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And 5 consecutive cars blowing the red light at Mass and Tremont. Somehow I doubt Boston has had any gentle driving epiphany just cause 93 moves along slightly faster.
I would be the first to say Boston is worse if it were! My experience in Dallas is people drive incredibly fast on the highways and in general I experience considerably more aggressive driving than I have here. 85 seems to be the normal speed there.
This data here supports my statements..MA as a whole has shown a decline in alot of the high-level areas, while Texas on the other hand...
Bottom line is, we can speak anecdotally all we want, for whatever reason we want. Means little..While this data is going to be skewed for Texas since it's larger with more cities, it still shows a trend and generally supports the theory that Texas has some crazy drivers. Maybe they should crack down on speed and ticket folks to fund the road system instead of installing more toll roads for people to drive like idiots on? Gotta wonder if they enforce as much on a road the driver pays a toll to use as opposed to State highways. Just a thought..
Now if we want to talk about pedestrian traffic Beantown might take the cake for the more trecherous city, next to NYC.
I would be the first to say Boston is worse if it were! My experience in Dallas is people drive incredibly fast on the highways and in general I experience considerably more aggressive driving than I have here. 85 seems to be the normal speed there.
This data here supports my statements..MA as a whole has shown a decline in alot of the high-level areas, while Texas on the other hand...
Bottom line is, we can speak anecdotally all we want, for whatever reason we want. Means little..While this data is going to be skewed for Texas since it's larger with more cities, it still shows a trend and generally supports the theory that Texas has some crazy drivers. Maybe they should crack down on speed and ticket folks to fund the road system instead of installing more toll roads for people to drive like idiots on? Gotta wonder if they enforce as much on a road the driver pays a toll to use as opposed to State highways. Just a thought..
Now if we want to talk about pedestrian traffic Beantown might take the cake for the more trecherous city, next to NYC.
I drove for a living all over New England - primarily in Boston for 15 years. I drive in N Texas - primarily Dallas - now for 5 years.
As I said in my previous post I agree high speed is the biggest danger here. Boston congestion is probably the only thing that slows them down up there. When I commuted from Rhode Island daily, 80 was the typical speed on 95 south and there was never a cop. My theory was the providence mob paid off the MA staties. To say people in MA don't or if given the chance - won't - drive as fast as possible - well that's just not believable. Being a native New Yorker I can tell the difference just between those two states.
Boston's grid is a nightmare. Road signage is stone age. Street names change arbitrarily. Try to get on Storrow Drive near MGH and see if you can get to the lane you need to be in before you're forced up on the ramp to the Tobin. Wait for a green the close your eyes and walk across Mass Ave and see if you live. Dodge triple parked cars in Southie. Have a breakdown on 128 when everyone is driving in the breakdown lane. Find a parking spot. Pay $40 per day for parking. Drive to Rhode Island in whiteout conditions. Drive across town on a sheet of ice. Dig that car out. Watch out for left hand turns from right lanes. Maintain and constantly monitor a 360 degree field of vision for bicyclists, pedestrians, god knows what else every second. Get cut off, flipped off, blocked out. Let's not even talk about the car insurance.
Boston is NOT a good place to drive. it is NOT better than Dallas.
Dallas driving also sucks but for a different reason. More nuts? Yeah prolly - but not significantly. More visible for sure. Most people drive 80? No. 70% of Dallas drivers drive in the right lanes at exactly the speed limit (60 on US75). Bostonians like you (or me) might not notice that as you speed by in the wide, straight easy to navigate left lanes with all the other competitors. So what's the problem?
Speed? Yes. Problem is in Dallas you can generally get up to a high enough speed to kill yourself far more frequently than you can in Boston. So they do. If they could in Boston, they would too. Another factor here is highway width > 3 lanes. With too many lanes, there are more cars to collide with. And people stray from their lanes.
With wider lanes there is more opportunity for recklessness. I agree, there is a lot of it here - but different than BOS. You see more recklessness on Dallas highways simply cuz there is more highway traffic. There is far more city street recklessness and quagmires in BOS. Just walking my son to school for six blocks down Tremont St in the AM was the riskiest part of our lives in BOS. Note the A-hole passing on the right at 40 mph to do a nosedive right on red at Mass Ave while we tried to cross.
Dallasites will let you get into traffic. Bostonians compete and won't. Bostonians do all kinds of risky stuff like they do in Europe. Not here. far less stupid stunts. Except on the highways. Which is why I stay off.
Biggest problem in Dallas besides high speed accidents is complacency and exhaustion. I think just because of the endless distances just to get to anywhere around here, people get exhausted driving. I've seen people literally asleep at the wheel on 75. And one gets so used to empty highways in CoCo that they forget to pay attention. Thus when reckless 20 year old cowboy meets clueless middle aged lady from India, Xmas gets ruined.
In Boston, you learn to see 360 degrees nonstop. Senses are heightened dramatically. You haftoo. things change second by second. In Dallas you can drive on wide easy highways for miles and not see a soul. This makes people complacent. And again - the endless distance to anywhere. A favorite saying here is "Oh yeah, we have a beach here - it's only 12 hours away - you can be there in a half a day." The more you are on the road, the more likely you are to have a car accident. People sadly spend a large portion of our lives in cars here. I'd trade my commute for a stroll through Boston Common in a heartbeat.
Boston is a nerve wracking nightmare until you completely digest the grid, know all the tricks, and totally heighten your senses. Anyone from outta town will tell you that.
Dallas driving is like a dream - until you realize that you hafta drive here so much you actually are asleep in your car - then you wake up and notice everyone else is too. And you see the wrecks everywhere.
Driving sucks in both. It's more a case of naming your poison.
I drove for a living all over New England - primarily in Boston for 15 years. I drive in N Texas - primarily Dallas - now for 5 years.
As I said in my previous post I agree high speed is the biggest danger here. Boston congestion is probably the only thing that slows them down up there. When I commuted from Rhode Island daily, 80 was the typical speed on 95 south and there was never a cop. My theory was the providence mob paid off the MA staties. To say people in MA don't or if given the chance - won't - drive as fast as possible - well that's just not believable. Being a native New Yorker I can tell the difference just between those two states.
Boston's grid is a nightmare. Road signage is stone age. Street names change arbitrarily. Try to get on Storrow Drive near MGH and see if you can get to the lane you need to be in before you're forced up on the ramp to the Tobin. Wait for a green the close your eyes and walk across Mass Ave and see if you live. Dodge triple parked cars in Southie. Have a breakdown on 128 when everyone is driving in the breakdown lane. Find a parking spot. Pay $40 per day for parking. Drive to Rhode Island in whiteout conditions. Drive across town on a sheet of ice. Dig that car out. Watch out for left hand turns from right lanes. Maintain and constantly monitor a 360 degree field of vision for bicyclists, pedestrians, god knows what else every second. Get cut off, flipped off, blocked out. Let's not even talk about the car insurance.
Boston is NOT a good place to drive. it is NOT better than Dallas.
Dallas driving also sucks but for a different reason. More nuts? Yeah prolly - but not significantly. More visible for sure. Most people drive 80? No. 70% of Dallas drivers drive in the right lanes at exactly the speed limit (60 on US75). Bostonians like you (or me) might not notice that as you speed by in the wide, straight easy to navigate left lanes with all the other competitors. So what's the problem?
Speed? Yes. Problem is in Dallas you can generally get up to a high enough speed to kill yourself far more frequently than you can in Boston. So they do. If they could in Boston, they would too. Another factor here is highway width > 3 lanes. With too many lanes, there are more cars to collide with. And people stray from their lanes.
With wider lanes there is more opportunity for recklessness. I agree, there is a lot of it here - but different than BOS. You see more recklessness on Dallas highways simply cuz there is more highway traffic. There is far more city street recklessness and quagmires in BOS. Just walking my son to school for six blocks down Tremont St in the AM was the riskiest part of our lives in BOS. Note the A-hole passing on the right at 40 mph to do a nosedive right on red at Mass Ave while we tried to cross.
Dallasites will let you get into traffic. Bostonians compete and won't. Bostonians do all kinds of risky stuff like they do in Europe. Not here. far less stupid stunts. Except on the highways. Which is why I stay off.
Biggest problem in Dallas besides high speed accidents is complacency and exhaustion. I think just because of the endless distances just to get to anywhere around here, people get exhausted driving. I've seen people literally asleep at the wheel on 75. And one gets so used to empty highways in CoCo that they forget to pay attention. Thus when reckless 20 year old cowboy meets clueless middle aged lady from India, Xmas gets ruined.
In Boston, you learn to see 360 degrees nonstop. Senses are heightened dramatically. You haftoo. things change second by second. In Dallas you can drive on wide easy highways for miles and not see a soul. This makes people complacent. And again - the endless distance to anywhere. A favorite saying here is "Oh yeah, we have a beach here - it's only 12 hours away - you can be there in a half a day." The more you are on the road, the more likely you are to have a car accident. People sadly spend a large portion of our lives in cars here. I'd trade my commute for a stroll through Boston Common in a heartbeat.
Boston is a nerve wracking nightmare until you completely digest the grid, know all the tricks, and totally heighten your senses. Anyone from outta town will tell you that.
Dallas driving is like a dream - until you realize that you hafta drive here so much you actually are asleep in your car - then you wake up and notice everyone else is too. And you see the wrecks everywhere.
Driving sucks in both. It's more a case of naming your poison.
Haha, this is very true!! Well said.
I guess I am very at ease with Boston driving at this point..I mean giving the finger and screaming GFY is like waving hello anywhere in Boston/GreaterBoston.
When I first drove on a Texas highway I was terrified, and alot of it was based on exactly what you said above. The highways are so huge, the stacks are so high I damn near got acrophobia. Lots of weaving, lots of movement, people don't stay in lanes, tailgaiting galore, and passing on the right and they're going at break-neck speeds. Definitely not used to it I guess. At one point I thought it was because I had out of state plates, then I drove withTexas plates, nothing changed really. I may have received 'the bird' alot less I think, but same white-knuckle fear on the freeways.
BTW, that picture isn't fair, it's basically a blizzard condition being used to illustrate the traffic! Can't be any worse! I DO want know why that CR-V is pointing towards a storefront though.
From my perspective the worst drivers tend to be around downtown/Uptown, and driving luxury cars. I'd say the majority are courteous drivers, but that 10% is so obnoxious and wreckless they seem to account for a larger percentage. The further out I get from the city core the more I see things calm down.
Group A: about 80% of Dallasites are good courteous drivers.
Group B: 10% are arsehowes of the Fratguy Beamer or used ghettostyle Beamer variety zigzagging, tailgating, just utterly reckless - and ultimately wreckful.
Group C: 10% are true incompetents who your description fits perfectly.
Whenever I see accidents - usually everyday - I look at the victims and almost every time I note they either belong to Group B or C.
The biggest problem with driving in Texas is there is a far higher percentage of high speed driving going on which results in far more terrible consequences when an accident occurs. In Boston and NY it's so crowded no one's ever getting up enough speed for the epic wrecks I see in Dallas all the time. But they have more fender benders and obviously more pedestrian incidents.
Besides Boston's impossible grid and no signage, the biggest difference between Boston drivers and Dallas drivers is when confronted with a risky traffic decision, in Dallas they probably won't and in Boston they probably will.
If you wanna talk about psycho, let's talk about Paris.
All that said I hate driving in Dallas. I stay off the highways as much as possible. I've saw more collisions in Dallas in my first year here than all 15 years in Boston.
I don't want to generalize, but I gotta agree. We visited DFW in late June. The area is sure impressive w/ all of these multi-lane speedways. But even with GPS (btw new Garmin was just awful and inaccurate) I'd like to go may be 65 mph, at least in the right lane. But many drivers do tailgating at this speed . For somebody who comes from NY/NJ area....it doesn't give me warm and fuzzy feeling inside. I had my wife and two kids in the car. Is this common to drive inches away from your rear bumper at 65-70 in the right lane? I mean all lanes to the left were readily available. We rented a car at DFW w/ FL license plates LOL. May be it was TX "welcome" to someone they thought was from FL ?
BTW, that picture isn't fair, it's basically a blizzard condition being used to illustrate the traffic! Can't be any worse! I DO want know why that CR-V is pointing towards a storefront though.
You're right it's the worst case scenario. But it's kinda fair cuz it reminds you in DFW we essentially never haftoo deal with driving in blizzard conditions. When it comes to driving - no blizzards and no ice is definitely a plus.
As much as I miss my family and love the many cultural amenities of the northeast, I'm not sure I ever need to go back to dealing with that problem.
FYI, that blizzard caused gridlock citywide. People ran out of gas stuck in gridlocked traffic. Glad I stayed home that day! That's Tremont and Hammond St FYI around 5:30pm forgot what year. 2007?
And that sideways CRV waited on Hammond to take a left on Tremont to head toward Melnea Cass for several lights before it became apparent of course no one was gonna let him in so he bullied his way in. Dumb mistake. Shoulda turned around and went the other way. Weird thing is all these side streets were wide open but these suburban commuters all rather sit stuck on the main drag.
I travel a lot for my work and I end up renting cars wherever I go, so I can say that I've driven in many cities in country. I have yet to see a city where drivers are as clueless as they are in Dallas. It's outrageous. In every city, you'll notice 2 or 3 people that are really bad drivers, but in Dallas that seems to be the norm. It's like no one knows how to drive in this city. People signal left and turn right. People make a turn and signal AFTER completing the turn. I've seen people get on the accelerating ramps of highways going 45 mph completely missing the point of those ramps. Hello, those ramps are there so that you can accelerate and catch up with the highway's speed, not so that people can slow down to 45 mph to accommodate your laziness. This is the only city where people actually wait for a green light to make a right turn even though it is perfectly fine to turn right in a red light if there is no incoming traffic. Did I also mention how most Dallas drivers are habitual drive-texters?
Oh also, people in Dallas are obsessed with using bright lights in traffic no matter how the conditions are. Bright lights are meant for foggy conditions or for roads that are night well-lighted. People in Dallas use it even under perfect conditions and well-lighted roads. People are so inconsiderate in this city.
It almost feels like DMVs in the DFW area just handout drivers licenses to people without actually checking their driving ability. This is probably how conversations occur in the DMV:
-Hey man, I came here for my driver's license.
-Can you drive a vehicle?
-Ummm not really.
-It's ok man, here is your license. You'll learn as you go.
Not knowing how to drive is instinctive. Just as soon as a small boy is big enough to jump to the front from the back seat, he will know how to grab hold of the steering wheel to turn it like a crazy wild man. And then there are the little girls who will grow up to become women learning multitasking doing their makeup while jabbering on the cell phone. This is universal behavior all around the world a tradition which got its start during the stone age all the way back to Fred Flintstone when he would foot pedal and brake his car back and forth from the rock quarry.
Not knowing how to drive is instinctive. Just as soon as a small boy is big enough to jump to the front from the back seat, he will know how to grab hold of the steering wheel to turn it like a crazy wild man. And then there are the little girls who will grow up to become women learning multitasking doing their makeup while jabbering on the cell phone. This is universal behavior all around the world a tradition which got its start during the stone age all the way back to Fred Flintstone when he would foot pedal and brake his car back and forth from the rock quarry.
One big difference in drivers in Texas vs. Southern California is I noticed people here in LA maintain their lanes on the freeway. Houston and Dallas drivers have very little lane loyalty, there is a lot of switching and zigging and zagging.
I think the difference is that here almost none of the freeways go in a straight line for more than a few hundred yards. We constantly curve and twist between hills or around buildings that were here before the freeways. Texas seems like it had much less aversion to bulldozing whatever was in the way of a straight line.
Maybe that opens it up for quick switching, faster speeds, and less attention needed.
And yes, San Antonio drivers coming to complete stops on the service road anytime there is a yield sign always drove me insane!!
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Agree
(although McAllen is downright scarey)
