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Southern California - Los Angeles to San Diego
Southern Florida - WPB to Miami.
In the Miami forum, there is kind of an general concession that drivers here are worse, more reckless, and more disrespectful. If you search on the internet, you will find Miami generally tends to top the charts in any study or survey on reckless drivers, bad drivers, or aggressive drivers.
As someone who has lived in Los Angeles, San Diego and now Miami, I don't really see a big difference however. At the same time I rarely drive here in Miami because I live in Miami Beach, and everything I need is within a small walk from me.
So I want to hear from others, *only* people who have driven in both for some period of time to make a judgement. If you just got in a cab, please don't comment. If your brother drove in both, and is very vocal about this issue? Is he on CD? Otherwise don't comment.
I've only driven in Southern California for very limited amounts, but I grew up driving in South Florida (West Palm Beach area). Hands-down, South Florida is worse. Left turns from the far right lane? An every day occurrence. Traffic in the fast lane doing either 80 or 40? Completely normal. Light just turned red? Well, the first few seconds of the red can also be considered the last few seconds of the yellow! The times I've been in California, I've been amazed by the diligence with which drivers will yield to pedestrians. In South Florida? Truly, it's every man for himself.
South Florida---without question. They drive like they've seen Fast & Furious too many times. And really just about anywhere on I-95----I once worked in Flagler County and drove to the Daytona Airport once per week on a Friday afternoon---and it seemed like there was some terrible accident every other week. It was frightening at times.
Southern Cal---I liked how they used their blinkers to signal a lane change on the highway---if you saw the blinker you knew they were coming over...just let off the gas and let them in.
I'd say South Florida is more reckless driving but LA is more congested. With LA you really have no option to get up 80 plus whereas everytime I've been to Miami it seems like 80 is the minimum. What bus man said about turning from the far lane is very true in South Florida. In LA when the light turns red, you better wait a few seconds before going, although I didn't really see that in Florida.
It's really a national contest. I have driven all over the country for years and people don't take driving very seriously. Funny,considering how many people get killed in accidents each year. Makes terrorist deaths almost seem trivial.
South Florida---without question. They drive like they've seen Fast & Furious too many times. And really just about anywhere on I-95----I once worked in Flagler County and drove to the Daytona Airport once per week on a Friday afternoon---and it seemed like there was some terrible accident every other week. It was frightening at times.
Southern Cal---I liked how they used their blinkers to signal a lane change on the highway---if you saw the blinker you knew they were coming over...just let off the gas and let them in.
I've only driven in South Florida when I was on vacation once and I remember coming back from Key West to Miami Beach hearing on the radio about a tanker crashing and exploding on I-95 in Broward County shutting down the freeway, it just seemed like such a frightening, shocking accident. Then on top of that all of the crazy drivers and maneuvers I saw driving around just made it seem like South Florida driver's were really like the stereotypes I've heard.
I always loved San Diego drivers overall. They drove fast and somewhat aggressive but they seemed to know how to drive and what they were doing. They were much better at yielding to faster moving traffic in the fast lane compared to up here in the Bay Area. I recall many times being one of several drivers doing 90 in the fast line like it was nothing. LA drivers were somewhat similar but traffic didn't move as fast there b/c of the congestion.
After just returning from a week in FL, overall the FL drivers are the worse drivers, but they do get a + for use of the blinkers.
Yeah I noticed that, most people use blinkers here. You have the people who swerve in and out of lanes, who obviously don't. I myself never use blinkers unless I need to indicate to someone what I'm doing ahead of time which is almost never on the highway.
One thing I noticed here on Miami Beach is that every now and then the people in the exotic cars will rev and race their cars on side streets. I cannot tell you how many times I've seen a Lamborghini zip by my side street going maybe 60+mph in an area with 25mph speed limit and tons of pedestrian traffic. You won't see that in California, the cars there are very respectful of pedestrians. Also honking, while exists in Southern California, can be multiplied by 2x here. I've seen people here honk even when they're in the wrong.
South Florida is really bad, you have the slow old drivers who can't see well, the young people who drive like the Fast and Furious, the tourists who don't know where the hell they are going and the internationals from the Latin American who can't drive for crap. Only place that has worse drivers than Miami is Boston and NYC.
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