World's Worst City to Drive In (living in, prices, business)
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Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) is by far the worst I've been to--I've visited about half of the cities on the list. Saigon's traffic laws (including traffic lights) seem to be optional--it's total mayhem, everyone drives-by-horn, and the biggest vehicle gets the right of way.
Within the U.S., I grew up in L.A., and it's traffic is nowhere near as bad as NYC's, where I live now. People commute much further in L.A., which is partly why their commute times are long. Most who vote for L.A. as the worst have never been to South Asia or Southeast Asia.
To anyone who voted for NYC... you guys obviously have never been to Bangkok or Manila! It is an absolute cakewalk. In fact, I actually find driving in Boston a little harder than in NYC because of the confusing road network.... in NYC, most of it makes sense.
To anyone who voted for NYC... you guys obviously have never been to Bangkok or Manila! It is an absolute cakewalk. In fact, I actually find driving in Boston a little harder than in NYC because of the confusing road network.... in NYC, most of it makes sense.
I have to vote for the contiguous cities of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, Michigan. It combines the worst features of all the other bad-driving cities I've ever been to (congestion, speeders, foreign drivers not used to being on that side of the road, bikes vs. vans Circus-Maximus style) with a nightmare jumble of dead-end, one-way, and dead-end-one-way streets, drunken frat boys driving on the sidewalks AND vast, lowing herds of students crossing the streets without any regard for what the traffic lights say.
AND there's no place to park, meaning that cars are parked every whichaway on all those one-way dead-end streets. Oh, yeah, it's a joy.
I didn't actually drive - I was driven around. Traffic lights are optional, hardly anyone stops at red, indicating, stopping for pedestrians etc are optional too. The carts with donkeys/horses/cows pulling them. People with their whole families on bikes (and livestock).
People getting (jumping) off buses into the middle of a 3 lane highway (that was one of the most frightening things I saw), but the bus wasn't stopping, it just slowed down - and the traffic takes no prisoners. I once took a taxi where the instrument panel was tied on by string, it would have been on the driver's knees otherwise.
I have driven in most of Europe, and parts of the US, Florida, Pennsylvania, Nevada and California - including San Francisco and Los Angeles. I live in the UK, and in the US and Europe most people do seem to follow a set of rules for driving - well except maybe Paris and Rome. The US is easy to drive in, there can be a lot of traffic and being able to overtake in any lane on a highway is odd, but most people have fairly safe cars and have passed some sort of a driving test. No where have I felt frightened for my life before - except Cairo. And that's not because I could be robbed or shot either.
I find that Boston drivers are just as rude as NYC drivers. What makes it easier to drive in NYC though is that the layout makes sense... when it doesn't in Boston!
probably los angeles too, although I have never been
I'm glad some one mentioned Tel-Aviv. You haven't lived until you rode with an Israeli. These guys must have learned how to drive in the IDF during live fire training.
Lagos would have to be my vote, it sometimes takes days to move the dead bodies off of the street, being a pedestrian is a matter of life and death, literally and ..... some of the pot holes could swallow a car whole and when it comes to right-of-way....possession is nine tenths of the law.
The worst I know iof is Hanoi. I've been there---it is incredible. There are dozens of YouTube vvideos of Hanoi traffic---it is a tourist attraction, is so bad. Everybody videotapes it. . . .
I was in Lagos in the 70's, when the city was virtually shut down by the impossibility. People in the suburbs just stayed at the office all week. It would take until 10 pm to get home, and you'd have to leave at 2 am to get back to work. But Ive heard that it has improves since then. The traffic was not bad because it did not move. A street that would normally be 3 lanes of traffic one way would be reduced to only one, by people on foot crowding out into the street hoping to catch a bus or a lift.
Lol @ that video...this is what happens when there are no traffic lights.
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