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Location: northern Vermont - previously NM, WA, & MA
10,749 posts, read 23,819,647 times
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You always hear about this or that place has horrible drivers. Boston has aggressive drivers, New Jersey has psychotic drivers, even driving through Alabama on the interstates, wow the drivers are batcrap crazy there too as they drive insanely fast. And I feel most places people are inclined to say they have the worst drivers. And don't even get me started on Florida, oyyy!
At the other end of the spectrum I noticed in cities like Seattle and Portland they drive a bit on the slower side there. Only problem with that is the left lane hogs are abundantly common there driving below or at the speed limit with no concept that the left lane is a passing lane. So there the drivers are just annoying as all get out and I'd say that poses a safety risk too since the person driving behind the slow driver might be inclined to make a swift move to get around them while the slow driver is hell bent on hogging that lane.
How about somewhere that has reasonably good drivers generally speaking? Would that be an anomaly or does it exist?
Based on a methodology aggregating car crashes, DUIs, speeding tickets, and a couple other statistics, one source concluded that the states with the best drivers are - in descending order - Michigan, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Illinois. Overall, there is a weak correlation between Democratic voting and worse drivers.
According to the Allstate cities with the worst drivers list Dayton has the best drivers in Ohio, I am up there quite a bit and rarely have any issues.
There's good drivers and bad drivers everywhere that I have driven and that encompasses a LOT of states
I would say that overall Michigan drivers are probably the best ones overall that I've encountered. Minnesota and Wisconsin drivers are also pretty decent as are Maine drivers.
The drivers here (PA) are a mixed bag.
Can't say that I enjoy driving much in Florida or South Carolina.
This is subjective, though, also. I'm an aggressive driver, so it's nice being on the road with aggressive/defensive drivers who know the rules of the road. Aggressive driving is not bad per se. I.e. in Los Angeles and the Northeast, generally, people understand that in order to merge properly, you must accelerate quickly enough to be at highway travel speed. Kentucky and Ohio seem incapable of doing so. The worst drivers I see in NJ are the NY T&LC driving 5MPH under the limit in the left lane and they're incapable of turning without bringing an entire roadway to a crawl because they don't know what they're doing. Second worst here are PA plates driving sooooooooo sslloooooowwwwww. However, when I drive in Philly, everyone is more aggressive and drives over the limit, so I assume the slow PA drivers in North Jersey are from non-Philly parts of PA in the Northeast part of the state. NJ has some bad drivers for sure, but I feel like I get disproportionately angry at NY T&LC and PA drivers compared to how many NJ drivers I encounter.
I never witnessed more accidents in my life or saw the countless aftermaths like I did in Louisville though. I'm not exaggerating when I say it was a near daily occurrence (potentially twice daily) to see a 3-car crash either blocking the roadway or pulled off to the side. I rarely witnessed 2-car crashes. It was almost always 3 or more. My commute was 12 miles and almost every single day there was one. I never saw that many in LA or NJ. I'll also never forget the time I saw an 8-car crash followed by a separate 6-car crash within the same highway interchanged in Louisville (64 E to 264 N). I never saw so many people run red lights as in KY. People regularly pull their car to the left to swing out before making a right hand turn and before I realized how common it was, I got in many near accidents while passing someone in a left lane and they were making a right turn from the right lane. They're incapable of staying in their own lane when it's 2 lanes of traffic on either side with a slight turn in the road...or straightaway it doesn't matter. The big rigs regularly travel in the left lane and will merge right into you while you're driving in the left lane nearly smashing you into the center divider. I had numerous close calls in KY, but never have had anything as close in LA or NJ. Drivers will regularly all go 50-55MPH across all lanes of traffic on the highways with 55MPH speed limits and nobody will move over even out of the far left lane. I think that's all my driving stories from KY, but I've never feared for my life on the road like I did in KY.
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