) residents.
• Distracted driving.
• Inadequate and selective enforcement of existing traffic laws.
  • Additionally, a 'good old boys club' law enforcement community that frequently violates traffic laws, thereby encouraging bad driving behaviors on the part of the general citizenry.
• Under-reported crime stats.
  • Since I know some will take umbrage to this bullet, I'll concede in advance that I have only anecdotal evidence to support this, albeit such anecdotal evidence is derived from nearly a decade of business and social relationships with a fair number of law enforcement agencies and staff.
• In Florida, 25% of all drivers are uninsured. That's millions of drivers operating a motor vehicle who have no business doing so as a matter of law.
• Florida is a/the leader insofar as auto accident related fraud (among many other types of fraud) is concerned.

[StreetSmarts]

Originally Posted by Majami

The only thing those 4 cities have in common is retirees (not sure about Jacksonville). So I guess the high percentage of older folks is the contributory problem, not immigrants.

False.

[StreetSmarts]

Originally Posted by PDF

I'm simply discussing the topic at hand. That isn't being dramatic.

Ur right. Majami is ignorant if he thinks it's a cake walk driving in S Fla of all places. No offense Majami but that's just ridiculous.